Status: Explained — investigators concluded the pilot most likely chased a Skyhook research balloon.
Credit: U.S. Navy photo 80-G-627386 (1953) · Licence: Public domain (U.S. government work) · Source
On January 7, 1948, the Kentucky Highway Patrol told Godman Army Airfield at Fort Knox about an unusual object in the sky. Tower staff saw it too and could not identify it as an aircraft or a weather balloon. Four F-51 Mustangs of the Kentucky Air National Guard were sent to look, and one of them was flown by 25-year-old Captain Thomas F. Mantell.
Mantell climbed toward the object while his wingmen turned back. None of the aircraft had the oxygen equipment needed for high altitude. The Army later concluded that once Mantell passed about 25,000 feet he blacked out from lack of oxygen, and his plane spiraled down and crashed on a farm south of Franklin, Kentucky.
Sensational rumors spread afterward, including claims the plane was shot down or the wreckage was radioactive. The Air Force investigation found no support for them. Project Blue Book head Edward Ruppelt later concluded that the observations, including a tower operator's description of “a parachute” and a Vanderbilt astronomer's report of a pear-shaped balloon with cables, fit a Skyhook, a then-secret high-altitude research balloon that Mantell would not have known about.
It remains one of the best known early UFO cases and a standard example of a pilot chasing a misidentified object.
Sources: Wikipedia: Mantell UFO incident
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