Mantell Incident, 1948

Mantell Incident

In what might be the first fatality directly attributed to an unidentified flying object, Air National Guard pilot Captain Thomas F. Mantell crashed his P-51 fighter while in pursuit of an unusual object in the skies over Kentucky on January 7, 1948. Flying without oxygen at high altitude in pursuit of a “silver disk shaped” craft, he apparently blacked out when he tried to get closer to whatever the thing was, with tragic consequences. Later investigation suggests that what Captain Mantell may have been chasing was actually a large Skyhook weather balloon, which can take on a disk-like appearance when seen from below and has a highly reflective silvery surface to boot. If that’s the case, then Mantell was a victim of his own zeal and disregard for Air Force procedures in flying above his safe maximum altitude, demonstrating that presumption may be more dangerous than extraterrestrials. The incident did manage to change the public perceptions of UFOs, however, leading some people to see the alien visitors as potentially dangerous rather than the fun-loving little green men they had been assumed to be up to then.