What happened
An Army Reserve UH-1H 'Huey' was flying home from Columbus to Cleveland at 2,500 feet when the crew chief spotted a red light on the eastern horizon. Within seconds it was racing toward them on what looked like a collision course. Captain Lawrence Coyne took the controls and pushed the helicopter into a powered dive toward 1,700 feet, bracing for impact. Instead, the crew said, the object stopped directly above them: a grey, metallic, cigar- or airfoil-shaped hull about 60 feet long, with a red light at the nose, a dome on top and a green light at the rear that swept through the cockpit like a spotlight. Then came the detail that made the case famous. With the collective still set for descent, Coyne said, the altimeter showed the helicopter climbing, reaching about 3,500 feet in seconds without any sensation of G-force. The object moved off west and the crew filed a signed Army report the next day.
The original account
On 18 October 1973 at 2305 hours in the vicinity of Mansfield, Ohio, Army Helicopter 68-15444 ... encountered a near midair collision with a unidentified flying object. ... The crew expected impact from the object instead, the object was observed to hesistate momontarily over the helicopter and then slowly continued on a westerly course accelerating at a high rate of speed ... Cpt Coyne indicated the altimeter read a 1000 fpm climb and read 3500 feet with the collective in the full down position.
US Army Disposition Form incident report, Cleveland USAR Flight Facility, October 1973 (US government document, public domain; spelling as in original)
The official explanation
Philip J. Klass, senior editor at Aviation Week & Space Technology, announced that his investigation showed the object was a fireball from the Orionid meteor shower, which the Earth passes through every mid-October. On that reading, a brilliant meteor crossing the sky at night could easily appear to rush toward an aircraft and then hang overhead to startled observers. Skeptics also note that night-time estimates of the size, distance and speed of an unfamiliar light are notoriously unreliable, and that a crew under stress may misread or mis-remember instrument indications during a sudden evasive manoeuvre.
The anomalous case
This is a written military report signed by all four crew members, filed with the Army the day after the event, by men with no interest in publicity. Investigator Jennie Zeidman of the Center for UFO Studies built a second-by-second timeline and concluded the object was in view for about five minutes, far longer than any meteor, and that it was seen to stop and hover. Two crewmen independently sketched similar shapes. Ground witnesses also emerged: Jeanne Elias and her son, southeast of Mansfield, reported a loud, low helicopter and an intense green light flooding the boy's bedroom, matching the crew's description of the green beam. The reported uncommanded climb, with the collective down, is precisely the kind of instrument-recorded anomaly that a fireball does not explain, and the case won a $5,000 'most scientific report' prize from a panel convened by the National Enquirer.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- US Army Disposition Form on the Mansfield helicopter incident (transcription) official, ufology.patrickgross.org
Sources
- The Coyne case, Mansfield, Ohio, 1973: the official report Patrick Gross, UFOs at Close Sight (transcription of Army report)
- The Coyne incident (UPI report, Mansfield News Journal, 4 November 1973) Patrick Gross, UFOs at Close Sight (newspaper transcription)
- UFOs Over Richland County: 1973 Richland County History (Tim McKee)
- The Coyne case, Mansfield, Ohio, October 18, 1973 (case file) Patrick Gross, UFOs at Close Sight
Witness reports elsewhere
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