Pilot Climbed Past His Wingmen in 1948 Chase Over Kentucky; Investigator Later Questioned Wreck

FRANKLIN, KY. — The death of Captain Thomas Mantell in January 1948 is retold in a recent episode of the Weird Darkness podcast, which describes it as the first fatal UFO encounter and recounts a pursuit that ended in a field in Kentucky.

According to the episode's summary, a huge metallic object was seen from the control tower at Godman Field near Fort Knox. Mantell took off after it in his P-51 Mustang. Both of his wingmen turned back, the account says, but the captain kept climbing. He crashed near Franklin, Kentucky.

The episode, drawing on a written account by Les Hewitt for HistoricMysteries.com, also relays two later claims. Captain James Duesler, an Air Force investigator who reached the crash site, is said to have recalled that the trees around the wreckage were untouched and that the plane looked as though it had been placed there. Richard Miller, who was monitoring the radio at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, claimed he heard Mantell mention occupants.

These recollections are presented as claims, and the show notes offer no mundane explanation for the crash or any rebuttal of either account.

The Mantell segment shares the broadcast with tales of spontaneous human combustion, a reportedly haunted ambulance, a seventeenth-century poisoner and a Southend carpenter said to be a werewolf. Listeners may take the lot in one sitting, or at least in a little over an hour.