Joe Phillips was enjoying a day off from school, sitting on the floor of his family home in Simpson County and sharing some popcorn with his sister on a quiet winter day. It was Jan. 7, 1948.
About 3 p.m., “I heard this real loud noise. I ran to the window and I really didn’t see it coming down, it was actually hitting the ground as I got to the window,” he said.
“It” was a P-51 Mustang from the Kentucky Air National Guard.
The plane, operated by decorated World War II pilot Capt. Thomas F. Mantell, crashed in a field next to a tree line on the Phillips property near Whitt Road and Lake Springs Road. Mantell was killed.
The news spread quickly.
“Almost instantly, people were coming from everywhere and within a matter of minutes there were more people and kids ... I had ever seen before. They were everywhere,” Phillips said. “My dad was uptown and he couldn’t get within a mile and a half of the farm.”
Phillips remembers going down to the crash site and seeing Mantell’s body covered by a parachute. Along with the sightseers, there were plentiful reporters and people from the military at the scene.
The cause of, and circumstances surrounding, the plane crash soon drew intense interest.
More than 70 years later, they still do by virtue of one fact – when Mantell’s plane crashed, he was chasing a UFO.
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On June 24, 1947, a pilot named Kenneth Arnold was flying near the Cascade Mountains in Washington state when he saw nine shiny objects flying at high speeds. The incident made headlines across the country, and one newspaper writer described the objects as “flying saucers.”
The UFO phenomenon was born.
A few weeks later, a rancher near Roswell, N.M., reported finding strange debris in a field. The debris was taken to a nearby Army base. The next day, the Roswell Army Air Field issued a news release stating that “the many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office of Chaves County.”
While the apparent crash of a flying saucer made headlines, the military quickly changed course, saying the initial statement was incorrect and what had crashed in the New Mexico dessert was in fact a weather balloon.
But in the pantheon of important early UFO cases that started an interest that has not subsided to this day, the Mantell crash is generally included with the Arnold and Roswell incidents.
The Mantell case is featured in a popular exhibit at the Simpson County Archives and Museum in Franklin, and not only because the crash occurred there.
Mantell’s “mother lived in Warren County and they were visiting family or friends (in Franklin) and little Tommy, who wasn’t born yet, said ‘I’m ready today,’ ” said James Snider, Simpson County Historical Society president.
The irony was, of course, that while he never lived in Franklin, Mantell was both born and died there.
The display includes wreckage from the plane crash and has drawn visitors from across the country and, recently, a television film crew working on a Discovery Channel show about UFOs with a segment about the Mantell case.
Mantell, then living in Louisville, served as an Air Force pilot during World War II and earned many honors despite his young age.
“He had flown at Normandy, flown in the battle of D-Day, so he was quite an experienced pilot,” Snider said.
In 1948, the 25-year-old was flying for the Kentucky Air National Guard.
On the fateful day, numerous individuals reported seeing something unusual in the sky across a broad swath of Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky.
• • •
Among the first documented reports came that afternoon when state police called the Army airfield at Fort Knox to report that people were seeing a large circular object in the sky. In the following hours, many others also reported seeing a large, strange object.
The Clinton County (Ohio) Air Field later issued a statement stating that observers there that evening saw something “having the appearance of a flaming red cone trailing a gaseous green mist ... the sky phenomenon hung suspended in the air at intervals and then gained and lost altitude at what appeared to be terrific bursts of speed. The intense brightness of the sky phenomena pierced through a heavy layer of clouds passing intermittently over the area and obscuring other celestial phenomena.”
Mantell and the two planes with him “were returning from a training mission in Alabama and the tower called and told them to investigate,” Snider said.
They soon saw the object and pursued it.
Mantell told the control tower the object was “directly ahead and above and moving about half my speed. It appears metallic of tremendous size – it appears like the reflection of the sunlight on an airplane canopy.”
“The other pilots with him were low on fuel, so they turned around to go back to the field and Mantell kept chasing the UFO,” Snider said.
The control tower lost contact with Mantell about 3:15 p.m. A short time later, his plane crashed into the Simpson County field.
An investigation could find no likely cause of the crash and the official theory was that Mantell flew too high, ran out of oxygen and blacked out, leading the plane to spiral toward the ground, breaking into pieces before it made impact.
One of Mantell’s wing men had reported that Mantell had indicated he was planning to briefly ascend to 25,000 feet before ending the pursuit. The Mustang was not equipped with oxygen. Aviation Safety Magazine reported that at 25,000 feet, a pilot would typically begin losing consciousness in three to five minutes.
The Army Air Force Accident report concluded that “since canopy lock was in place after the crash, it is assumed that Captain Mantell made no attempt to abandon the aircraft, and was unconscious at moment of crash or had died from lack of oxygen before aircraft began spiraling dive from about 30,000 feet.”
Snider said Mantell’s wife was later quoted as doubting that explanation because he was too experienced a pilot to make such a basic mistake. Some UFO believers have speculated that the craft Mantell was chasing caused the crash.
As to what Mantell was chasing, theories have ranged from the planet Venus to a weather balloon (and of course, an alien space craft).
In 1948, a University of Louisville astronomer reported that he trained his telescope on the coordinates of one of the sightings and saw Venus.
One of the pilots with Mantell, A.W. Clements of Radcliff, told the Louisville Courier-Journal in 1948 that he believed Mantell had simply climbed too high in pursuit of the object. As for what it was, “the more I think about it the more I’m convinced it was a star or some other type of celestial body.”
Another Air National Guard pilot in 1948 told the Daily News that he was also asked to track the mysterious object while he was near Beaver Dam. He concluded that the object was a star.
Two pilots from Hopkinsville also reported seeing a flying object that day, but when they got closer saw that it was a balloon, according to an Associated Press article.
Another popular theory is that the object was a “Skyhook” balloon. The massive balloons were used by the Office of Naval Research for high-altitude atmospheric observations starting in 1948, although the program was kept secret at that time.
According to a 2004 article in Skeptical Inquirer magazine, the Skyhook balloons likely fueled many UFO reports.
According to article author B.D. Gildenberg, who worked on the secret Skyhook project starting in the 1940s, the balloons were relatively massive – up to 300 feet in diameter and 430 feet high.
“Primarily cruising in the stratosphere, the balloons change color at high altitudes during sunrises and sunsets, while the Earth below is almost dark, Gildenberg wrote. “These characteristics equate to a superb UFO generator.”
Phillips, too, has his theories.
“Because the direction (the object) was moving east to west ... the weather balloon theory never did enter my mind,” he said. “He was chasing something where he really wanted to see what it was.”
Amid the continued speculation, Snider said a few things are clear – that the case is still intriguing people decades later, and “I guess we will never really know what happened.”
– Follow Managing Editor Wes Swietek on Twitter @WesSwietek or visit bgdaily news.com.
