Skyhook balloon

Single panel intelligence dossier image for the January 7 1948 Thomas Mantell incident rendered in muted late-1940s color showing a high-altitude daytime scene over a winter Kentucky landscape with a 1948 P-51D Mustang fighter in Air National Guard markings seen from behind in a steep nose-up climbing attitude with its canopy closed and a lone pilot inside, while high above and ahead of it hangs a large pale rounded inverted-cone object with a faintly metallic sheen a vertical seam line and a reddish shaded base consistent with a huge classified Skyhook high-altitude balloon far beyond the straining fighter's reach, with HUD overlays marking the large metallic slowly rotating object, the most credible identification as a classified Skyhook balloon at 60 to 100 thousand feet, the unpressurized P-51 with no oxygen above its safe ceiling, the last contact at 15000 feet leading to oxygen starvation and a fatal spiral, the DD daylight disc classification rather than CE-VI, the Godman tower and command staff and flight witnesses, the Duesler account and Army Air Force records and Ruppelt Skyhook source, and the Explained balloon and altitude-accident status, with a lower strip reading thinkaboutitdocs.com — UAP/Entity Archive by Date

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Kentucky Sightings

1948: The Thomas Mantell Incident (aircraft crashes after chasing UFO)

Published: April 8, 2013 | Updated: June 5, 2026

THINK ABOUTIT UFO | UAP SIGHTING REPORT 1948: The Thomas Mantell Incident At 1:20 on the afternoon of January 7, 1948, the control tower...