I've read a lot about the production of ST:TOS, and I've yet to find any reference to that incident in any of that series' creators' recollections. But it is strikingly similar.
On January 7, 1948, Captain Thomas Mantell was shot down by a flying saucer. Or so it seemed. Several people people around Fort Knox, Kentucky saw a whitish object 1/4 the angular size of the full Moon high in the sky. Captain Mantell was in the air with three fellow Kentucky Air National Guard pilots flying P-51 Mustangs, and those four were ordered to investigate it. One of them returned home from low fuel, and the two others later returned home from low oxygen, leaving Mantell continuing to chase the object. After climbing after it, he went into a dive, his plane partially disintegrated, and he crashed near Franklin KY, still strapped into his seat, with his watch stopped at the crash time.
The US Air Force decided that Captain Mantell passed out from lack of oxygen above 25,000 ft (7,600 m) and lost control of his plane. It then went into an uncontrollable dive and crashed. As to what he was chasing, the USAF first thought Venus, then later decided that it was a then-secret high-altitude balloon.
Turning to what UFOlogists think, not many of them speculate on the motives of the operators of the extraterrestrial spacecraft that they believe that many UFO's are. Not even UFO contactees, who claim to have had close encounters of the friendly kind with usually human(oid) UFO occupants. But I've found an exception, UFO contactee George Adamski in his book Inside the Spaceships (1955). That book has what I find to be some rather striking parallels with Star Trek. During one of his rides, one of his human-ET friends explains to him that the Mantell incident was a horrible accident. They wanted to bring him aboard, but that their tractor beam or whatever did not work well with his airplane, making it go out of control and disintegrate. Sort of like a failed version of "Tomorrow is Yesterday".
In that episode, the Enterprise became an Unidentified Flying Object. John Christopher then chases this UFO in his plane, and the Enterprise crew grabs his plane with the ship's tractor beam, making it disintegrate. But they beam JC out and they show him some of their ship, thus making him a sort of UFO contactee.
Mantell UFO incident - Wikipedia, The UnMuseum - The Mantell Incident
On January 7, 1948, Captain Thomas Mantell was shot down by a flying saucer. Or so it seemed. Several people people around Fort Knox, Kentucky saw a whitish object 1/4 the angular size of the full Moon high in the sky. Captain Mantell was in the air with three fellow Kentucky Air National Guard pilots flying P-51 Mustangs, and those four were ordered to investigate it. One of them returned home from low fuel, and the two others later returned home from low oxygen, leaving Mantell continuing to chase the object. After climbing after it, he went into a dive, his plane partially disintegrated, and he crashed near Franklin KY, still strapped into his seat, with his watch stopped at the crash time.
The US Air Force decided that Captain Mantell passed out from lack of oxygen above 25,000 ft (7,600 m) and lost control of his plane. It then went into an uncontrollable dive and crashed. As to what he was chasing, the USAF first thought Venus, then later decided that it was a then-secret high-altitude balloon.
Turning to what UFOlogists think, not many of them speculate on the motives of the operators of the extraterrestrial spacecraft that they believe that many UFO's are. Not even UFO contactees, who claim to have had close encounters of the friendly kind with usually human(oid) UFO occupants. But I've found an exception, UFO contactee George Adamski in his book Inside the Spaceships (1955). That book has what I find to be some rather striking parallels with Star Trek. During one of his rides, one of his human-ET friends explains to him that the Mantell incident was a horrible accident. They wanted to bring him aboard, but that their tractor beam or whatever did not work well with his airplane, making it go out of control and disintegrate. Sort of like a failed version of "Tomorrow is Yesterday".
In that episode, the Enterprise became an Unidentified Flying Object. John Christopher then chases this UFO in his plane, and the Enterprise crew grabs his plane with the ship's tractor beam, making it disintegrate. But they beam JC out and they show him some of their ship, thus making him a sort of UFO contactee.
Mantell UFO incident - Wikipedia, The UnMuseum - The Mantell Incident
