by Dan Wright
Mantell Incident
On the afternoon of January 7, 1948, Kentucky Air National Guard's Thomas Mantell, a 25-year-old pilot with World War II experience, was headed north past Goodman AFB in his F-51 Mustang. The State Highway Patrol had been passing along citizen reports that day of an unusual aerial object first seen over Maysville, 80 miles east of the base. Soon sightings were reported from two other towns. Three air base personnel, including the commanding officer, a colonel, spotted the oddity at high altitude. Through binoculars, the colonel later remarked, “It was very white and looked like an umbrella ...” Its apparent size was about a quarter of a full moon. At times the top or bottom appeared to be banded in red. The three witnesses continued observing for 1½ hours; all the while the unknown was seemingly stationary.
At that point, four F-51s, including Mantell's, approached the base on their flight from north Georgia. One, low on fuel, landed. The tower directed the remaining three to pursue the unknown—per recent USAF policy. Mantell spotted it first and radioed back that it was “in sight above and ahead of me, and it appears to be moving at about half my speed or approximately 180 miles an hour. It appears to be a metallic object or possibly reflection of sun from a metallic object, and it is of tremendous size.”26
Without first informing his companions, Mantell climbed steeply toward the object, the others in hot pursuit. At 16,000 feet one pilot donned an oxygen mask in the thinner air. Mantell's plane was not equipped with oxygen. At 22,500 feet both of the wingmen broke off the chase, while Mantell continued upward in the hope of closing further. The other pilots last saw his plane still climbing.
In minutes, two rural Kentucky witnesses separately heard a screaming sound and saw Mantell's plane headed steeply downward in a spiraling path. It exploded in midair. Upon retrieving the body, rescuers said his shattered watch had stopped at 3:18 p.m. At 3:50, the unknown was lost from view by the Goodman tower. The evening edition of the Louisville Courier proclaimed, “F-51 and Capt. Mantell Destroyed Chasing Flying Saucer.”27
Note: In a separate account, MUFON's Leonard Stringfield reported he had later been told by one of the wingmen that Mantell's Mustang did indeed have oxygen onboard, the only one among the four so equipped, and that his oxygen mask allowed him to continue when the others broke off the chase. That pilot allegedly told Stringfield that he saw some type of tracers directed from the unknown toward Mantell's plane, causing it to break up.28 Another source stated that none of the F-51s had oxygen onboard in that the flight from Georgia was to be at modest altitude.29
The USAF Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) later stated that Mantell and the others had misidentified a high-altitude Skyhook balloon. That explanation, however, would seem problematic, given the lengthy duration of the event (1½ hours plus) asserted by the base commander, the swiftness of prevailing winds, and Mantell's airborne description of the object as reflective metallic.
Aerial peculiarities occurred elsewhere as well. On the afternoon of April 5, 1948, at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, three balloon observers from the Geophysics Lab saw three round but irregularly shaped objects of either white or gold coloration. One made three loops around the area before rising rapidly out of sight. The others flew in a fast arc to the west. USAF Project Blue Book later left the case unidentified.30
In the wee hours of July 24, 1948, an Eastern Airlines DC-3 was en route from Houston to Atlanta. At 2:45 a.m. the captain and copilot confronted a large red light coming directly at them. They veered left as the anomaly passed to the right of the plane, turned upward, and, with a burst of flame from the rear, shot off into the clouds. The two pilots described the object as cigar-shaped without wings, approximately 100 feet long and 30 feet thick. A pointed protrusion was at the front, while two rows of rectangular windows glowed brilliantly. The underside was likewise aglow in phosphorescent blue. The red-orange flame extended some 50 feet from the rear. Another ghost rocket?31
On October 1, 1948, a North Dakota National Guard lieutenant was flying his F-51 Mustang over Fargo at 9:00 p.m. when a white light passed him from behind. He gave chase but could not equal its tight turns and acceleration. The sphere of light ultimately approached him on a collision course before veering straight up and out of sight overhead. The pilot noticed no sound or exhaust trail from the light. Air traffic controllers also observed it, as did a private pilot and his passenger who remarked afterward on its amazing speed and maneuvers.32
Following a report in autumn 1948 by USAF Project Sign declaring saucers to be potentially extraterrestrial in origin, the effort was abandoned, replaced that December by a far less accepting Project Grudge. This program continued for a year. In 1952 it would, in turn, be displaced by the more recognizable Project Blue Book.
Chapter 2
1949: Curiouser and Curiouser
Another aerial oddity, green fireballs were seen from 1948 through 1949 in the American southwest, especially New Mexico—clustered around sensitive research installations such as the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories. Meteor expert Dr. Lincoln LaPaz headed up investigations into the fireballs for the military. He concluded that the objects displayed anomalous characteristics including slow speed and horizontal paths that were unlike meteors; instead they must be artificial, perhaps Russian devices. Many individuals with solid reputations saw the fireballs, including LaPaz, other distinguished Los Alamos scientists, Kirtland AFB intelligence officers, and Air Defense Command personnel.1
On January 4, 1949, about 2:00 p.m. at Hickam Field, Hawaii, an Air Force captain and pilot watched an elliptical object from the ground. Flat white with a matte top, it circled the area, oscillating to the right and left, then flew rapidly away. The Air Force listed the matter as unresolved.2
Beginning at 10:20 p.m., January 27, 1949, an Air Force captain accompanied the acting chief of the Aircraft Branch at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, along with his wife, who all observed a cylindrical object for 25 minutes from their location in the Cortez-Bradenton area. As long as two Pullman cars, the ship had seven lighted square windows and was throwing sparks. It descended at one point, then climbed with a bouncing motion at an estimated 400 mph. USAF files afterward listed the incident as unidentifiable.3
In a January 31, 1949, memo to Director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI's San Antonio, Texas, field office stated in reference to flying saucer reports, “... This matter is considered top secret by Intelligence Officers of both the Army and the Air Force.” The message referenced “sightings of unexplained phenomena [that] were reported in the vicinity of the A.E.C. (Atomic Energy Commission) installation at Los Alamos, New Mexico ... No scientific experiments are known to exist in this country which could give rise to such phenomena.”4 In short, the authorities had no clue.
A February 1949 Los Alamos conference was titled encouragingly by the Air Force, Project Sign. Among those attending were H-bomb scientist Dr. Edward Teller, upper atmosphere physicist Dr. Joseph Kaplan, and other renowned scientists and military brass. On the topic of recent fireball phenomena, the conference attendees concluded, though far from unanimously, that the displays were natural phenomena.5
At 9:06 a.m., September 20, 1949, while flying a C-45 cargo plane northeast of Rome, New York, an Air Force lieutenant colonel observed a silvery aerial cylinder ahead. The object descended slowly until lost from view in a cloud layer at 7,000 feet. An hour later, a lieutenant piloting a C-47 in the same region spotted an object “similar in size and shape to a fighter fuselage, silver in color” diving at a 45- to 60-degree angle. The unknown seemingly vanished while in a shadow cast by clouds.6
In December 1949, Project Twinkle was established then quickly extinguished. It involved a network of fireball-observation installations and photographic stations. The project was never fully implemented.7
A spate of three similar 1949 events reported within a month argued against any easy answer to the questions surrounding aerial phenomena. Soon, ATIC was classifying commonly observed unknowns seen in
daylight in binary terms: spherical or elliptical, plus those described only as shiny metallic. Some were said to be only two or three feet across; most approached 100 feet; a few were claimed to be up to 1,000 feet. Other shapes reported in daytime sightings: torpedo, pencil, triangle, even mattress-like.8
Nighttime sightings in the late 1940s were still of green, flaming red, or blue-white glowing/undulating fireballs. Formations varied in number. The intruders' speed ranged from virtual hovering to moderate (like a conventional propeller aircraft) to, on occasion, “stupendous” (up to an estimated 1,000+ mph in a White Sands incident). Extreme accelerations and violent maneuvering were reported in a small proportion of cases. With few exceptions, neither sound nor smell was recorded.9
With World War II still in the rearview mirror and a new cold war with the Soviets just underway, reasoning held that the American populace could be forgiven for a measure of mass hysteria concerning anything unfamiliar in the sky. In that context, fair or otherwise, the CIA initially chose not to respond at all to the fundamental questions posed.
Importantly, the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 (Public Law 81-110) authorized use of confidential fiscal and administrative procedures. More firmly established than before, the Agency was authorized to operate in essentially unaccountable secrecy, exempted from most limitations on the use of federal funds; there would be no public accounting for what was spent and how.
As was his authority earlier as the Coordinator of Information, CIA Director William Donovan was the only official cleared for unvouchered disbursements from the president's emergency fund, spent at White House discretion.10 The new law likewise exempted the CIA from disclosure of its “organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed.”11
In 1949, the Agency established an Office of Scientific Intelligence (much later renamed the Directorate of Science & Technology) over concerns of a possible technological surprise by way of Soviet nuclear capacity, guided missiles, or biological warfare. Its mission was to research, devise, and manage technical collection disciplines and equipment. Many of its innovations would eventually be transferred to other intelligence organizations or, as they became more overt, to the military services.12 Credit was not OSI's frame of reference.
OSI was destined to be at the heart of the Agency's response to the UFO problem. The earliest known UFO-related document in CIA files was recorded on March 15, 1949, in an OSI memo from a Dr. Stone to a Dr. Machle (branch office name redacted). Stone responded skeptically to earlier data submitted to him by Machle, which had apparently argued for the credence of flying saucer reports.13
On May 5, 1949, at the Army's Fort Bliss, Texas, two majors and a captain observed two oblong white discs flying 200–250 mph overhead at 5:45 p.m. The unknowns made a shallow turn before moving out of sight. As was its habit when the witnesses were military personnel or private pilots, the USAF Project Blue Book later listed the event as unidentified.14
Chapter 3
1950: Escalation
The Agency established its first staff development facility, the Office of Training and Education, in Langley, Virginia, in 1950. It is unclear whether UFOs were even a tangential subject.
At Teaticket, Massachusetts, on February 5, 1950, from the ground an Air Force lieutenant and pilot, along with a former Navy pilot and two others, observed a pair of illuminated cylinders, thin in profile, at 5:10 p.m. As they watched, a fireball dropped from one of the structures. The objects maneuvered together for five minutes then ascended swiftly out of sight. Their report to an otherwise skeptical Project Grudge was left unidentified.1
At 9:26 p.m., March 20, 1950, over Stuggart, Arkansas, a Chicago & Southern Airlines captain and his first officer observed a 100-foot saucer for half a minute. They noted 9–12 portholes along the lower side that emitted soft purple light. At the top a light flashed three times in a 9-second span. The pilots adjudged its velocity upon leaving as not less than 1,000 mph. Project Grudge left this case unidentifiable as well.2
President Harry Truman declared on April 4, 1950, “I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on Earth.”3
On May 25, US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Doyle Rees, the Commander of the 17th District Office of Special Investigations, wrote to his superior, General Joseph Carroll. Rees' letter concluded:
This summary of observations of aerial phenomena has been prepared for the purpose of re-emphasizing and reiterating the fact that phenomena have continuously occurred in the New Mexico skies during the past 18 months and are continuing to occur, and, secondly, that these phenomena are occurring in the vicinity of sensitive military and governmental installations.4
An American Airlines DC-6, soon after takeoff from Washington National Airport on May 29, 1950, confronted a brilliant object coming straight on and veered to avoid a collision. Reported the captain later: “As I looked to my left the object appeared to come to a stop. It appeared as a perfectly streamlined object without wings or tail section ...” In seconds the intruder circled around to the right and paced the plane, then turned away abruptly. “We watched it for several more seconds until it disappeared in the east out of sight. I have never seen anything like it before or since.”5
On July 31, 1950, an Information Report by a CIA operative in South America attached a magazine article originating in Chile. German-born physicist Eduard Ludwig of Santiago had written the piece for a German-language magazine there. He had declared that notions of saucer origins beyond Earth were absurd. Ludwig posited that nighttime observations of anomalies were actually of the exhaust from an advanced but unnamed “gas-turbine” vehicle. The remaining text was largely technical, discussing the properties of aerodynamics related to lift.6
Less than three weeks later, on August 18, another foreign CIA Information Report from a redacted source concerned an August 4 sighting by a ship's crew at sea, sailing from Nova Scotia to an unidentified East Coast US port. At 10:00 a.m. that day, with smooth water and a clear sky, the captain was called hastily to the deck. There he and the crew confronted a smallish “ovular cylindrical” object off the starboard bow, probably several miles away, flying low over the water. The captain viewed it through binoculars for 1½ minutes as it approached the ship then flew away with an uneven “churning” motion, its closest approach being about 1,000 feet. No sound was heard. One crewman described its shape as elliptical—like an egg cut in half lengthwise. The unknown cast a shadow on the water. He said it moved away at tremendous speed with a spinning, wobbling motion.7
That anecdotal report deserved the credible side of the ledger as it was reportedly seen by multiple military witnesses who, by occupation at least, were likely fairly reliable at observing things at a distance. Some of them might also well have been adept at judging the size and shape of something unusual in their seafaring environment.
Late that summer, on September 8, came an underscoring of military directives—pointedly regarding anomalous airborne objects. Air Force Major General Charles P. Cabell at Air Materiel Command wrote to Air Force commanding generals, major air commands, and US air attachés, with copies to the intelligence directors of the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, FBI, CIA, and State Department. The memo, titled “Reporting of Information on Unconventional Aircraft,” defined same as “any aircraft or airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft type.” Each incident was to be reported separately, with descriptive details and time of the sighting, to the Air Materiel Command, Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio.8
At the outset of the Korean War in August 1950, the CIA comprised a few thousand employees—one thousand of them engaged in various types of analysis. Raw intelligence material came largely from an obscure Office of Reports and Estimates within the Defense Department, which in turn drew the contents of its daily reports variously from State Department telegrams, military dispatches, and public doc
uments. As yet, the CIA lacked its own intelligence-gathering function.
In its early tenure, the Agency endured disparate demands brought by the official bodies overseeing it. Truman's White House wanted a centralized group to organize the information reaching him. The DoD wanted military intelligence and spy-stuff covert action. The State Department wished it to be the agent for global political change favorable to the United States. From those inputs, the basic areas of CIA responsibility as an arm of the federal government became (a) covert actions and (b) covert intelligence gathering. The primary target was the Soviet Union, of course, which had likewise been a priority of the CIA predecessors, OCI and OSS.9
While you were away from your desk . . .
Though 1950 was not hectic in terms of UFO-related activity internationally, sharp Agency analysts might have bent the rules of the CIA charter a bit and thereby better served their superiors by acquiring the accounts of a few additional anomalous aerial events. However, nothing concerning those incidents was found among the files released to the CIA website in 2017.
March 8, 1950
At 7:50 a.m., four F-51 Mustangs were dispatched from Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio, to engage an unknown observed from the tower and tracked on radar. Two pilots came close enough to identify the object as huge, circular, and metallic. But severe weather forced them to break off the chase.10
March 17, 1950
At Farmington, New Mexico, on the morning of March 17, 1950, hundreds of locals over the course of an hour witnessed a great number of airborne discs—variously estimated between 500 and several thousand feet in diameter. USAF Captain Edward Ruppelt, later the first head of Project Blue Book, immediately and defensively claimed they all had seen the shattered remains of a Skyhook balloon launched that morning from Holloman AFB. University of Arizona atmospheric physicist Dr. James McDonald contended that witness descriptions of fast-moving discs did not support that. Records thereafter released by Holloman and the Office of Naval Research squelched Ruppelt's contention; no Skyhook had been released from Holloman or any other place on or near that date.11