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31 The young pilot increased his throttles and climbed in altitude to about 20,000 feet. He radioed that he was closing in on the object, and then came silence. There were no more messages from Mantell. The wreckage of his plane was found shortly later. For some reason that would never be explained, the plane had gone out of control and plunged to the earth. Mantell died instantly upon impact. The press went wild. The New York Times printed the headline, “Flier Dies Chasing a ‘Flying Saucer.” Military officials attempted to downplay the sighting, saying that Mantell had mistaken Venus for a UFO and that he simply ran out of oxygen and crashed. While it is true that Mantell’s plane was not equipped with oxygen, at the time of the sighting, Venus was low on the horizon and could not have been responsible for the object. When this fact became clear, skeptics then claimed that Mantell was chasing a large Skyhook weather balloon. Believers, on the other hand, say that the UFO may have zapped his plane out of the sky. There are many cases during which UFOs affect electronic equipment, these are discussed in later chapters. There were also rumors that the wreckage of Mantell’s plane showed evidence of unusual damage, though this was never confirmed. To this day, the truth remains unknown.’ Many pilots have reported seeing UFOs. For some reason, UFOs are attracted to other flying objects—including normal planes. A similar and equally dramatic airplane-UFO encounter occurred just two months later over Fargo, North Dakota. Twenty-five year old George Gorman was a jet pilot and second lieutenant of the North Dakota Air National Guard. On the evening of October 1, 1948, Gorman was coming in for a landing at Fargo Airport when he no- ticed a weird, glowing disk-shaped object below and ahead of him. As he watched, the unknown object steadied its flight, then pulled into a sharp left turn heading toward the airport control tower. The Sighting That Changed the World UFO OVER FARGO