Tony Dodd - FLIGHT TO DESTRUCTION -
The Strange Death Of Pilot Thomas Mantell

Author: Tony Dodd.

Part 2

On inspecting the aircraft I found that it was very strange how it had come down. The wings and tail section had broken off on impact with the ground and were a short distance from the plane. There was no damage to the surrounding trees and it was obvious that there had been no forward or sideways motion when the plane came down.
It just appeared to have belly flopped into the clearing. There was very little damage to the fuselage, which was in one piece, and no signs of blood whatsoever in the cockpit. There was no scratching on the body of the aircraft to indicate forward movement and the propeller blade bore no scratch marks to show it had been rotating at the time of impact and one blade had embedded in the ground. The damage patters was not consistent with an aircraft of this type crashing at high speed into the ground. Because of the large engine in the nose of the plane, it would come down nose first and hit the ground at an angle. Even if it had managed to glide in, it would have cut a swathe through the trees and channel into the ground. None of these signs were present. All indications were that it had just belly flopped into the clearing. I must admit, I found this very strange. The next day Doctor Loading came from Wright Field, Ohio. He was an Aeronautical Engineer with a PH.D, and was in charge of what he called ‘Saucer Project’. He told me about many files they had on record about flying saucers and said that they were aware that the highest numbers of sightings were in areas of high industrial and high military activity. Not normal everyday military activity, but when large military exercises were taking places. Because of this they had two pilots on the team. One was at Pittsburgh and the other at Birmingham, which were two areas of high saucer activity.
	Central part of the wreckage. One blade from the prop sticks up. The right wing collapsed upon impact. The fuselage is half buried in mud from impact.
	Right side of the engine and propeller
	Close-up of the smashed engine
	The crash site

Interestingly a very large military exercise had been taking place at Camp Campbell some 50 miles away on the day Mantell crashed. Doctor Loading also indicated to me that they were aware that these craft were of extraterrestrial nature and said, ‘ Thank God they are not hostile otherwise we wouldn’t stand a chance’. He went on to tell me that they held a very large number of files at Wright Field dating back many years.

At this time we were joined by two Army military agents who I assumed were from the Counter Intelligence Corps, or the Criminal Investigation Department. I don’t know which department because they were in plain clothes. A short time later we were informed that two women living in different locations and not known to each other had reporting seeing a flying saucer on the date of the crash. One woman reported her sighting to the State Police and the other made a report to her local Sheriff’s office. We were notified about the reports and the two plain-clothes men were dispatched to interview the witnesses.

It was established that the witnesses lived in different tows between 60 and 70 miles apart and were totally unknown to each other. Their description of the object seen was the same. They both said that the flying saucer was travelling from East to West.

As a crash investigator at the site, I have got to say that we were puzzled by the lack of damage to the aircraft. The fuselage which would normally be about two feet wide, was virtually undamaged, but was only nine inches wide. The wings and tail assemblies had broken off on impact and were not far from the plane.

We were also puzzled as to how the aircraft had hit the ground. It should have been nose first because of the heavy engine up front. This was not the case. It just appeared that it had into the clearing in a belly flop mode. The official report said that Mantell had blacked out due to lack of oxygen, this may well have been the case, but the aircraft came down in a very strange way.

There was no indication of any mechanical fault with the aircraft prior to the crash. If there had been we would have expected Mantell to have reported over the intercom. No such report was received. As I said previously, I never saw Mantell’s body as it had been removed prior to my arrival at the scene. The injuries to Mantell I described previously, were described to me by people who were present when the body was recovered. It was common in those days for bodies of crash victims to be sealed in lead lined coffins. That is all I can tell you”.

Two weeks after the Mantell incident, Project Saucer was publicly established on 22nd. January, 1948, at Wright Patterson Field, Ohio. It’s real purpose however was to act as a cover to Project Sign, a classified flying saucer investigative programme. In August 1948, Project Sign staff members produced a top-secret estimate of the situation which concluded that flying saucers were probably extraterrestrial.

I don’t suppose the real truth of what happened to this unfortunate pilot will ever be made public. But once again we see a very strange set of circumstances involving unidentified flying objects and readers will probably know how close the circumstances of this case are to that of the famous case of Foxtrot 94 which occurred over the sea near the East Coast of England.