At first, after Kenneth Arnold made famous his “Flying Saucer) sighting near Mt. Rainier in Washington State in 1947, the public took the flying disk mystery as a benign occurrence that would do no harm to anyone. That inaccurate assessment soon changed and began a decade’s long cover-up that, to this day, remains in a flux of disinformation. Although a previous crash recovery had been witnessed in Cape Girardeau ,Missouri in 1941 and then in Roswell, New Mexico in June of 1947, it seemed nothing more than a harmless manifestation from unknown whereabouts.

However, soon this bubble of innocent encounters burst when in 1948 at Godman Field, Kentucky, a fatal incident happened that authorities would be forced to disavow as a hostile incursion into US air space and result in one pilot’s deadly crash. Although the incident was reported as a mistaken identity with a high altitude weather balloon by a military pilot requested to intercept a UFO, evidence points to a grim reality.

Captain Mantel was on a routine aircraft transfer mission in command of Flight consisting of 4 P-51 Mustangs. During the afternoon, Godman Airfield traffic controllers had noticed a bright object lingering in the area for some time and worrying the team of radar officers that the unknown craft could interfere with ongoing flight operations and even cause a mid-air collision. Thomas Mantell’s small group, in cooperation with the air tower climbed to intercept the unknown. Unfortunately, they were not equipped with pressurized cockpits, a costly oversight. As they climbed higher in altitude, Mantell’s conversation with Godman Airfield flight operations got interesting and despite one pilot breaking off due to low fuel and another in the group reporting an overheating manifold and departing, Mantell’s wingman continued to follow.

At 20,000 feet the 25 year old captain and veteran WWII combat pilot reported, “It’s huge, metallic, and I’m gaining on it!” This was the last transmission received by the control tower. Sometime after three hundred hours, apparently Mantell’s P-51 Mustang had crashed with the young captain still in the cockpit dead. What was the official version of the story: Mantell, had suffered anoxia (oxygen deprivation) which had caused him to pass out and lose control of his fighter plane resulting in a corkscrew death dive from 30,000 feet. However, there were problems with the official explanation!

One witness claimed that he saw Mantell’s aircraft circling when it exploded! This seemed to indicate an act by an aggressor. Another assertion was that Mantell’s Mustang was incredibly intact for having spiraled 30,000 feet straight down! Still, another rumor claimed that Mantell’s P-51 was perforated with holes and a Geiger counter at the crash site registered radioactive readings on Mantell’s fighter plane! This would have been startling news for the general public had such information been released as fact so it was handled by the press as being merely rumored speculation without verification, and this was a mistake as encounter in the near future would end up with aircraft and their crews vanished or crashed.

A British officer who accompanied the onsite investigators from the US Air Force indicated that Mantell’s head was almost decapitated by the force of the crash and every bone in his body had been pulverized. He also corroborated that fact that the P-51 Mustang did not seem to be as badly damaged as it should have been from an alleged uncontrolled dive from 30,000 feet.

Even though Flight 19 (5 Navy Avenger Bombers) were lost off the shores of Chicken Sholes) Florida, it had been officially characterized as a tragic misnavigation although a documentary narrated by Vincent Price years later revealed that Naval personnel interviewed who were at the Ft. Lauderdale Air Base on that fateful day claim that rumors of the lost aviators and their planes had been abducted by alien spacecraft were rampant all over the Naval Air Station!

Shortly after the Mantell Incident would come the following air to air encounters that resulted in the loss of air crews and their aircraft. Suddenly, it seemed that the supposedly harmless conundrum was now accounting for the loss of men and material. The sightings of “Foo Fighters” in the theaters of WWII in the Pacific as well as Europe were also now seeming to be more than just mistaken identity. The evidence seemed to point to an undeniable presence in the skies of the world, and that SAC (Strategic Air Command) under General Curtis LeMay had its hands full!

Soon to follow would be Lieutenant Gorman’s dogfight with a UFO over North Dakota at First of October 1948! In the year of 1952 was the, perhaps, greatest display of witnessed UFO activity in history of the  uncanny manifestation. A massive number of sightings reported from all over the US seem to culminate in the Washington National Sightings where the White House air space was violated with impunity several nights in a row while the US Air Force scrambled F-94 C fighter planes in futile pursuits. Only one pilot,  got close enough, William Patterson, to see the UAP’s up close and personal and feared for his life before the enigmatic objects backed off after surrounding his fighter jet. To this day, records of his debriefing have never been publicly released. The unknown crafts would disappear from radar screen when the USAF war planes entered the scopes. Experienced radar operators swore that what they saw were solid objects and not the false thermal inversion targets that upper command attempted to explain with.

23^rd Nov 1953, Pilot Felix Moncla disappeared with his “Wizzo” (Weapons Officer) flying their all-weather interceptor F-89 Scorpion when the UFO they were chasing suddenly merged on radar with the USAF fighter jet. Moncla and his rear seat co-pilot were never seen again. Why would the US Air Force expunge all records of the flight intercept after claiming the UFO was simply a Canadian Royal Air Force cargo plane slightly off course? Disappearing from GCI radar at 8,000 feet does not indicate vertigo of the commanding pilot in command. What happened really?

2^nd of July 1954, a 2 man flight crew are scrambled from Kinross AFB to identify a UFO and are forced to eject from their Starfighter Jet. Hitting a suffocating wall of heat, the pilots ejected over Walesville, New York only to watch in horror as their jet fighter crashed into the small town killed a family of 4 after hitting with their home. The US Air Force explained this as an unfortunate instrument malfunction within the cockpit! However, details investigated by NICAP (National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomenon) begged to differ over the official account of the tragedy, and once again we are faced with the prospect of HUAP’s as an explanation. The inadequate official versions persist while others speculate that hoaxes, Secret X-plane experiments, misidentifications, foreign technology, extraterrestrial alien crafts, or even time travelers could be responsible. But, what we all agree on is that the explanation remains unknown!