UFO Specialist Calls Saucer 'Racket' Dead

One of the most controversial recorded sightings of an unidentified flying object-one in which a man was killed-has been revealed to have been a case of an Air Force Pilot chasing a Navy Weather ballon.

"The Navy and the Air Force weren't speaking to each other and it was a number of years before the truth was known," Donald H. Menzel, Paine Professor of Astronomy, told an audience of about 25 in the Kirkland House JCR last night.

Menzel, who is also Science Editor of Galaxy Magazine, has been called the "arch-demon of saucerdom" for his research as a UFO trouble-shooter for the Air Force. He has been a major debunker in the debate between scientists and those whom he called "urologists-writers and researchers who have attempted to demonstrate that UFO's are sightings of spaceships guided by intelligent beings from another planet.

Menzel last night praised the 1969 report on UFO's by a University ofColorado research team headed by Edward U. Condon. The report suggested that the Air Rorce abandon its 20-year role as arbiter and compiler of UFO reports.

As evidence of the unfitness of a military agency to serve as UFO control, Menzel mentioned the Godman sighting, in which an Air Force pilot, Robert Mantell, was sent up in an Air Force plane to track an unidentified flying object which had been sighted near Godman Air Force Base in Kentucky.

Mantell followed the object above the altitude which his aircraft could maintain, blacked out from lack of oxygen, and then crashed and died, Menzel said.

Air Force vs. Balloon

Afterwards, researchers discovered that the UFO had been a Navy weather balloon which had not been announced to the Air Force tracking station.

The mistake, when discovered, was kept secret for more than ten years, Menzel said.

Menzel said that the recent drop in UFO sightings has come because news media have stopped giving them big play. "Everyone in the UFO racket-myself included-realizes that this is a bad time for UFO's," he said.

"The flying saucer is over and I'm glad, because it's been costing us millions of dollars," he added.