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A frequent cause of "unidentified aerial object" reports is the sighting of "Skyhook" balloons at high altitudes. The huge balloons (73 feet in diameter and 129 feet long) ascend to altitudes as high as 100,000 feet. The translucent polyethylene plastic of which the balloons are made gleams brightly in the sun. At higher altitudes, Skyhook balloons tend to lose their spheroid shape and undulate slowly in air currents, often assuming the shape of eggs or discs. Skyhook balloons are released regularly from west coast launching sites by the Air. Force under Project "Moby Dick." They have been known to drift across the entire United States on their mission of obtaining weather data in the upper reaches of the earth's atmosphere. The launching of one of these sky monsters is shown in the photo below. Below that, is a Skyhook balloon depicted shortly after the launching as it begins its long trip skyward. The smaller spheres to the left are three-foot weather balloons, which are used to compute winds aloft.
About the only theory left to check was that the object might have been one of the big, 100-foot-diameter, "skyhook" balloons. I rechecked the descriptions of the UFO made by the people in the tower. The first man to sight the object called it a parachute; others said ice cream cone, round, etc. All of these descriptions fit a balloon. Buried deep in the file were two more references to balloons that I had previously missed. Not long after the object had disappeared from view at Godman AFB, a man from Madisonville, Kentucky, called Flight Service in Dayton. He had seen an object traveling southeast. He had looked at it through a telescope and it was a balloon. At four forty-five an astronomer living north of Nashville, Tennessee, called in. He had also seen a UFO, looked at it through a telescope, and it was a balloon.
In the thousands of words of testimony and evidence taken on the Mantell Incident this was the only reference to balloons. I had purposely not paid too much attention to this possibility because I was sure that it had been thoroughly checked back in 1948. Now I wasn't sure.
The group who supervise the contracts for all the skyhook research flights for the Air Force are located at Wright Field, so I called them. They had no records on flights in 1948 but they did think that the big balloons were being launched from Clinton County AFB in southern Ohio at that time. They offered to get the records of the winds on January 7 and see what flight path a balloon launched in southwestern Ohio would have taken. In a few days they had the data for me.
Unfortunately the times of the first sightings, from the towns outside Louisville, were not exact but it was possible to partially reconstruct the sequence of events. The winds were such that a skyhook balloon launched from Clinton County AFB could be seen from the town east of Godman AFB, the town from which the first UFO was reported to the Kentucky State Police. It is not unusual to be able to see a large balloon for 50 to 60 miles. The balloon could have traveled west for a while, climbing as it moved with the strong east winds that were blowing that day and picking up speed as the winds got stronger at altitude. In twenty minutes it could have been in a position where it could be seen from Owensboro and Irvington, Kentucky, the two towns west of Godman. The second reports to the state police had come from these two towns. Still climbing, the balloon would have reached a level where a strong wind was blowing in a southerly direction. The jet-stream winds were not being plotted in 1948 but the weather chart shows strong indications of a southerly bend in the jet stream for this day. Jet stream or not, the balloon would have moved rapidly south, still climbing. At a point somewhere south or southwest of Godman it would have climbed through the southerly-moving winds to a calm belt at about 60,000 feet. At this level it would slowly drift south or southeast. A skyhook balloon can be seen at 60,000.
When first seen by the people in Godinan Tower, the UFO was south of the air base. It was relatively close and looked "like a parachute," which a balloon does. During the two hours that it was in sight, the observers reported that it seemed to hover, yet each observer estimated the time he looked at the object through the binoculars and timewise the descriptions ran "huge," "small," "one fourth the size of a full moon," "one tenth the size of a full moon." Whatever the UFO was, it was slowly moving away. As the balloon continued to drift in a southerly direction it would have picked up stronger winds, and could have easily been seen by the astronomers in Madisonville, Kentucky, and north of Nashville an hour after it disappeared from view at Godman.
Somewhere in the archives of the Air Force or the Navy there are records that will show whether or not a balloon was launched from Clinton County AFB, Ohio, on January 7, 1948. I never could find these records. People who were working with the early skyhook projects "remember" operating out of Clinton County AFB in 1947 but refuse to be pinned down to a January 7 flight. Maybe, they said.
The Mantell Incident is the same old UFO jigsaw puzzle. By assuming the shape of one piece, a balloon launched from southwestern Ohio, the whole picture neatly falls together. It shows a huge balloon that Captain Thomas Mantell died trying to reach. He didn't know that he was chasing a balloon because he had never heard of a huge, 100-foot-diameter skyhook balloon, let alone seen one. Leave out the one piece of the jigsaw puzzle and the picture is a UFO, "metallic and tremendous in size."
Originally posted by Gazrok
In addition to showing some of the best evidence cases, I’ve also attempted to clarify what I believe to be mistaken cases or witnesses as well. The misunderstanding of some of these items, in my opinion, greatly affects the ridicule or disbelief factor in regards to UFOs being otherworldly spacecraft.
You are a believer in a cover up. You just said so. This means your bias will hurt you in any investigation
of a cover up as you will not see (register) indications to the contrary. Change that sentence to saying
where Hynek worked at the time, and you have a piece that becomes more investigative in nature, and does
not reveal your bias.
Nobody knows what Capt. Thomas F. Mantell Jr. was chasing through the winter sky on Jan. 7, 1948.
His pursuit of the "flying saucer" cost him his life. The 25-year-old Kentucky Air National Guard pilot from Louisville died in the crash of his P-51 "Mustang" fighter plane near Franklin, the Simpson County seat.