The “ghost rockets,” so tagged by the newspapers, had first been seen in the summer of 1946, a year before the first UFO sighting in the U.S.  There were many different descriptions for the reported objects.  They were usually seen in the hours of darkness and almost always traveling at extremely high speeds.  They were shaped like a ball or projectile, were a bright green, white, red, or yellow and sometimes made sounds.  Like their American cousins, they were always so far away that no details could be seen.  For no good reason, other than speculation and circulation, the newspapers had soon begun to refer authoritatively to these “ghost rockets” as guided missiles, and implied that they were from Russia.  Peenemunde, the great German missile development center and birthplace of the V-l and V-2 guided missiles, came in for its share of suspicion since it was held by the Russians.  By the end of the summer of 1946 the reports were widespread, coming from Denmark, Norway, Spain, Greece, French Morocco, Portugal, and Turkey.  In 1947, after no definite conclusions as to identity of the “rockets” had been established, the reports died out.  Now in early January 1948 they broke out again.  But Project Sign personnel were too busy to worry about European UFO reports, they were busy at home.  A National Guard pilot had just been killed chasing a UFO.

On January 7 all of the late papers in the U.S. carried headlines similar to those in the Louisville Courier:  “F-51 and Capt.  Mantell Destroyed Chasing Flying Saucer.”  This was Volume I of “The Classics,” the Mantell Incident.

At one-fifteen on that afternoon the control tower operators at Godman AFB, outside Louisville, Kentucky, received a telephone call from the Kentucky State Highway Patrol.  The patrol wanted to know if Godman Tower knew anything about any unusual aircraft in the vicinity.  Several people from Maysville, Kentucky, a small town 80 miles east of Louisville, had reported seeing a strange aircraft.  Godman knew that they had nothing in the vicinity so they called Flight Service at Wright-Patterson AFB.  In a few minutes Flight Service called back.  Their air Traffic control board showed no flights in the area.  About twenty minutes later the state police called again.  This time people from the towns of Owensboro and Irvington, Kentucky, west of Louisville, were reporting a strange craft.  The report from these two towns was a little more complete.  The townspeople had described the object to the state police as being “circular, about 250 to 300 feet in diameter,” and moving westward at a “pretty good clip.”  Godman Tower checked Flight Service again.  Nothing.  All this time the tower operators had been looking for the reported object.  They theorized that since the UFO had had to pass north of Godman to get from Maysville to Owensboro it might come back.