believed that many flying saucers appear to pilots who are actually
chasing a reflection on their canopy. I checked over all the reports
we had on file. I couldn't find one that had been written off for
this reason. I dug back into my own flying experience and talked to a
dozen pilots. All of us had momentarily been startled by a reflection
on the aircraft's canopy or wing, but in a second or two it had been
obvious that it was a reflection. Mantell chased the object for at
least fifteen to twenty minutes, and it is inconceivable that he
wouldn't realize in that length of time that he was chasing a
reflection.

About the only theory left to check was that the object might have
been one of the big, 100-foot-diameter, "skyhook" balloons. I
rechecked the descriptions of the UFO made by the people in the
tower. The first man to sight the object called it a parachute;
others said ice cream cone, round, etc. All of these descriptions fit
a balloon. Buried deep in the file were two more references to
balloons that I had previously missed. Not long after the object had
disappeared from view at Godman AFB, a man from Madisonville,
Kentucky, called Flight Service in Dayton. He had seen an object
traveling southeast. He had looked at it through a telescope and it
was a balloon. At four forty-five an astronomer living north of
Nashville, Tennessee, called in. He had also seen a UFO, looked at it
through a telescope, and it was a balloon.

In the thousands of words of testimony and evidence taken on the
Mantell Incident this was the only reference to balloons. I had
purposely not paid too much attention to this possibility because I
was sure that it had been thoroughly checked back in 1948. Now I
wasn't sure.