UFOs in the daily Press:

At the heart of the flying saucer mystery

III. Captain Mantell's race to death

Until then, no attempt had been made to catch the mysterious saucers or to apprehend these strange visitors. At the beginning of 1948, Captain Mantell's desperate pursuit was the first attempt made to gather precise information. This scene took place in Kentucky, at Fort Knox. From 2:30 in the afternoon, numerous people had reported the object: the state police alerted the military police—a huge, gleaming object was speeding through the sky, heading toward the Gogman airbase.

The base was on high alert. In the control tower, Colonel Hix, surrounded by his officers, had his binoculars trained in the indicated direction. It was close to 3:00 p.m. when the object suddenly emerged from the clouds. It was immense, estimated to be about 170 meters in diameter. Three fighter planes had already taken off to try to intercept the massive saucer. The pilot leading the small squadron of fighters, Captain Mantell, finally made contact with the control tower: the object was in front of him and he was following it. What details could he already provide? The craft was enormous, it appeared to be metallic, it wasn't faster than the fighter planes, and Mantell believed he could catch it.

But five minutes later, Mantell reported a sudden acceleration of the object, which rapidly gained altitude to nearly 740 kilometers per hour. Then came silence. When the airfield loudspeaker crackled again, it was not Mantell's voice that was heard, but that of another pilot. He announced that the saucer and Mantell's aircraft had disappeared into the clouds. At 3:15, Mantell's voice was heard once more: he was continuing the pursuit up to 6,000 meters; at that ceiling, if he couldn't reach the object, he would abandon the chase. Mantell's voice was never heard again...

Minutes passed; the tension in the control tower grew more oppressive. The colonel then ordered one of the other fighters to search for Mantell. The aircraft scoured the sky for hundreds of kilometers, climbing to 9,000 meters. But the sky was empty—no plane, no saucer... Finally, the wreckage of the plane was found scattered across a wide area, but there was no trace of Mantell. His body seemed to have vanished into thin air...