Strange Lights Over Fort Campbell

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Break, break, negative 698.

You are not cleared for landing.

Be advised, unidentified objects seen at heading 220.

Do you have eyes on?

In 1948, just a few years after the Second World War ended, something strange happened in the skies near Fort Knox, Kentucky.

On the cold afternoon of January 7th, control tower operators at the adjacent Godman Army Airfield spotted a bright, unidentified object floating in the sky.

This, along with the events that followed, including the mysterious death of a Kentucky National Guard pilot, would become known as the Mantel UFO incident.

Almost 40 years later, a young soldier would arrive to his new duty station at Fort Campbell, another Army base in Kentucky, situated 130 miles southwest of Fort Knox.

Unbeknownst to him during his time at this base,

he would also find himself witnessing

strange things.

That young soldier was me,

and this is the first half of the story of Strange Lights over Kentucky.

I'm Luke Lamana,

and this is Wartime Stories.

As a young soldier, one who grew up in the area near Fort Campbell, despite my better judgment, I suppose I was always open to the idea of strange things, but...

It's not as if I walked around expecting to see them.

The question I have is why I seem to keep finding myself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and whether or not what I saw will ever be explained.

For those aware of the Kentucky Goblin story, which happened in 1955, I thought it would be worth mentioning that, along with the other local police and officials, a security detail of four Army police officers were also dispatched from Fort Campbell.

to investigate that incident.

My own time spent working with the military police on Fort Campbell seemed to similarly put me in rather unusual circumstances.

Maybe it just goes with the territory.

Most of my experiences weren't exactly unconventional, ranging from the time we found a soldier out in an empty field at night, digging up a few dozen marijuana plants that he had clearly been growing for several months,

to the more tragic situations,

such as the time we found a young soldier who had hung himself from a tree

near one of the back roads.

And then there were the few but far less conventional encounters, some of which you may have already heard.

While my strangest encounters mostly took place while I was conducting nighttime security patrols in Fort Campbell's wild and expansive range area, the Back 40,

there was one experience that happened when I was simply lugging my laundry back to my base apartment.

For those of you military folks out there, yes, it was somewhat unusual for a junior soldier to get a private housing assignment, even if it was only a small one-room apartment in a renovated complex of what used to be old warehouses.

I guess I just got lucky not to have to live in the barracks.

As for the strange incident, it all began in early 1987.

I had recently returned from a deployment to Honduras in December and had shortly been reassigned from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to my new command at Fort Campbell.

When I arrived, I was still serving in my original communications MOS, but within a few months, my unit would discover that it was over capacity for radio operators, and my company commander would give me the opportunity to select a new position on the base.

I would then choose an assignment with the military police, since it was my secondary preferred MOS when I had enlisted.

my stepdad having also worked in law enforcement.

But a couple months before all that happened, one evening, a few weeks after settling into my small apartment, I had driven to a nearby laundromat.

The machines in my apartment complex were often unreliable.

I stayed out until long after dark, killing some time, dropping quarters into video games at a local arcade, before heading back to go to bed.

Grabbed my basket of clean laundry out of the car, I began crossing the parking lot.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a number of blinking lights in the sky, off to the west, out over the Back 40.

Glancing over, I realized these were the red and white lights on several Chinook helicopters flying in formation.

Nothing unusual.

You always see some kind of aircraft flying around at all hours over the base.

My eyes then moved towards the moon, which was very bright and hanging low on the horizon.

At least

I thought it was the moon.

What?

That's when I stopped walking.

Whatever this bright object was,

it wasn't round.

It was shaped like a cube, although tilted as if balanced upright on one corner.

I had no idea what I was looking at.

I then realized that the Chinooks were flying directly towards it.

I wondered if it wasn't some kind of aircraft, although it gave no indication of being anything like one.

No blinking lights, nothing.

It was simply a huge, bright cube, hanging completely stationary, some distance above the ground.

Doing my best to describe it, it did appear to have an exterior surface, which was seemingly transparent, the bright white light seeming to come from its interior.

The helicopters as a reference, I was taken aback by the object's sheer size.

It looked much bigger than they were.

From my perspective, it was about the size of a large marble, held out at arm's length.

I then noticed the sudden appearance of an odd, reddish-orange glow, emitting from the bottommost corner of the object, which vanished as quickly as it appeared.

It was basically a bright, fiery streak shooting downward a short distance, rather like the afterburner exhaust of a fighter jet.

It would reappear again and immediately disappear again, in perhaps five second intervals.

As the Chinooks drew closer to the object, I wondered what would happen when they reached it, if that was what they were attempting to do.

Since it had remained stationary the entire time, I was then startled when it suddenly moved.

Now, when I say it moved, I don't mean it accelerated.

It just

moved.

It quickly shot across the sky in a very straight line, closing a good distance in only a couple seconds, certainly a mile at least.

Then it stopped again, just as instantly, and remained stationary, the reddish-orange glow continuing to reappear underneath it in pulsing intervals.

The Chinooks now slowly banked in unison, directing their flight path towards its new location.

About 15 seconds later, it suddenly moved again.

now in a different direction, but approximately the same distance.

The Chinooks again banked to follow it.

It continued to conduct these sudden movements, changing direction each time, with the Chinooks continuing to adjust their course as if trying to intercept it.

I almost felt like,

whatever it was,

it was taunting the pursuing helicopters.

Like it was showing off by demonstrating its superior capabilities.

After a couple minutes, it slid across the sky one final time, but much further, off to the west, now quickly disappearing from sight.

Then,

it was gone.

Practically forgetting about the heavy basket of laundry in my arms, I continued to watch the point at which it had vanished, wondering if the object would come back.

It never did.

Pulling my eyes away from the distant sky, I then glanced around the parking lot.

I'd been so entranced by watching the light shifting around in the sky that I'd failed to notice a crowd of other people gathering in the parking lot around me, many of them still continuing to stare out into the sky.

I hesitantly asked the guy standing nearest to me what that thing was.

He shrugged and muttered that he didn't know,

looking back at the sky one last time before he turned and walked away.

I stayed on for maybe another minute before turning back towards my building and heading inside.

Hey, it's Luke, the host of Wartime Stories.

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Despite the number of witnesses, it wasn't exactly a hot topic for conversation at work the next day, nor did I see anything about the strange object mentioned in the local news or papers.

I can't say I'm surprised.

As strange as stories like this might seem, I expect that, like myself, most folks just chalk it up to something they can't explain and don't give much thought after that.

At least until it happens again, or someone else mentions having a similar experience.

I've heard that combat veterans often avoid talking about their experiences in war, even to their own families.

But they might talk about it to another combat vet,

someone who would understand what they were talking about without judgment or too many questions.

Maybe witnessing strange things is like that, but...

Obviously less traumatizing, at least in my case.

It's just something you don't talk about, either to avoid ridicule or simply because you aren't even sure what you saw.

I still have no idea what it was that I saw.

As such, over the years, I have spent a fair amount of time looking into similar stories to try to find some explanation for my own experience.

Suffice it to say, I am no longer surprised to discover that neither the U.S.

military nor the state of Kentucky are strangers to such unexplained events.

I'm also increasingly made aware that, at least until recently, the U.S.

government and military usually do their best to distance themselves from these kinds of unusual events,

whatever the reasons may be.

I would also point out that many of these events may simply go unreported, like mine did.

They only seem to become public knowledge when someone is either injured, disappears, or gets killed.

One such example is the Mantel UFO incident.

On that cold January afternoon in 1948, when the tower operators and other Army officials spotted that bright, unidentified object over Fort Knox, they probably asked themselves the same questions I I would 40 years later.

What the hell am I seeing?

However, their sightings were quickly confirmed by incoming reports from local highway patrol officers, as well as more than two dozen other military personnel stationed on nearby installations, some of whom could apparently see this thing clearly from over 150 miles away.

At the same time the object was seen, four pilots, including a Captain Thomas F.

Mantel, were also airborne and on their way to Gobin Airfield, where control tower personnel had been observing the object for some time.

Before landing, they were radioed and told to fly over to the object to inspect it.

Three of the pilots broke away from their approach, either due to having insufficient fuel or experiencing low oxygen levels as they chased the object into higher and higher altitude.

Despite his plane not being equipped with oxygen either, Mantel was the only one to maintain his upward course in pursuit of the object.

When he'd reached approximately 15,000 feet, Gobin Tower operators received a transmission from Captain Mantel.

The object is directly ahead of and above me now.

Moving about half my speed, 180 miles per hour.

It appears to be a metallic object, possibly a reflection of sun from a metallic object.

It is of tremendous size.

I'm still climbing.

I'm trying to close in for a better look.

At 3:15 p.m., Mantel transmitted what would be his final communication.

Object going up.

Forward as fast as I am

down 360 miles per hour.

I'm going to 20,000 feet.

And if I can't get any closer, I will abandon chase.

The 25-year-old pilot's plane was then seen hurtling back to the earth in a death spiral before it impacted the ground, shattering to pieces.

Gaubman Airfield transcripts indicate they recovered his watch from the crash site, which had stopped at the time of impact, 3.18 p.m.

The UFO, meanwhile,

had disappeared.

Apparently, a similar incident had occurred a few weeks prior, and it turned out that the bright object that those pilots had been chasing was, in fact, a planet, an unusually bright Venus shining in the night sky.

Investigators proposed that Mantel had done the same, albeit during the daytime, his plane being unequipped for such high altitudes and the lack of oxygen causing him to black out and lose control of his aircraft.

His cockpit latches were still locked on impact, indicating no effort was made to bail out.

However, none of this satisfied the many eyewitness accounts and the strange movements that the object seemed to perform.

Nor does it seem to account for the various colors and shapes witnessed.

Some said it looked pear or bulb-shaped, some saying it resembled the canopy of a parachute.

others said it appeared to be a flaming ball of fire.

Still other witnesses reported the object as being red, flaming, and cone-shaped.

If not Venus, the only other reasonable explanation offered by government authorities was that it was likely a Skyhook Navy weather balloon, the sunlight reflecting off the balloon's surface.

This balloon program was highly classified at the time, which would explain why few witnesses would have known about it, including those who were military personnel and had no reason to be informed about the top secret program.

These balloons were also quite large, reaching 100 feet in diameter, and could reach altitudes of over 60,000 feet, which would offer a reasonable explanation to what many of the eyewitnesses may have seen.

Out of my own curiosity, I took the time to read over the unclassified official report of the incident.

As such, I couldn't help but to notice some possible contradictions.

The report first states that the object was at a heading of 220 degrees from Goblin Field, putting it some unknown distance to the southwest.

Along with addressing the possibility of a bright planet, the report then states that it was later confirmed that a secret skyhook balloon had in fact been released into the sky that afternoon, and I quote, released by the Navy from Clinton County Airport in Ohio.

The report ends by saying that the official Air Force conclusion for the cause of the incident was likely a result of both the stationary planet Venus, which was seen by some of the witnesses, as well as the same skyhook balloon, which had drifted 250 miles southwest.

While likely the most reasonable answer, these conclusions potentially contradict both the report's own information and also the eyewitness testimonies, primarily those of Captain Mantel and the Gobman Field personnel, including the commanding officer, Colonel Hicks.

These military personnel all signed sworn statements, attesting not only to their individual accounts, but also their aviation experience, their visual acuity, and their mental health.

Colonel Hicks himself stated that the object appeared to remain stationary for at least one and a half hours before the P-51s began flying towards it.

Thus, the final report implies, first, that the men at God and Field were staring at the planet Venus for that entire time.

Secondly, as they began looking for the same bright object, it's thus implied that Mantel and the other pilots likewise directed their flight path towards the same abnormally bright Venus.

And third, as he approached Kentucky's southern border, by an unfortunate coincidence, the report indicates that Mantel must have caught sight of a fast-moving Skyhook weather balloon overhead, which had already been spotted by dozens of civilians living south of Gobin Field.

Seen from the cities of Madisonville, Elizabethtown, and Mansville, Clearly this object was at a high enough altitude to be seen from 60 to 80 miles away in all directions.

So, the military personnel saw the stationary Venus Venus ahead of them to the southwest, and the civilians saw the weather balloon as it hovered past them across the sky.

The report's conclusion thus implies Mantel must have been confused, his attention shifting from a bright planet on the horizon to then a reflective weather balloon tens of thousands of feet overhead.

All of this, of course, is possible.

However, Ohio State astronomers would contradict this report some years later, saying that Venus would not have been that clearly visible during the afternoon daylight.

I myself have some additional questions.

If it was a weather balloon, it seems strange that Mantel would first state that it was moving at half his speed, estimated at 180 miles per hour, only to later state the object had increased its speed, then moving as fast as he was, if not faster, as he chased it into a vertical ascent.

Unfortunately, there's not much statistical information available about the specific skyhook balloons, but modern-day weather balloons will evidently climb at roughly 1,000 feet per minute, or just over 11 miles per hour, which is pretty slow.

If these skyhook balloons were anything similar, which they do appear to be, that 180 mph movement would have to have been horizontal rather than vertical.

However, modern-day weather balloons that can climb over 100,000 feet are also known to reach their maximum altitude in only a couple hours before bursting, traveling only as far as 125 miles during this time, giving an approximate forward speed of only 60 to 70 miles per hour.

In any case, the report does address the descriptions of the object's erratic movements from eyewitnesses on the ground and Mantel's comments about the object's incredible speed, stating that the movement of clouds in front of the object could create such an illusion.

But still, this Mantel report would seemingly imply that this particular skyhook balloon floated more than 250 miles southwest of its release point, reaching its intended altitude of over 60,000 feet, and instead of bursting, that it continued to travel southwest.

And even though Mantel was reported as saying the object was of tremendous size, the final report firmly concludes that it was merely a large plastic balloon, and I quote, which was still more than 40,000 feet above him.

Again, that just creates more questions.

If the balloon was at most 100 feet wide in size, as those skyhooked balloons were at full capacity, At 40,000 feet away, something that size, still, would have been nothing more than a speck in the distance.

Certainly nothing that would look tremendous from Mantel's perspective.

Or, perhaps some of what he said was misheard, and the relevant information got lost in translation.

When later asked about Mantel's reasons for blatantly ignoring the danger of his ascent over 15,000 feet, one of his longtime friends evidently said,

The only thing I can think was that he was after something that he believed to be more important than his life or his family.

On top of everything, if this story wasn't confusing enough, only a few hours after Mantel's plane crashed, new reports would begin pouring into Lockbourne Air Force Base, 300 miles away in Ohio.

Only 50 miles northeast of the Clinton County airport, where the Skyhook balloon reportedly responsible for Mantel's death was released, Another unidentified object had been spotted.

And this one would be far stranger and far less likely to be either a planet or a balloon.

Military pilots and ground personnel at Lockbourne, and even personnel from the same Clinton County airport where a skyhook balloon was reportedly released that day, had now sighted another bright object, approximately five miles southwest from the Lockbourne airbase.

Witnesses were unable to identify it as anything other than an enormous, round, oval, or cone-shaped, bright glowing object, and specifically noted that it was not a star due to the cloudy overcast sky.

At least one witness, air traffic controller Alex Boudreaux, stated that the wind at the time was blowing east to west, and if it had been a balloon or a lighter-than-aircraft, it would have drifted in the direction the wind was blowing.

During its period of observation, this new object also appeared to change or emit different colors, from white to amber yellow to red.

From about 7.25 p.m.

until it finally disappeared around 8 p.m., this object behaved far more strangely than the one witnessed by Mantel and the men stationed at Gobin Airfield.

Multiple witnesses signed sworn statements, again attesting to their visual acuity and mental health.

Watching from the front steps of his operations building, 26-year-old Lockbourne control tower operator Albert Pickering first saw this object at around 7.25 p.m.

Air Force Captain Charles McGee likewise caught sight of the bright object from the cockpit of his aircraft as he approached the Lockbourne runway to land.

Captain McGee would likewise continue his observation of the object as he taxied the runway after landing his plane.

For a time, the object moved very little.

if not remaining stationary at about 3,000 feet, before suddenly disappearing, rocketing quickly up into the cloudy overcast at 10,000 feet.

Shortly after watching it disappear, Pickering would be joined by 25-year-old Airways operator Frank Eisel as the object descended from the clouds to again about 3,000 feet over the ground and then became motionless once again.

Then, they all watched in bewilderment as the object began moving horizontally in a wide, two-mile diameter circle over one position, completing this approximate six-mile circumference in about 30 to 40 seconds.

seconds.

It then moved to another position and repeated this elliptical movement.

During these circular horizontal movements over the ground, the speed of the object was estimated by both men to be an incredible 500 miles per hour, which, doing the math, would match the speed required to cover six miles in 30 to 40 seconds.

Also, during these horizontal movements, but not during its vertical movements, both Pickering and Eisel reported seeing a comet-like wisp of a tail streaming behind the object, which was about five times the length of the object's diameter.

Having ended its circular movements, both men stated that it again moved like an elevator, now descending quickly to near ground level in several seconds, staying for a few seconds before shooting back up to 10,000 feet into the clouds, again in a matter of only a few seconds.

The object was not seen again.

Eisel stated that the Clinton County Tower, about 50 miles away, reported that they had also observed a similar or the same object in the same general direction and position at the same time as his and Pickering's observations at Lockbourne.

Citing his six years of aviation experience, Pickering stated directly that it was positively not a star, comet, or any astronomical body to the best of my knowledge of such things.

I also rule out the possibility of it being a balloon, flare, dirigible, military, or private aircraft.

Although occurring in the same day, within hours of Mantel's plane crash less than 300 miles away, this unidentified object was not mentioned in the final Air Force report of Mantel's incident.

Coincidentally, the nearest military base to where Mantel crashed was, in fact, Fort Campbell, which is situated about 60 miles further west from the crash site.

And get this, Fort Campbell is very close to being 220 degrees southwest from Gobman Airfield, the direction in which the object was spotted.

Although offering no location where it would have been released from, the Mantel report does acknowledge that a second weather balloon might have been involved in the confusing circumstances leading to his death.

But no reports of any weather balloons released over Fort Campbell on January 7, 1948 seem to be included in the Mantel reports.

As you can imagine, whatever the truth was, as this incident caused the death of a decorated young World War II pilot, the answers being given by either military or other government officials were viewed by the general public with a fair amount of suspicion and were never fully accepted.

I have no idea what it was that Captain Mantel and those many other military and civilian witnesses saw in the skies near Fort Knox or Lockbourne Air Force Base in early 1948.

I also have no idea what it was that I saw, along with dozens of other eyewitnesses, in the skies over Fort Campbell almost 40 years later in 1987.

And something else I didn't know.

That wouldn't be the last time I would see that very same object over Fort Campbell.

And the next time,

it would be much,

much closer.

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive produced by Mr.

Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

Written by Jake Howard and myself.

Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Acasio, and Whit Lacascio.

Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stidham.

Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone.

Production coordination by Avery Siegel.

Additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden, artwork by Jessica Clogson Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picada.

If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartime stories.com.

Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.