Captain Mantell was a wartime pilot, with over three thousand hours in the air. He was trained to identify a distant enemy plane in a split second. His vision was perfect, and so was that of his pilots. In broad daylight they could not fail to recognize a balloon during their thirty-minute chase.
Colonel Hix and the other Godman officers watched the object with high-powered glasses for long periods. It is incredible that they would not identify it as a balloon.
Before its appearance over Godman Field, the leaking balloon would have drifted, at a low altitude, over several hundred miles. (A leak large enough to bring it down from high altitude would have caused it to land and be found.) Drifting at a low altitude, it would have been seen by several hundred thousand people, at the very least. Many would have reported it as a balloon. But even if this angle is ignored it still could not possibly have been a balloon at low altitude. The fast flight from Madisonville, the abrupt stop and hour-long hovering at Godman Field, the quick bursts of speed Mantell reported make it impossible. To fly the go miles from Madisonville to Fort Knox in 30 minutes, a balloon would require a wind of 180 m.p.h. After traveling at this hurricane speed, it would then have had to come to a dead stop above Godman Field. As the P-51’s approached, it would have had to speed tip again to 180, then to more than 360 to keep ahead of Mantell.
The three fighter pilots chased the mysterious object for half an hour. (I have several times chased balloons with a plane, overtaking them in seconds.) In a straight chase, Mantell would have been closing in at 360; the tail wind acting on his fighter would nullify the balloon’s forward drift.
But even if you accept these improbable factors, there is one final fact that nullifies the balloon explanation. The strange object had disappeared when Mantell’s wingman searched the sky, just after the leader’s death. If it had been a balloon held stationary for an hour at a high altitude, and glowing brightly enough to be seen through clouds, it would have remained visible in the same general position. Seen from 33,000 feet, it would have been even brighter, because of the clearer air.
But the mysterious object had completely vanished in those few minutes. A search covering a hundred miles failed to reveal a trace.
Whether at a high or low altitude, a balloon could not have escaped the pilot’s eyes. It would also have continued to be seen at Godman Field and other points, through occasional breaks in the clouds.
I pointed out these facts to one Air Force officer at the Pentagon. Next day he phoned me:
“I figured it out. The timing device went off and the balloon exploded. That’s why the pilot didn’t see it.”
“It’s an odd coincidence,” I said, “that it exploded in those five minutes after Mantell’s last report.”