n't find one that had been written off for
this reason. I dug back into my own flying experience and talked to a
dozen pilots. All of us had momentarily been startled by a reflection
on the aircraft's canopy or wing, but in a second or two it had been
obvious that it was a reflection. Mantell chased the object for at
least fifteen to twenty minutes, and it is inconceivable that he
wouldn't realize in that length of time that he was chasing a
reflection.

About the only theory left to check was that the object might have
been one of the big, 100-foot-diameter, "skyhook" balloons. I
rechecked the descriptions of the UFO made by the people in the
tower. The first man to sight the object called it a parachute;
others said ice cream cone, round, etc. All of these descriptions fit
a balloon. Buried deep in the file were two more references to
balloons that I had previously missed. Not long after the object had
disappeared from view at Godman AFB, a man from Madisonville,
Kentucky, called Flight Service in Dayton. He had seen an object
traveling southeast. He had looked at it through a telescope and it
was a balloon. At four forty-five an astronomer living north of
Nashville, Tennessee, called in. He had also seen a UFO, looked at it
through a telescope, and it was a balloon.

In the thousands of words of testimony and evidence taken on the
Mantell Incident this was the only reference to balloons. I had
purposely not paid too much attention to this possibility because I
was sure that it had been thoroughly checked back in 1948. Now I
wasn't sure.

I talked with one of the people who had been in on the Mantell
investigation. The possibility of a balloon's causing the sighting
had been mentioned but hadn't been followed up for two reasons.
Number one was that everybody at ATIC was convinced that the object
Mantell was after was a spaceship and that this was the only course
they had pursued. When the sighting grew older and no spaceship proof
could be found, everybody jumped on the Venus band wagon, as this
theory had "already been established." It was an easy way out. The
second reason was that a quick check had been made on weather
balloons and none were in the area. The big skyhook balloon project
was highly classified at that time, and since they were all convinced
that the object was of interplanetary origin (a minority wanted to
give the Russians credit), they didn't want to bother to buck the red
tape of security to g