The Mantell Incident
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Mantell An Anatomy - Complete Report http://www.nicap.org/books/MantellReport/mantell_anatomy_complete.htm (1 of 194)2/11/2015 10:17:10 PM Mantell An Anatomy - Complete Report The Cover (see above) Credits and Introduction Part 1 - 1: Mantell Case - Original Account (Ruppelt) Part 1 - 2: Capt. Thomas Francis Mantell, Jr. Part 1 - 3: The P-51D Mustang Part 1 - 4: 2005 Prior to Re-Investigation Part 2 - 1: March 2006 - The Re-Investigation Begins Part 2 - 2: WFIE Show Aires Part 2 - 3: The Documents Speak Part 2 - 4: Project SIGN Part 2 - 5: Balloon Deflated Part 2 - 6: The Accident Report Part 2 - 7: Deyarmond Says Case Unexplained Part 2 - 8: Incident 30 - The Clinton County Incidents Part 2 - 9: The Fort Knox Sightings Part 2-10: The Alert Crew Sightings Part 2-11: "Was Not The Planet Venus" Part 2-12: Pickering Re-Interviewed Part 2-13: "Appeared to Touch the Ground" Part 2-14: The Press Reports Part 2-15: Plan 62 Part 2-16: Skyhook 160 Miles From Mantell Part 2-17: The Accident Report Arrives Part 2-18: WFIE - The Second Interview Part 2-19: "Coverup of the Complicity" Part 2-20: The Real Work Begins Part 3-1: Summary & Analysis by Fran Ridge Part 3-2: Independent Analysis by Brad Sparks http://www.nicap.org/books/MantellReport/mantell_anatomy_complete.htm (2 of 194)2/11/2015 10:17:10 PM Mantell An Anatomy - Complete Report The Mantell Incident Anatomy of a Re-Investigation By Francis Ridge with Jean Waskiewicz and Dan Wilson First edition, 2010 Published in the United States Copyright 2010 by Francis Ridge All rights reserved. No part of this report may be reproduced in any form, without written permission from the copyright holder, unless by a reviewer who wishes to quote passages. Printed in the United States of America Acknowledgments http://www.nicap.org/books/MantellReport/mantell_anatomy_complete.htm (3 of 194)2/11/2015 10:17:10 PM Mantell An Anatomy - Complete Report In the 1960's, all I had with my NICAP rapid deployment investigation team was a crude home office with an old Underwood typewriter, a file cabinet (mostly empty), a small collection of UFO books, and access to the local library. I had three other field investigators and three technical advisers in my 7- man NICAP Subcommittee. My contact with a few outside researchers and NICAP headquarters in Washington, DC, was by the relatively slow U.S. mail and expensive long distance telephone. Twenty-five to thirty years later, the scene changed drastically. Field investigators and researchers all over the globe had a computer that was online. The internet, with instantaneous email messaging, along with the ability to scan and attach important documents, and text from books and UFO reports from all over the world, created a system that rivaled the FBI. In December of 1997, I set up the NICAP web site to house archived data and later set up the NICAP A-Team to peer review that data. While my team compiled UFO data for over ten years from the earliest days to, by now, the 1990's, a tremendous amount of information and expertise was in place. But without Rebecca Wise and the Project Blue Book Archive, most of this would have been only historically important. The real breakthroughs came about when we brought the BB files into the picture. If we wanted to provide information to a media source, or another researcher, we either already had it or knew where to get it and had the people who knew the most about it. None of this would have been possible without the help from the NICAP A-Team and others. Those who assisted in this re-investigation were: Jean Waskiewicz - researcher and NICAP site materials archivist; Dan Wilson, Project Blue Book researcher, member Nuclear Connection Project; Brad Sparks, independent researcher & analyst; Richard Hall - Primary NICAP Consultant & Former Acting Director of NICAP, former Chairman of the Fund for UFO Research; Mark Rodeghier - Scientific Director and President of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies; John Schuessler - Associate for the Center for UFO Study, Director, Mutual UFO Network (2000-2006); Don Berliner - Chairman of the Fund for UFO Research; Tom Deuley - Co-Founder, Fund for UFO Research & Corporate Secretary, Mutual UFO Network; Steven Kaeser - Executive Board Member, Fund for UFO Research; Rob Swiatek, Secretary & Treasurer, Fund for UFO Research; Bruce Maccabee, former Chairman of the Fund for UFO Research, US Navy optical physicist and expert in analysis of UFO photographs; Rebecca Wise, Project Blue Book Archives; Jan Aldrich, Project-1947 consultant; Joel Carpenter, pilot, Consultant of early UFOs and "foo-fighters"; Don Ledger, pilot & television producer; Peter Davenport - Director, National UFO Reporting Center, Seattle, WA.; also Kevin Randle, Wendy Connors, Terry Mantell, Drew Speier (Channel 14, Evansville), Jerry Clark, Tom DeMary, Michael Swords, Mary Castner, Barry Greenwood, Rod Dyke, Loren Gross, and William Jones. One of it's members is a workhorse, a magnificently skilled person by the name of Jean Waskiewicz. Jean is a retired Computer Systems Analyst and retired Michigan Mufon Webmaster. She is a member of Mufon International and served with Michigan MUFON for many years. UFO history is her passion and she loves the search for new data. She has been working feverishly on the NICAP effort since 2004. In 2006 her work on the Mantell case re- investigation for the NICAP team was absolutely essential. Her work in that regard illustrates that she will do whatever it takes to help decipher old documents and make them readable again. She is also a member of the Nuclear Connection Project Team. Another extremely gifted and determined member of our A-Team is Dan Wilson. Dan lives in Painesville, Ohio. He began studying nuclear weapons, the entire nuclear weapons complex, nuclear weapons testing, and nuclear power production in 1988. He has read extensively on the UFO phenomena and has interviewed various witnesses from the Air Force, Navy, and the Atomic Energy Commission. He contributed very interesting information to the newly released book, UFOs and Nukes, by Robert Hastings. Since 1998 he has extracted vital documents from the Project Blue Book Archives for the NICAP site, and in 2006 he discovered documents proving a cover-up in the Mantell case. Since 2003 he has provided valuable researched information regarding UFOs and the nuclear connection and is now an official member of the Nuclear Connection Project. Armed with these great colleagues, and some years preparation with document and database work, we couldn't have been more prepared. But what we found was a lot more than we had imagined. This time it involved a case almost everyone had written off. http://www.nicap.org/books/MantellReport/mantell_anatomy_complete.htm (4 of 194)2/11/2015 10:17:10 PM Mantell An Anatomy - Complete Report The first part of this report is a blow-by-blow, day-by-day, chronicle of the investigation. It describes who found what, and when, and what others had to say about it. The Mantell Incident: An Anatomy of an Investigation, is more than a diary of what happened each day. It includes transcripts of discovered documents and "lost" press releases, as well as actual copies of important documents. The report includes analyses by numerous researchers of specific issues. The Report would not be complete without the analytical expertise of independent researcher, Brad Sparks, who wrote the very detailed analysis based on all the evidence collected. We welcome others to conduct their own analyses and/or rebuttals to this report. Introduction There are at least 1500 good reports in the Blue Book files where the witnesses actually lived to tell about their encounters with UFOs, many of which would make any sensible person sit up and take notice. And those reports come directly from the Air Force files. In April of 2006, at WFIE reporter Drew Speier's request, I reluctantly agreed to do an interview on the Mantell case, one that even many pro-UFO researchers had thrown out. WFIE wanted to do it because it was somewhat a "local" incident, and it was both sensational and controversial. I finally agreed to do it in the hope that WFIE would do something better in the near future with any of our many better UFO reports or something new that might develop. Since I wanted to do this interview right, for the record, I set out to show the media and the public the importance of what we DID have on the case. First of all, there were at least seven reasons why I have always felt that the Mantell incident was important and that a cover-up was probably involved: 1) In I960, I was a NICAP Subcommittee Chairman in SW Indiana. A scientific consultant to our team at Vincennes, Indiana, who had worked for Project SIGN, told me that the Mantell case was NOT explained and that the incident had shaken a lot of people up. I was "small potatoes" back then, a field investigator and head of a rapid response team for local and regional reports, with other things in my area of responsibility besides events 12-years in the past and in another state.. 2) The Air Force-inspired, 1952 LIFE Magazine article by Robert Ginna, five years after the incident took place, stated that the case was unsolved. 3) In 1956 a former head of Project Blue Book (Capt. Ed Ruppelt) stated in his book, "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects" (page 41): "According to the old timers at ATIC, this report (Chiles-Whitted case) shook them worse than the Mantell Incident.