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the area. a formation of military planes or a series of weather balloons. Donald H. Menzel, Professor of Astrophysics at Harvard, who was later to become a professional saucer-skeptic and de-bunker, said that Arnold had been fooled by tilting snow-clouds or dust haze reflecting in the sun. Arnold, however, stuck fast to his story and the item made front-page space in newspapers across the nation. For UFOlogists, it was the birth of an era. The next classic case in the chronicle of UFO sightings was the tragic encounter of Captain Thomas Mantell with a flying saucer over Godman Field Air Base in Kentucky on January 7, 1948. At 1:15 P.M., the control towers at the base had received a telephone call from the Kentucky State Highway Patrol inquiring about any unusual aircraft which might be being tested in the area. Residents at Marysville, Kentucky had reported seeing an unfamiliar aircraft over their city. Flight Service at Wright-Patterson provided Godman Field with the information that there were no flights of test craft in Within twenty minutes, Owensboro and Irvington had reported a strange aircraft, which residents described as "circular, about 250 to 300 feet in diameter." At 1:45 P.M. the tower operators on the base had seen it. They satisfied themselves that it was not an airplane or a weather balloon and called the base operations officer, the base intelligence officer, and several other high-ranking personnel. At 2:30 P.M., they were still discussing what to do about the object when four F-51's were seen approaching the base from the south. Captain Mantell, the flight leader, started in pursuit of the UFO after the tower asked him to take a closer look at the object in an attempt to identify it. Mantell was still climbing at 10,000 feet when he made his last radio contact with the tower: "It looks metallic and it's tremendous in size. It's above me and I'm gaining on it. I'm going to 20,000 feet."