Donald Keyhoe and Thomas Mantell

For reasons that will become clear later, meaning in the future and not in this post, I have been reviewing some of the Mantell case. I won’t bother telling you that it involved Thomas Mantell who died while chasing an unidentified object. What I want to mention are two things, both relevant to understanding the case, but that have gotten buried in the minutia of the sighting.

Donald Keyhoe

Donald Keyhoe, when he was writing about the case in his book, The Flying Saucers Are Real, thought the balloon explanation was wrong. He wrote, “To fly the 90 miles from Madisonville to Fort Knox in 30 minutes, a balloon would have required a wind of 180 m.p.h. After traveling at this hurricane speed, it would have to come to a dead stop above Godman Field.”

Keyhoe, who didn’t have access to the official file on the case as I do now, made two assumptions that were incorrect. The first was that the object would have had to travel 90 miles in 30 minutes. That was assuming that the object wasn’t seen to the northeast of Madisonville and to the southwest of Godman. This is actually the case. The time calculation is flawed based on his assumptions.

The other problem is that the object was never over Godman Field. Looking at the case file, those at Godman who reported the object were looking to the southwest. Since the object was never over the field, his calculation of the distances are equally flawed.

The record shows that none of those with Mantell saw the object when first asked to intercept it. They had to be directed toward it by those in the Godman Tower until Mantell spotted it in front of him and at a higher altitude.

The point here, which is sort of about chasing footnotes, is that many have used Keyhoe as a primary source. The flaw there is that Keyhoe’s information came, not from the documentation and the investigation, but from his sources inside the Pentagon. While he did get many facts correct about UFOs and the investigation of them, he did not have access to the documents in the Mantell case. Had he had those, he would have known the truth about the distances. This is why I chase footnotes and try to get to the original source. There will be a part two on this, because it is clear that the official file is in error as well.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Fran Ridge and NICAP

This week I reached out to Fran Ridge who has been hosting the NICAP website for

Fran Ridge

quite a few years. You can find it at www.nicap.org. It contains a wealth of information about UFOs that might not be found anywhere else, and given Fran’s knowledge about the subject, it is one of the most credible sites on the web. You can listen to the program here:

https://youtu.be/58-95jKvVXA

We did discuss a sighting that Fran had send out to what he thinks of as his “A” team, which is a group of researchers who have some expertise in various areas of human knowledge. They’re not only just those who have been around the UFO field for a long time, but people trained in other fields as well. The point was that he’d sent the limited details of the sighting and within twenty-four hours, a number of us had provided additional detail. That information can be found at:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/09/chasing-footnotes-and-cannon-air-force.html

I thought it was a rather interesting exercise and it did point out the value of having something like the “A” team available. Not only that, but we get to eliminate a sighting from the list that was dubious, but we also found another from around the same time that is much more interesting. All the details are in the posting.

One of the areas that we explored, all too quickly, was the Thomas Mantell case from January 1948. Fran mentioned an analysis that he had completed with a number of others including Brad Sparks. Jean Waskiewicz, and Dan Wilson. Their conclusions do not mirror my own. Fran did send a link to their analysis which can be found at the NICAP website, as can be mine. All that information follows this post as well.

Next week’s guest: Ben Moss

Topic: Encounters in the Desert (my Socorro book) and information that Ben has found in the last few months about the case.

The Mantell Analyses

While I was talking with Fran Ridge, he of the NICAP website, http://www.nicap.org/, we drifted into a discussion of the Thomas Mantell UFO sighting of January 1948. Mantell was killed when his F-51 crashed in Kentucky.

Thomas Mantell

The case has been wrapped in controversy since then, mainly because a pilot died attempting to identify the UFO. Various theories have been offered over the years about what happened.

I had written a long analysis of it about a decade and a half ago. My plan had been to create an online peer review for UFO research. I had written the analysis and it was offered over the UFO Updates list when the draft was finished. I had hoped that those with expertise in various aspects of the case would be inspired to provide their analysis of my analysis. There were a few responses but most had to do with the performance capabilities of the aircraft rather than other aspects of the case. You can read that analysis here:

http://www.nicap.org/docs/mantell/analysis_mantell_randle.pdf

My secondary goal was to inspire some others to examine UFO cases with a similar eye to detail and analysis. Updates would be one of the ways that we would communicate, but no one followed the lead, much to my disappointment.

However, Fran mentioned that he had been inspired to look into the case when a local television station wanted to do a story about the crash just a few years ago. Working with several others, he produced a new analysis with a different conclusion. You can read that here:

http://www.nicap.org/books/Mantell_Incident/The_Mantell_Incident.pdf

Since we now have two detailed examinations of the Mantell crash, maybe we can move into something like a peer review of it. Take a look at both of these documents, try to put aside any personal bias about the reality of UFOs, or rather the alien visitation aspect of the case, and comment about it. I believe it will be interesting to see how this shakes out, given the research that has been done into the case, if anyone cares to comment about it.

Mantell, Ruppelt and Blue Book

Bob Koford inadvertently opened a can of worms with a couple of his comments about the Mantell case. Using much of the Project Blue Book case file, he suggested that the balloon explanation didn’t work because the balloon was only at 20,000 feet and that a witness at Vanderbilt University had been watching it but saw no sign of Thomas Mantell’s F-51. Besides, the information suggested that Mantell hadn’t climbed above 20,000 feet and that he had left his wing men at

Mantell

15,000 in his attempt to get closer to the UFO.

This didn’t match much of what I remembered about the case and took a look at the Blue Book file. In it, I found documentation that was somewhat at odds with what Koford had written. I found a report written on January 21, 1948, by Captain Lee Merkel of the Kentucky Air National Guard. Merkel, in a section called “Investigation Disclosed,” he wrote:

k. At 18,000 feet, Lt. Clements attempted to pull up close to the flight leader and signal him with hand signals to listen out on Channel B…

m. At 20,000 feet, Lt. Clements advised Captain Mantell that their ETA for Standiford had elapsed…

o. At approximately 20,000 feet, Captain Mantell called the flights attention to an object at 1200 o’clock… (Copied as written).

p. Captain Mantell’s transmission was garbled, but Lt. Clements stated he mentioned something about going to 25,000 feet for 10 minutes.

q. At 22,500 feet, Lt. Clements advised flight leader [Mantell] that he was breaking off to lead other wingman back to Standiford Field.

s. At the time Lt. Clements and Lt. Hammond broke off from the flight (22,500) Captain Mantell was observed climbing directly into the sun.

Those aren’t the only indications of the pilots operating above 14,000 feet without oxygen. In another document which is labeled, “Description of the Accident,” it was noted that “One pilot left the flight as the climb began, the remaining two discontinued the climb at approximately 22000 feet… Captain Mantell was heard to say in ship to ship conversation that he would go to 25000 feet for about ten minutes…”

All that seems straight forward and indicates that the pilots were far above the 14000 foot altitude where regulations required that they go on oxygen. So where did this idea come from that suggested 15000 feet as the altitudes where Clements and Hammond turned back but Mantell continued to climb?

Part of the confusion might be from T/Sgt Quinton A. Blackwell who was in the Godman Tower and who quoted Mantell as saying, at 15000 feet, “Object directly ahead and above me now and moving at about half my speed. It appears metallic and tremendous in size. I’m trying to close in for a better look.”

Captain Gary W. Carter, also in the tower, said that Mantell said that the object was going up and forward as fast as he was and that Mantell said, “…going to 20000 feet and if no closer will abandon chase.”

(I will note hear, apropos of nothing, that Colonel Hix, in the tower said that Mantell said the object was traveling at about half his speed and that Lt. Orner, also in the tower, said he heard Mantell say the same thing. It is also important to note that Blackwell reported that Mantell said, “It appears metallic and tremendous in size.)

Ed Ruppelt, who is often considered the authority on all this, included the Mantell case in his book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. Looking at some of what Ruppelt wrote about the case, I begin to wonder if we might have given

Capt. Ed Ruppelt

Ruppelt too much credit. On page 48 of the Ace paperback edition, Ruppelt wrote, “Saucer historians have credited him with saying, “I’ve sighted the thing. It looks metallic and tremendous in size…” While this sentence seems to suggest that the statement was invented by UFO researchers, it is found in the official record and Ruppelt had to know that.

Ruppelt then wrote that the two wing men had levelled off at 15,000 feet and were trying to communicate with Mantell. Ruppelt wrote:

He [Mantell] had climbed far above them by this time and was out of sight. Since none of them had any oxygen they were worried about Mantell. Their calls were not answered. Mantell never talked to anyone again. The two wing men levelled off at 15,000 feet, made another fruitless effort to call Mantell, and started to come back down. As they passed Godman Tower on their way to their base, one of them said something to the effect that all he had seen was a reflection on his canopy.

Ruppelt never wavers from this 15,000 feet or that Mantell had tried to get to 20,000 feet. He goes on to explain that in the training of pilots and crewmen, they are exposed to the problems of high altitude flying and have “it pounded into to [them], ‘Do not, under any circumstances, go above 15,000 feet without oxygen.’” Ruppelt tells us that no one ever got above 17,000 in the altitude chamber tests in training without experiencing adverse effects from altitude, but experiments made long after this event suggest that many humans will be able to remain conscious at 20,000 feet for about ten minutes. Some are able to stay conscious longer and many not quite so long. If Mantell had said he was going to 25,000 feet and circle for ten minutes before starting to descend, he had no chance. Useful consciousness at that altitude is about three minutes. After he trimmed his aircraft to climb, he passed out and the F-51 continued to climb until it rolled over and began a powered dive that resulted in it breaking up. Mantell did not attempt to stop the dive nor did he attempt to bail out. The canopy latches were all closed.

Interestingly, several others who wrote about the Mantell case such as T. Scott Crain, Jr. in the MUFON Journal, reported on the higher figures mentioning that the wing men broke away before Mantell reached 22,500 feet. Given that an illustration in the article is from the Blue Book files, it is clear that Crain had the same information as the rest of us today.

Here’s the point I find it somewhat disturbing. Ruppelt suggests that they never really climbed above 15,000 feet though the official record suggests otherwise. I’m not sure why Ruppelt did that unless he was attempting to protect the pilots involved and removed the information that they had violated regulations. He does report that Mantell said that he was going to 20,000 feet and then said nothing more. But the documentation available suggests that 25,000 is the proper figure.

The information about the sighting near Vanderbilt, which is in Nashville, doesn’t seem to have any relevance to the Mantell case. Ruppelt does seem to believe the Skyhook balloon explanation and suggested that it was launched from Clinton County. Ohio. Some researchers, looking at the data including winds aloft suggest that the balloon would not have been in the location reported on that day and is ruled out. Others aren’t quite so sure. I will note that winds aloft data is often spotty, wind directions vary radically as altitude is increased and the Skyhook balloons often reached altitudes of 60,000 feet, or some 35,000 feet (nearly seven miles) above Mantell. That might explain Mantell’s comments about the object moving away from him at the speed of his aircraft. It was much higher than he thought, misjudged the size and was fooled by all that.

The real takeaway here, for me, was Ruppelt’s attitude. He seemed to suggest that some of the quotes attributed to Mantell were rumors spread by UFO researchers. Now that we have access to the Blue Book files, we learn that Ruppelt’s comments were misleading because the phrase, “It appears metallic and tremendous in size,” is found in the official documentation.

Chasing Notes... Sort Of...

Although this isn’t actually about chasing footnotes, it sort of began that way. I was trying to follow up on a comment about the Mantell crash and why it had happened. Nearly twenty years ago or so, I had a thought of creating a sort of peer review of UFO information using the Internet as the publishing vehicle as well as a way of getting that peer review. To that end, I selected the Mantell case because there was so much bad information about it out there, from the idea that he was an experienced fighter pilot and ace to the claim that he had seen some creatures inside the craft or that they had shot him down because he approached too close.

The idea failed because no one wanted to invest the time and effort in creating documents of length about a case, some of the needed information was still classified at various levels, or maybe they all just thought it was not worth the effort. Why work so hard on a sighting because no matter the conclusion and how honest you believed the results might be there would be others who would reject the word because it didn’t fit their personal belief structure? I suppose I should have known that it was doomed to failure, but sometimes we all get overly optimistic.

Anyway, I was pulling up information from a variety of sources just to see how it was treated in them. Skeptic Curtis Peeples in Watch the Skies didn’t actually explain the sighting but noted the Air Force had claimed Venus and others thought it might have been a weather balloon but investigation apparently couldn’t prove that. The one real contribution to the discussion was Peeples’ report that Mantell

Thomas Mantell.

had a mere 67 hours of flight time in the F-51D type aircraft he was flying and 2867 hours in transports. Peeples doesn’t mention it, but Mantell had been awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions during the Normandy invasion (D-Day for those of you who aren’t history buffs) in 1944. The point is that he was an experienced pilot but that his flight time in fighters was relatively low which might explain part of this.

I checked Richard Dolan’s UFO’s and the National Security State. Dolan suggested that Mantell was flying a P-51, which is the same aircraft as the F-51. The designation had been changed from “P” for pursuit to “F” for fighter, but many people make the mistake and it isn’t of much importance. He said that two of the other aircraft accompanied Mantell to 15,000 (while regulations required oxygen above 14,000) feet, but other documents suggested they climbed to 22,000 feet with Mantell.

Dolan quotes from Mantell’s last transmissions suggesting the object is above him and that is metallic and of tremendous size. He finally reports that the object is moving about his speed of maybe a little faster. According to Dolan, Mantell said that he was going to climb 20,000 feet and if he was no closer he would abandon the chase. The records seem to suggest that Mantell was already at 20,000 feet, and he was going to climb to 25,000 and circle for ten minutes before giving up. It is now clear to all of us, that if Mantell climbed to 25,000 feet he wouldn’t have had ten minutes of useful consciousness. He would have passed out in three to four minutes because of hypoxia.

The Air Force first claimed that Mantell had chased Venus, then a weather balloon and finally two weather balloons and Venus. Ed Ruppelt, when he took over as the chief of Project Blue Book concluded that Mantell might have been chasing a Skyhook balloon which could reach altitudes of nearly 100,000 feet, and given they were made of polyethylene, would have a metallic sheen in the bright sunlight. Ruppelt was unable to find a launch of one of those balloons on the proper date but there did seem to be one or two that might have been launched in the days preceding Mantell’s doomed flight.

Where Dolan goes astray, in the footnote sort of way is when he wrote, “Clifford Stone, a twenty-year U.S. Army veteran, has informed me that a navy colleague of his checked with the Office of Naval Research for Skyhook balloon plots. The man said that ONR records indicated there was definitely no launch of a Skyhook balloon from at least January 6 to January 8, 1948, but also that probably none had been launched since late December 1947.”

Here’s the problem, he mentions Cliff Stone, who is unreliable as a source on this, given the many unconfirmed tales he has told over the years. More importantly, Stone does not supply the name of his source, so not only is the information provided by Stone unverified, we aren’t provided with the name of this man with ONR. There is no way to check this out if Stone won’t supply the name.

Or, in other words, we can trace it from Dolan to Stone to a “navy colleague. That tells us nothing about where the information originated, about the accuracy of the information or what documentation exists to confirm it. The trail ends at that point. We need to ask Stone about it.

But here’s the point and it is one that we all too often ignore. We need to be able to trace the evidence to the original source so that we might be able to assess the credibility of that source. When I say, for example, that Edwin Easley suggested to me the path to the extraterrestrial was not the wrong path to follow in my investigation, we all could look at who he was. Easley, according to the documentation, was the provost marshal at Roswell in 1947 and was in a position to know. We can’t get beyond him, but we don’t need to. He was an eyewitness source who was clearly there in 1947. Unfortunately, in today’s world that information can’t be corroborated because he said it to me in an unrecorded conversation. He fell ill shortly after that and the opportunity was lost. You can accept it or reject based on your personal bias, but the point is, Easley was a named source who was in the right place at the right time. With Stone’s source we cannot verify his credentials, we don’t know if he was in the right place to gather the data claimed and that is the difference.

Those of us engaged in UFO research, regardless of the side of the fence we inhabit, must be willing to provide proper sourcing for what we say. We must name the names and the documents. Once that is done, we can all argue about the interpretation, but we must be willing to share all relevant data so that everyone can see where it originated. Otherwise we are just spinning our wheels.

UFOs - The Never Ending Saga

There was a time when I believed that once a sighting had been solved, once a real solution had been offered, we could eliminate that case from our files. We wouldn’t have to worry about it because we all knew what the answer was. That was back when I was younger and somewhat naïve.

Today I see us still talking about the so-called Philadelphia Experiment as if it wasn’t an admitted hoax. That’s right, the man who originated it, Carlos Allende, or if you wish to use the name he was born with, Carl Allen, admitted that he had

Carlos Allende aka Carl Allen

made the whole thing up in an attempt to stop Morris K. Jessup from writing any more UFO books. The Allende Letters, and the annotated copy of the Case for the UFO sent to the Office of Naval Intelligence, was a hoax. Allende even signed a statement for Jim Lorenzen saying as much.

In the October 1980 issue of Fate, Robert Goerman drove the final stake through this tale when he found Allende’s family (known as the Allens) and interviewed them. They said that Allende had been a strange man who always annotated everything he had including birthday cards and magazine articles. They confirmed the hoax and yet we still have to hear about this as if there is something to learn from the letters. For an overview see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/07/allende-letters.html

Or take the case of Thomas Mantell. Here was a man who earned a Distinguished Flying Cross during the Normandy Invasion as a transport pilot. After the war he transitioned into fighters and in January 1948 was leading a flight near Godman Army Air Field when he was asked to attempt to intercept and identify an object over the field. Mantell could not reach the altitude the UFO was operating at and he was killed in his attempt.

Thomas Mantell

It is clear from the declassified records that this was an aircraft accident. Mantell lost consciousness around 25,000 feet with his aircraft trimmed to climb. It rolled over into a power dive at 30,000 feet and broke apart long before impact. The object he was chasing based on the descriptions and drawings in the Project Blue Book files suggest it was a huge balloon and not an alien craft.

Unless you think that this is a phenomenon of the 1940s and 1950s, there are always the Gulf Breeze sightings. Here was a case in which the model used in the best photographs was found. The evidence offered seemed to refute the idea that there had been some spectacular sightings with photographic evidence. Nearly everyone believes the photographs are a hoax but there are still arguments about it.

And let’s not forget the Alien Autopsy. Here is a case that is an admitted hoax with photographs showing how the alien was created and showing the work in progress. There is just no evidence of a photographer, no evidence that anyone had kept this classified material to be sold to Ray Santilli later) but there are still those who

Creation of the Alien for the autopsy. Photo
courtesy of Philip Mantle. 

believe that some of the footage in the autopsy film is real.

And now we’re stuck with the Roswell Slides. It is clear from the evidence that the slides show a mummy. It is clear that someone in the inner circle had to know the truth about this, but it went forward anyway with some of the people simply ignoring the obvious. Once the mummy was identified by reading the placard, once the museum was identified by comparing the slides to other photographs in that museum, once the journal article was found corroborating the evidence, you would have thought that the debate would be over… but no, we’re told the placard doesn’t matter and the research continues to prove that the body is that of an alien.

David Rudiak is continuing to work to nail down the photographs and other scientific information so that we might put this, briefly, to bed. I have no confidence that any evidence offered will be accepted as authentic if it doesn’t show that the body on the slide is alien. The fallback position seems to be that the scientists from the May 5 presentation pointed out all these “nonhuman” characteristics so the evidence to the contrary is unimportant… just as the admission of hoax by those involved in the Alien Autopsy is unimportant.

The point is that no matter what evidence is presented, no matter who admits the hoax, no matter what is said and done, there are those who are going to reject the evidence and believe what they want. I simply do not understand how you can reject the evidence that you don’t like… oh, I get that sometimes the evidence isn’t as persuasive as it is in these cases and that there can be legitimate disagreements, but I don’t understand how you reject the words of those who participated in the hoaxes when they say they made up the stories or when the evidence clearly leads to a specific conclusion. But that is what we contend with day after day here.

Don Ecker Quits UFO Research

Word has reached me, meaning that Don Ecker called me, to tell me that he was quitting the UFO business. He had been around it for more than twenty years and probably a lot longer as an interested party. He served as the Director of Research for the US version of UFO Magazine for a number of years and was key in exposing some of the biggest UFO frauds. Even when the magazine seemed to endorse the ridiculous stories of some claimed witnesses, Don would write companion pieces explaining why he, at least, was not taken with a specific tale.

In a long paper that he published recently, Ecker wrote:

One thing that I’ve discovered being in this field for 20 years is a very simple truth, but a truth that is most profound. Most "researchers" are ignorant of what has happened previously in the field of UFO research. They are ignorant of the claims made in the past, ignorant of past hoaxes perpetrated by "players" in the field and are intolerant of views that conflict with their deep seated erroneous beliefs. Quite frankly, I’ve grown tired of this field.

I’m tired of the media that is blinded by their prejudice about UFOs, their snide and condescending remarks about something that quite frankly they know nothing about. I’m tired of people claiming to be researchers that refuse to accept the truth about something regardless of how many times it jumps up and bites them in the ass. I’m tired of government agencies that continuously lie about a subject that has shown to be something real and even possibly affect our national security … and getting away with it for over 60 years. I’m tired of believers that become upset when their fuzzy illogic is shown to be as full of holes as Swiss Cheese. I’m tired of frauds and clowns in this field that are shown to be frauds and clowns and yet still are treated like they are stars with something important to say. I suppose you could just say I’m tired of all of it.

20 years ago I thought that genuine study, research and investigation might make a difference. Alas!! I was most profoundly wrong! Today (even though I most certainly believe this is a genuine and legitimate subject of study and UFOs must come from somewhere), I have had enough! So, this is my goodbye from the wonderful and wacky field of UFOs. For any of you that, through the years, have found any of my writing on the subject to be of interest … thank you. It has been an up and down thing, this UFO enigma. However, if you are a believer in Bill Cooper, Mel Noel, Billy Meier, Project Serpo, or benevolent ET’s from the Pleiades here to show us a better way … or possibly how to build a better mouse trap … preferably a humane one, I’m sure you will be glad to see my exit … on stage right. So with that in mind I now make my exit. Thanks, because if nothing else … this has been an interesting but frustrating 20 years.

We see that Ecker’s paper tells of his years fighting the nonsense in the field and of the personal toll that sometimes takes. Although he doesn’t point it out specifically, this field, like much found in academia, is contentious, with claims and counterclaims thrown about, allegations of all sorts, and when that fails, then it moves into the legal arena, or more often, threats of legal action with no follow up.

I understand much of what Ecker says. I have been threatened with lawsuits for years and used to count the days in each new year until the first threat of a lawsuit was made. One year it was in early January.

This comes with disagreements and perceived slights. Stan Friedman once complained that in the acknowledgment section of my first book on Roswell, I had given Robert Hastings more lines that I had given him. I mean, who counts the number of lines in an acknowledgment?

But it does demonstrate one of the problems with UFO research and that is the ego of the researcher. We fight with one another in the fashion that O.C. Marsh used to fight with Edward Drinker Cope in the early days of dinosaur hunting. They would lie about their finds, collect specimens and then dynamite the fossil beds so that others couldn’t find them or excavate them and called each other all sorts of names. It did nothing to further the research and hindered it many times. Ufology should look at these "Dinosaur Wars" and try to learn from them.

So, in Ufology, we simply smear those with whom we disagree. I have been labeled, in recent weeks as a liar, poor researcher, incompetent and a fraud. In the past, I have been called a government agent and one misguided person even reported that I had worked with Hector Quintanilla, he once the chief of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, on some kind of recovery team. Of course, when Quintanilla was leading Blue Book, I was in high school, but such facts do nothing to defuse the situation.

To give you a feel for how this works, back in 1988, Don Schmitt, then the Director of Research at the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, invited me to join them in a project about Roswell. They planned to look at the evidence and search for witnesses who might not have been interviewed during the initial research. Remember, Schmitt asked me, because of my military background, to assist them. I agreed.

Imagine my surprise in the mid-1990s, when my partner was telling people that he suspected I was a government agent planted on him. He refused to supply people with my contact information when they asked for it and kept convention bookings for himself, telling the hosts that I wouldn’t be available. This is how it is in Ufology all too often. Partners working at what turns out to be opposite goals.

I can point to other examples but why bother? The story is sad and those who have called convention or lecture sponsors to attempt to steal the bookings know who they are. It can be documented. It has been but then, no one seems to pay attention to these underhanded tactics as long as the researcher says what the people want to hear. Often times the truth gets left behind.

What this demonstrates is simply, as many have said, we eat our young. We turn on one another so that we can move to the top of the heap in a field in which the heap is small and so often ignored. But fight for that top place we do, and this, I think, explains some of what Don Ecker was talking about in his article. He has grown tired of the infighting that benefits no one except the skeptics.

Which leads to another point that Ecker made. He wrote, "One thing that I’ve discovered being in this field for 20 years is a very simple truth, but a truth that is most profound. Most ‘researchers’ are ignorant of what has happened previously in the field of UFO research. They are ignorant of the claims made in the past, ignorant of past hoaxes perpetrated by ‘players’ in the field and are intolerant of views that conflict with their deep seated erroneous beliefs."

The example I think of here is the Mantell case. I believe that most of the old time researchers realize that Captain Thomas Mantell, a transport pilot during the Second World War, and who had just transitioned into fighters in 1947, was killed in a tragic accident. Mantell, asked to attempt to identify an object seen over the Godman Army Air Field at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, died when his F-51 crashed.

We now know, based on the files released by the Air Force, by the statements of those involved, research by Robert Todd, Jerry Clark and a dozen others, that Mantell climbed too high and blacked out due to oxygen starvation. His aircraft, trimmed to climb, continued upward to about 30,000 feet where the torque of the engine and the thin air conspired to pull the aircraft over, into a power dive. The aircraft was seen to begin to break up at about 20,000 feet. Mantell died in the crash.

The object he was chasing was a skyhook balloon which was part of a classified project in 1948. Descriptions released with the declassification of the Project Blue Files seem to confirm this. The answer, tragically, is that Mantell was trying to reach a balloon that was at 80,000 feet, way above him.

Today, we begin to argue about the case again. There are those who believe there was something more here. Mantell was chasing an alien space craft and regardless of the evidence, will not be persuaded otherwise. So, we waste more time and effort on a case, tragic though it was, that is only tangentially connected to UFOs. For those interested in the full treatment of the case see:

http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/

and scroll down to the segment about Mantell. All the information is there so that the reader can decide if Mantell was chasing a craft from another world or if he was chasing a balloon.
Ecker continued in this vein, writing:

As most reading this will know, Birne’s [meaning William Birne who is now the publisher of UFO magazine] was co-author with Phil Corso of the blockbuster "The Day After Roswell." However Birne’s is an academic and writer where I was a researcher and investigator. They began allowing previously verboten bullshit spewing airbags into the magazine that in my opinion don’t have a clue nor could they buy a vowel.

So, what are they doing in UFO? Birne’s feels that regardless, all should have a say and then let the public decide. I most strongly disagree with that position. (For example, there is a vocal minority claiming that the NASA Moon landings were done on a studio stage, and the entire Moon Program was a government disinformation program. Should we give these morons a public position in the magazine?) If one strives to be the publication of record in this confusing field, one has to be willing to separate the wheat from the chaff. As I write this paper, the most recent egregious example of slip shod editorial decisions was allowing one wind-bag columnist to revisit one of the biggest hoaxes in recent memory by allowing the inclusion of the ‘Dulce alien base shoot out with U.S. Forces in 1979!’ (With neither Birnes wife especially, or Birnes being aware of the last 20 odd years of UFO history, this type of egregious error is routinely made.) This came from the John Lear/ Paul Bennowitz disinformation all the way back to 1987, and has been effectively shown to be total crap!

Which means that some, unaware of the history of these stories will now accept them because there have been printed again without commentary. The bright spot is that with the Internet, some will try to learn more and will find the controversy that rages, though, in my mind, there is no real controversy. We know, as Ecker said, this is "total crap!"

So, we see that nothing in Ufology changes. We see that old cases are repeated as if newly discovered and that solid explanations are ignored because the mystery is more important than the truth. As some in the news media say, "Why ruin a good story with the facts?"

Don, I at least, am sorry to see you go. Voices of reason are too few in this field and the clouds of deceit and confusion far too many. The commentaries offered by you put some of this into perspective and now we’ve lost that. I hope that, at some point, you’ll return and that we’ll have another voice for reason because, without that, the bad guys win.

(Note: In the latest issue of UFO they only report that both Don and Vicki Ecker have decided to retire from the field...)

The whole of Ecker's article can be seen at:

http://www.ufowatchdog.com/ufo_fog.pdf

And a thanks to Don Ecker for forwarding the link.