CHAPTER V
For more than two weeks, I checked on the Godman Field tragedy. One fact stood out at the start: The death of Mantell had had a profound effect on many in the Air Force. A dozen times I was told:
“I thought the saucers were a joke-until Mantell was killed chasing that thing at Fort Knox.”
Many ranking officers who had laughed at the saucer scare stopped scoffing. One of these was General Sory Smith, now Deputy Director of Air Force Public Relations. Later in my investigation, General Smith told me:
“It was the Mantell case that got me. I knew Tommy Mantell. very well—also Colonel Hix, the C.O. at Godman. I knew they were both intelligent men—not the kind to be imagining things.”
For fifteen months, the Air Force kept a tight-lipped silence. Meantime, rumors began to spread. One report said that Mantell had been shot, his body riddled with bullets; his P-51, also riddled, had simply disintegrated. Another rumor reported Mantell as having been killed by some mysterious force; this same force had also destroyed his fighter. The Air Force, the rumors said, had covered up the truth by telling Mantell’s family he had blacked out from lack of oxygen.
Checking the last angle, I found that this was the explanation given to Mantell’s mother, just after his death, she was told by Standiford Field officers that he had flown too high in chasing the strange object.
Shallet, in the Saturday Evening Post articles, described Project “Saucer’s” reconstruction of the case. Mantell was said to have climbed up to 25,000 feet, despite his firm decision to end the chase at 20,000, since he carried no oxygen. Around 25,000 feet, Shallett quoted the Air Force investigators, Mantell must have lost consciousness. After this, his pilotless plane climbed on up to some 30,000 feet, then dived. Between 20,000 and 10,000 feet, Shallett suggested, the P-51 began to disintegrate, obviously from excessive speed. The gleaming object that hypnotized Mantell into this fatal climb was, Shallett said, either the planet Venus or a Navy cosmic-ray research balloon.
The Air Force Project “Saucer” report of April 27, 1949, released just after the first Post article, makes these statements:
“Five minutes after Mantell disappeared from his formation, the two remaining planes returned to Godman. A few minutes later, one resumed the search, covering territory 100 miles to the south as high as 33,000 feet, but found nothing.