No, this is not about the “Great Airship Mystery” that left hundreds of witnesses spellbound across the US at the turn of the century from Aurora, Texas to San Francisco. This is about an intentionally misleading narrative used by the US Air Force from the very beginning in 1947 after the Roswell crash where the recovery of a flying disk was reported by the 509^th Bomb Group, the only atomic weapons air capable command in the world. These airmen and officers were more than aware of any exotic material that could possibly be mistaken for an alien space craft or otherworldly material. Even the citizens of Roswell, New Mexico routinely encountered US Air Force weather balloons as they eventually deflated and settled upon the land.

Yet, when the story of a crashed flying disk was announced and the world changed overnight, General George Ramey decided to use the weather balloon excuse to defuse the excitement, the jamming of Roswell Army Air Field telephones, and the public’s hysterical fascination with what seemed to be the crash landing of a real flying saucer! Major Jess Marcel who actually handled the debris recovered from Mac Brazel’s ranch and proclaimed it to be from another world would be the one blamed for misidentifying the wreckage that had now magically become a standard weather balloon!  

Later, the US Air Force would publish a book on the Roswell crash now claiming it was another type of balloon all together and this explanation would now morph into “Project Mogul” a high altitude listening array of balloons and sensitive microphone equipment designed to detect Soviet nuclear tests in the upper atmosphere! A new balloon narrative! This stirred even more controversy! Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist who had worked for General Electric developing nuclear propulsion engines claimed that he knew about Project Mogul and knew it was not a relevant explanation!

The year is 1948 and Captain Thomas Mantell, a WWII veteran combat pilot is about to arrive at his rendezvous with fate as the control tower at Godman Airfield requests that he investigate a high flying glowing aerial object that they have been observing for the last 45 minutes. He is heading a flight of P-51 Mustangs across country to another Air Force base when he acknowledges and vectored by Godman Air Controllers to intercept the unknown airborne object. Accompanied by 3 other Mustangs 2 develop problems and break off the pursuit leaving only Mantell and his wingman!

Tragically Mantell is flying in an unpressurized cockpit and begins climbing at a steep angle seeing the UFO above him! His wingman loses him in the pursuit. Mantell’s last transmission to  the radar operators at Godman Tower is that he sees it, it is metallic, and huge but he’s gaining on it! Just minutes later he would lose consciousness from anoxia and his P-51 would plunge 30,000 feet below to the aviator’s death! “Whatever he saw,” replied his wingman, “Was more important to him then his family, his career, or his life.” Remember, Captain Mantell was an experienced combat pilot!

What did the military’s explanation amount to? You guessed it, another balloon explanation. This time it was the US Navy’s “Sky Hook” balloon project! Saying that once the balloon reached around 50,000 feet, the neoprene outer skin would freeze and become brittle and reflect light as though it were metallic! Sure!

In his 1956 book, “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects,” Captain Edward Ruppelt, Director of Project Blue Book would state that he had checked balloon launch records all over the adjacent areas and never found any evidence of a Skyhook balloon being released in the immediate area in or around the date that Mantell plowed the farm as Chuck Yeager used to say of crashes. Once again, a mundane explanation for a fantastic and fatal event! This would end up leading to a conflict with the US Air Force who threatened his position with a defense contractor that forced him to write a 2^nd book renouncing everything he had accused his former bosses for which was denying the existence of the extraterrestrial theory! Ruppelt would later die as a young man of an untimely heart attack shortly after releasing his 2^nd book. Donald Keyhoe would later say that Ruppelt had been so deeply hurt by the USAF’s threats that it had contributed to his fatal coronary.

Balloon Incident Number Three: Dogfight Over Fargo 

As Lieutenant Gorman begins his landing approach at Fargo, North Dakota airport, he spots a UFO and aborts his landing and for 27 minutes will enter into a virtual aerial contest with a lighted orb shaped object. Witnesses who followed the attempted intercept observed an unknown airborne object that would perform high speed maneuvers, abrupt climbs, and intelligently controlled acrobatics that outmatched Gorman’s determined pursuit! Both a single engine pilot inflight over the airport and control tower personnel with binoculars watched the aerial display! Lieutenant Gorman landed safely unlike other US Air Force pilots who had not been so lucky! After the debriefing, after the witness testimony, and after a final determination, you guessed it! What was the explanation? A lighted weather balloon! Amazing how those weather balloons could out maneuver the best WWII fighter plane in the US inventory at the time!