were two of us in the cockpit, and we both witnessed the same thing. We were both in awe. I have been flying for 14 years have never witnessed something like this before.”
Reported by Anonymous
Source: UFOCasebook.com
The first death due to a UFO took place on January 7, 1948. Captain Thomas Mantell, a veteran pilot who had flown in the battle of Normandy in 1944, was scrambled with three other pilots in response to reports of an unidentified object over Marysville, Kentucky. The sightings started at about 1:20 p.m., with many area residents reporting something in the sky, and at 1:45 p.m. an object looking like a white umbrella was seen by an airport tower operator and the commanding officer at Fort Knox.
Mantell, flying an F-51, climbed dangerously high in order to get closer to the object, reaching an altitude of more than 6,000 metres, without his oxygen mask. On his radio, he described the object as “metallic” and “of tremendous size.” He continued to fly upward, but the other pilots decided to break off the pursuit. Radio contact was lost with Mantell as he reached 6,900 metres. The wreckage of his plane was found near Franklin, Kentucky.
News reports announced that an air force pilot died while chasing a flying saucer. However, after a lengthy investigation, the object was identified as a Navy Skyhook balloon, a secret high-altitude experiment — information not shared with the air force. Mantell had died because of military compartmentalization: only those involved in the Skyhook program knew of its existence, and the air force did not know it was a military operation. He was not shot down by a flying saucer; he had climbed too high and his engine likely stalled, leading to the unfortunate crash.
• During the afternoon of April 5, 1948, several researchers at a geophysics laboratory on Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico all saw two unusual dish-shaped objects, white or grey in colour, about 30 metres in diameter, and high up in the sky. One object moved upward, then moved sharply to one side, dropped and made a loop in the air and vanished. The other flew rapidly to the west, made a similar loop and vanished as well.
• On May 7, 1948, at 3:00 p.m., three people in Memphis, Tennessee, saw as many as 50 shiny objects flying at high speed across the sky. Although most were travelling all in a straight line, a few seemed to occasionally deviate from the line and weave in and out. They did not make any noise, even though a few seemed to have whitish tails that were thought to be exhaust. A check with a meteorological office showed that only one balloon had been launched that day, and there had not been any military aircraft flying in the vicinity that afternoon. The suggestion that the witnesses had seen a train of daytime meteors was rejected. The incident was listed by Project Blue Book as “unknown.”
• On June 30, 1948, the ship Llandovery Castle had left Kenya bound for Cape Town. At 11:00 p.m. on July 1, it was going through the Straits of Madagascar when the lookout and some passengers saw a light high in the sky heading in their direction. As they watched, it descended until it was only about 15 metres above the water and began travelling alongside the ship. As it flew, it shone a beam of light like a searchlight down onto the water, then the beam and its lights were extinguished. The crew and passengers of the ship were then able to see that the object was a cigar-shaped metallic craft, with its rear section cut off. It did not have any windows or portholes and seemed to be 300 metres in length. It kept pace with the ship for approximately a minute, then it ascended to about 300 metres in altitude, flames came out of its tail section and it shot ahead becoming lost to sight quickly.
• On August 20, 1949, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh was casually observing the sky one night near Las Cruces, New Mexico, with his wife and mother-in-law beside him. In February 1930, he had been comparing sets of photographic plates taken of the night sky when he noted one star seemed to have moved from one night to the next; he had discovered the planet Pluto. But on this night, nearly 20 years later, he and his family saw something completely different that left him perplexed. They saw a half-dozen rectangles of greenish light, moving together in a line from the northwest to the southeast. It was as if they were windows on a long, cylindrical object, moving about 35 degrees in altitude, making no sound as they sped rapidly across the sky and vanished within three or four seconds.
On June 30, 1948, a cigar-shaped object flew by a cargo ship, shining a light on the water as it passed by.
In 1941, the United States built an Air Force Base at Goose Bay in the heart of Labrador, a strategic location, leading to the ocean. It facilitated anti-submarine exercises and staging of aircraft on overseas flights. A set of Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line sites was constructed in Labrador during the Cold War and monitored at a NORAD site at Goose Bay beginning in 1953. The 641 Aircraft Warning and Control Squadron was based there and began flying missions for “surveillance, identification, and interceptor control.”
Given this mandate, when the flying saucer phenomenon began spreading in the 1940s and unidentified aircraft were being reported, Goose Bay seemed to be a major hotspot. It was not surprising that an American airbase on Canadian soil might be the site of many saucer sightings, just like so many other bases worldwide.
What is perhaps a bit surprising, however, is that there were so many saucer sightings at Goose Bay. In the 1940s and 1950s, there were 20 known reports, a considerable number for such a remote base. Most people were unaware of what was being seen and reported by pilots and other military personnel, although rumours of events persisted over the years.
The first known sighting near Goose Bay took place in the summer of 1948 and was described by a military witness who came forward much after the fact, relating his story to UFO investigators. He provided few details but painted a picture that can be easily visualized, showing the reaction of the intelligence community and the command chain.
UFOS AND ALIENS IN LITERATURE
In 1938 C.S. Lewis published Out of the Silent Planet, the first of a trilogy of books in which people from Earth travel to Mars (here called Malacandra) where they encounter a race of intelligent seal-like creatures called hrossa and others. However, the caretaker of the planet is Oyarsa, an angelic being who belongs to a race that oversees intelligent life. Unfortunately, the being in charge of the Earth has become evil, and as a result we have fallen from grace.
Major Edwin A. Jerome, USAF (Ret.), stated that in the summer of 1948, a high-ranking inspection team was visiting the base’s radar facilities as part of a tour looking at refuelling and servicing capabilities for all military and civilian aircraft on North Atlantic air routes. During the generals’ inspection of the USAF radar shack, the operator painted a high-speed target on his scope going from the northeast to the southwest with a calculated speed of about 15,000 kilometres per hour. This caused considerable concern since the base personnel wanted to look good in front of the inspection team, and such a calculation must have been an error.
Jerome noted: “The poor airman technician was brought to task for his apparent miscalculation.” However, when the target appeared a second time, the brass saw the target on the screen themselves. They dismissed it as poorly calibrated American equipment. They then went to the Canadian side of the base to inspect the RCAF facility and learned that the equipment there had also just tracked the
