Psience Quest

Quote:On Jan. 7, 1948, Mantell sat in the cockpit of his F-51D Mustang as flight leader headed north from Marietta Air Force Base in Georgia back to Louisville’s Standiford Field. He and three other pilots from the Kentucky Air National Guard’s Flight C, 165th Fighter Squadron had been participating in a low-altitude navigational training exercise when the request came from Godman Commander Col. Guy Hix to investigate the sightings.

Quote:News agencies wasted no time turning the crash into front-page news. The big questions on everyone’s minds: What did Mantell encounter, and why did he crash?

Quote:“They also asked astronomers to identify the positions of both Venus and Jupiter in the sky on an hourly basis,” writes Shaw. “They definitely seemed to be looking for any mundane explanation, but even their own investigation found that those planets would not be visible during daylight hours and the weather was good for visibility.”

Later theories that Mantell had merely seen Venus in the sky when he described what he witnessed were debunked as a result. But he wasn’t the only one to see the phenomenon...