Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [43]
Nit-picking? Hardly. Godwin reported that Colonel Hix dispatched a flight of three (not four) F-51 planes (not P-5Is) when actually he merely asked the flight—already in the area on a mission ferrying the aircraft from Marietta Air Base in Georgia to Louisville—to investigate. The planes were not carrying oxygen equipment because the mission was a routine low-level one, and since one plane was running dangerously low on fuel it may be assumed that the others, including Mantell's, were also low. Such omissions and errors make sightings of UFOs almost impossible to research unless one consults basic sources. Godwin certainly was able to do so, but he chose not to.
What was the UFO in this case? Most books on the subject won't tell you, but the New York Times of January 9 told nearly the whole story. Two other pilots, Garrett and Crenshaw, "said they chased a flying object which they believed to be a balloon." Also, reported the Times, "Astronomers at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, reported that they saw some object in the sky yesterday afternoon which they believed to be a balloon, but the Weather Bureau at Nashville said it knew of no balloons in that vicinity. In southern Ohio, meanwhile, observers reported seeing a flaming red cone near the army base at Wilmington."
What none of the parties reporting knew, or were going to know for several years, was that the Navy was at that time (in fact, since 1947) experimenting with what came to be known as the Skyhook project. This was a series of experiments with high-altitude balloons that would probe the upper atmosphere and perform secret photoreconnaissance work behind the Iron Curtain. These balloons attained a diameter of as much as 170 feet at an altitude of 120,000 feet—much higher than any aircraft was able to go. At lower altitudes the balloons assumed the shape of a sphere with a long trailing cone hanging down—resembling an elongated ice-cream cone. The descriptions in the Times matched these characteristics of the balloons quite well.
The Air Force, through a spokesman, told the curious that Mantell had been chasing the planet Venus. Not very likely. Venus was up there, all right, but in mid-aftemoon it would have been very difficult to see, and it was not in one of its brightest phases at that time. No points for the Air Force on that blunder! The UFO believers have never stopped quoting that one.
Thomas Mantell chased one of these balloons, believing it to be a UFO. Here, a Skyhook is readied aboard the USS Valley Forge. Note the aptness of the description of the balloon as "shaped like an ice cream cone." U.S. Navy
Since the weather stations in the area denied that they had any balloons up at the time, the enthusiasts have told us that we may not use that as an explanation. Checking with the Naval Research people, we cannot determine (the records simply don't exist now) whether a Skyhook balloon was up at the time. But since some pilots, the astronomers at Vanderbilt, and others saw the object and described it as a balloon, it is very likely that it was just that. Skyhooks were known to stay up as long as 180 days, wandering about widely, and the description so well fits the Skyhook that it would be amazing if the UFO was not one of the balloons. The path that we may determine for the UFO matches quite well