Pentagon UFO Study - Media Monitoring

[ALPHA ROMEO UNIFORM]

Thomas you know and I know so don't give a toss what other folks think if just onging negativity. Don't bite and like Greg Bishop says don't get involved in fighting just sit back and learn. Also tid bit always imagine if the anti-gravity element had a bilogical connection to interaction with space? Good sci-fi TV Series bio wars between ET Puppetmasters.

 

[DROBNJAK]

Offer an actual concrete case that is at least somehow verified (as it no doubt lacks proper evidence anyway) that would need such explanations. Pick your best, instead of repeating old fallacies by assuming unconnected events would be the same phenomena and could somehow be summed together or something.

I can help you here. Debunk this if you will, case Army Reserve Mansfield, Ohio with Maj. Larry Coyne as the main witness. You need to read and watch several sources because journalists routinely under-report for brevity. 8.5 independent witnesses, 4 of them on duty military personnel.

Beauty of the case is that it confirms some of Thomase's assertions, because UFO lifts Huey helicopter, with 4 passengers, up 1,500ft, which was confirmed by all 8 witnesses. Meaning that possibly there was a positive gravitational field under the UFO. Magnetism wouldn't work because helicopters are made of aluminum, which is not ferromagnetic.

Harry Reid on What the Government Knows About UFOs

Interesting thing in this article that you found is that former Senate majority leader Harry Reid kicked off the investigation after he consulted an unnamed PhD physicist. Most scientist would shun UFOs, so its extremely curious that one scientist weighted in on UFOs. Here is the hint that some physicist believe in UFO physics.

Were you possibly able to find more about what physicist and Harry Raid were talking about? Did physicist give Raid some scientific arguments.

 

[MrBeliever]

I really like the alien fishing lure theory. I know it's probably a joke, coming from Realm, but still.

Assuming the ocean is not just a hiding place for them, there has to be something interesting there, right? Something they don't want tainted with background radiation from nuclear weapons, maybe?

 

[O'Rilly]

In case anyone's interested, Hal Puthoff is at the top of the list of "early invited speakers" (I guess the remote viewers will have to tell us who the late uninvited speakers will be) for the,

The 2018 IRVA & SSE Joint Conference

taking place on June 6-10, 2018 in Las Vegas.
(Well, I guess that's better than on Cinco De Mayo in Mexico City.)

Unfortunately, the call for papers ended on Mar. 1st, but who knows, if you have a really hot paper they might slide the cut-off date.

Hal's paper?

"The Department of Defense Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Program:
The Back Story, The Forward Story."

So, there you are. Everything will all be fully cleared up in June. Maybe . . . or not.

 

[Realm]

I can help you here. Debunk this if you will, case Army Reserve Mansfield, Ohio with Maj. Larry Coyne as the main witness. You need to read and watch several sources because journalists routinely under-report for brevity. 8.5 independent witnesses, 4 of them on duty military personnel.

Beauty of the case is that it confirms some of Thomase's assertions, because UFO lifts Huey helicopter, with 4 passengers, up 1,500ft, which was confirmed by all 8 witnesses. Meaning that possibly there was a positive gravitational field under the UFO. Magnetism wouldn't work because helicopters are made of aluminum, which is not ferromagnetic.

I have stated how the Nimitz case is quite exceptional in how it has survived closer scrutiny. The Coyne helicopter case is not like that. There seems to be a lot of reasons for doubt, especially because of statements Coyne himself has apparently given. As a result, it's hard to make sense what actually happened.

It's best to begin with the original reports as signed by Coyne and the other 3 witnesses. As for those other claimed witnesses, quoting Philip J. Klass:

The Sturrock panel report states: “The Mansfield helicopter case is a particularly puzzling event since it involved not only the testimony of the helicopter crew but that of independent ground witnesses.” The panel was not informed that these alleged witnesses did not come forward with their story until three years later, after a feature story in the Mansfield newspaper said local UFO investigators were looking for eyewitnesses to the 1973 incident. My investigation into these eyewitness claims showed that their tale was spurious. The helicopter was several miles away from where they claimed they had seen it, and their account sharply conflicted with that of the crew, as reported in my book, “UFOs: The Public Deceived,” published in 1983.

Volume 53 - CSI

Here are the reports of the crew:
UFOs - Documenting The Evidence

Text for the interesting part as copied from ATS:

Army Helicopter 68-15444 was returning from Columbus, Ohio to Cleveland, Ohio and at 2305 hours east, south east of Mansfield Airport in the vicinity of Mansfield, Ohio while flying at an altitude of 2500 feet and on a heading of 030 degrees, SSG Yanacsek observed a red light on the east horizon,90 drgrees to the flight path of the helicopter.
Approximately 30 seconds later, SSG Yanacsek indicated the object was converging on the helicopter at the same altitude at a airspeed in excess of 600 knots and on a midair collision heading.
Cpt Coyne observed the converging object, took over the controls of the aircraft and initiated a power descent from 2500 feet to 1700 feet to avoid impact with the object. A radio call was initiated to Mansfield Tower who acknowledged the helicopter and was asked by CPT Coyne if there were any high performance aircraft flying in the vicinity of Mansfield Airport however there was no response received from the tower. 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, clear west of Mansfield Airport then turn 45 degree heading to the Northwest. Cpt Coyne indicated the altimeter read a 1000 fpm climb and read 3500 feet with the collective in the full down position. The aircraft was returned to 2500 feet by CPT Coyne and flown back to Cleveland, Ohio.

The Coyne incident, Mansfield, Ohio, 1973, page 1

Note that the report only states the altitude had unexpectedly changed, not specifically that the UFO had lifted it. It also doesn't mention any effects on the compass, as has been reported later, which seems to have been possibly faulty before and after:

The commander [Capt. Coyne] reported that the magnetic compass began to spin during the event. The compass continued to spin after the event and it was subsequently removed...” During my several telephone interviews with Coyne shortly after the incident, he had never even mentioned any compass anomaly. Nor did he mention the compass in his official incident report to his Army superior, written only a month later—on Nov. 23, 1973. Several years later, when another investigator interviewed copilot Jezzi, he said that the compass had performed erratically prior to the UFO incident.

Volume 53 - CSI

All the distances and speeds of the object seem to be just visual guesstimates. As for the problems with the radio:

Coyne claimed that the UFO had caused the helicopter’s radio to become inoperative for several minutes, making it impossible to contact airports at Cleveland, Columbus and Akron. My investigation indicated a more prosaic explanation: that at the helicopter’s then-low-altitude it was beyond line-of-sight range to these airports. I suggested that Coyne conduct an experiment during his next flight to Columbus—that near Mansfield he descend to the same low altitude and try to make radio contact with these same airports. Coyne ran such a test and later informed me that he was unable to reach any of the three airports, as I had predicted.

Volume 53 - CSI

As for that green light:

Subsequently I discovered that the overhead portion of the helicopter's transparent canopy is tinted green for protection against intense sunlight. This means that even a white luminous tail of a fireball could have caused the green illumination inside the cockpit.

Bad UFOs: Skepticism, UFOs, and The Universe: New : Historical UFO Documents (Klass, Hynek, others)

The descriptions given by Jezzi, who was sitting in the front on the other (left) side, give further hints that may be the reason for the color:

Jezzi reported only a bright white light, comparable to the leading light of a small aircraft, visible through the top “greenhouse” panels of the windshield.

Only thing sited was a highly intense white-green trailing light.

That already raises question how much they actually saw, and it only gets worse:

I then told Coyne about the incident that had occurred on June 5, 1969, in broad daylight, near St. Louis, when the very experieneed flight crews of an American Ainlines and United Air Lines jetliners, and an Air National Guard
pilot, thought they too had had a near nim-air collision with a squadron of UFOs, The UFOs turned out to be a bright fireball and its fragments that actually had passed approximately 125 MILES north of the three airctraft. It
was photographed by an alert newspaper photographer, Alan Harkrader, in Peoria.
When I finished, Coyne commented:
COYNE : "This is all possible. What I'd like to believe, really, is that in the area where we flew, is the Air National Guard, the F-100s have an approach and departure corridor [into nearby Mansfield airport]. What I think would be a logical explanation was that it could have been an F-100 fighter."
KLASS: "Except that you checked Mansfield [later]."
COYNE: "Right, and all [their F-100] aircraft were down."

http://www.debunker.com/historical/PJK_Coyne1976.pdf
So, it's not just those general problems of human imagination and people seeing stuff that's not there, but Coyne clearly thought it could have been something much more mundane. Even this:

I went on to inform Coyne that at the time of his UFO experience, the 0rionids meteor shower was under way. That it begins each night at approximately 11 p.m., precisely the time of his UFO incident, and that the meteors come out of the East--the direction from which the UFO came. I added that I had received a report from another man in central Ohio who had been driving East on Oct. 20, 1973, when he saw several glowing objects coming out of the East at the time of this Orionids meteor shower. Coyne responded:
COYNE: "Well, that would sound like a loqical explanation."
KLASS: "I'n not trying to convince you, or deprive you of your sighting.",
COYNE: "No, it. sounds good."

While Fravor has been consistent and clear that he "knows what he saw", based on those comments, Coyne didn't.

I believe this is the critical part that made this case so famous:

altimeter read a 1000 fpm climb and read 3500 feet with the collective in the full down position

First of all, that rate of climb is well within the capabilities of that helicopter, with "Initial Rate of Climb: 1,600 ft/min":
Bell UH-1H Iroquois | Royal Australian Navy

So that climb does not actually need anti-gravity or anything exotic, all it needs is someone having kept the controls in the wrong position. Can a professional pilot do something illogical with the controls in a somewhat confusing situation? That's what happened to Air France Flight 447:

In response to the stall, first officer Robert took over control and pushed his control stick forward to lower the nose and recover from the stall; however, Bonin was still pulling his control stick back, lifting the nose further up. The inputs cancelled each other out.
...
First officer Robert said: "We've lost all control of the aeroplane we don’t understand anything we’ve tried everything" and then: "Climb climb climb climb" to which Bonin replied "But I’ve been at maximum nose-up for a while!" At that point captain Dubois realized that Bonin was causing the stall. He shouted: "No no no don’t climb!" But it was too late the aircraft was now too low to recover from the stall. Soon the Ground proximity warning system activated and sounded an alarm warning the crew about the aircraft's now imminent crash with the ocean. Bonin, realizing the situation was now hopeless, said: "Fuck! Were going to crash! This can't be true. But what's happening?!"

Air France Flight 447 - Wikipedia
That seems like a very elementary and stupid error, and they barely found out what happened before it was all over, and the culprit didn't seem to understand it at all.

So that's the situation with the Coyne case, there seems to be little information that could be really trusted, and no actual evidence. And even if it happened more or less as has been described, no anti-gravity needed, normal capabilities of a helicopter suffice.

Interesting thing in this article that you found is that former Senate majority leader Harry Reid kicked off the investigation after he consulted an unnamed PhD physicist. Most scientist would shun UFOs, so its extremely curious that one scientist weighted in on UFOs. Here is the hint that some physicist believe in UFO physics.

Remember there are physicists like Puthoff who believe things like remote viewing, scientology, measuring feelings of chicken eggs with an E-meter and so on.

Were you possibly able to find more about what physicist and Harry Raid were talking about? Did physicist give Raid some scientific arguments.

I have some leads to follow as for who that physicist might have been. Haven't had the time to check those out properly yet. My first guess would be that it was a physicist employed by the DIA (AATIP was a DIA project).

 

[Realm]

Unfortunately, the call for papers ended on Mar. 1st, but who knows, if you have a really hot paper they might slide the cut-off date.

From there:

Included Topics:

• Remote viewing
• New energy technologies
• Mediumship / After death communication
• Remote healing
• Dowsing
• Astrology
• Intuition- or PK-mediated practices for investments, betting, etc.
• Psi devices and applications (eg. Random number generators, etc.)
• Divination (e.g., I Ching, tarot cards)
• Intercessory prayer
• Police work with intuitives
• Out-of-body experiences
• Psychic counseling
• Homeopathy
• Unidentified Aerial Phenomena technology

And that's what's wrong with the so called ufology. As long as it's part of that sort of lists of pure BS, there's no hope or reason for it to be taken seriously. And as we can once again see, pseudo-scientists like Puthoff are actively working to keep it that way.

 

[Realm]

I probably now know the training (and hence the range of dates), carrier and two possible squadrons for the jet that took the Gimbal and Go "Fast" videos. But I need help to verify it. I hope you can tell me what you believe the background voice of the Go Fast clip is saying, starting at 1:33?
Go Fast: Official USG Footage of UAP for Public Release

 

[DROBNJAK]

I have stated how the Nimitz case is quite exceptional in how it has survived closer scrutiny. The Coyne helicopter case is not like that. There seems to be a lot of reasons for doubt, especially because of statements Coyne himself has apparently given. As a result, it's hard to make sense what actually happened.

It's best to begin with the original reports as signed by Coyne and the other 3 witnesses. As for those other claimed witnesses, quoting Philip J. Klass:

Volume 53 - CSI

Here are the reports of the crew:
UFOs - Documenting The Evidence

Text for the interesting part as copied from ATS:

The Coyne incident, Mansfield, Ohio, 1973, page 1

Note that the report only states the altitude had unexpectedly changed, not specifically that the UFO had lifted it. It also doesn't mention any effects on the compass, as has been reported later, which seems to have been possibly faulty before and after:

Volume 53 - CSI

All the distances and speeds of the object seem to be just visual guesstimates. As for the problems with the radio:

Volume 53 - CSI

As for that green light:

Bad UFOs: Skepticism, UFOs, and The Universe: New : Historical UFO Documents (Klass, Hynek, others)

The descriptions given by Jezzi, who was sitting in the front on the other (left) side, give further hints that may be the reason for the color:



That already raises question how much they actually saw, and it only gets worse:

http://www.debunker.com/historical/PJK_Coyne1976.pdf
So, it's not just those general problems of human imagination and people seeing stuff that's not there, but Coyne clearly thought it could have been something much more mundane. Even this:

While Fravor has been consistent and clear that he "knows what he saw", based on those comments, Coyne didn't.

I believe this is the critical part that made this case so famous:


First of all, that rate of climb is well within the capabilities of that helicopter, with "Initial Rate of Climb: 1,600 ft/min":
Bell UH-1H Iroquois | Royal Australian Navy

So that climb does not actually need anti-gravity or anything exotic, all it needs is someone having kept the controls in the wrong position. Can a professional pilot do something illogical with the controls in a somewhat confusing situation? That's what happened to Air France Flight 447:

Air France Flight 447 - Wikipedia
That seems like a very elementary and stupid error, and they barely found out what happened before it was all over, and the culprit didn't seem to understand it at all.

So that's the situation with the Coyne case, there seems to be little information that could be really trusted, and no actual evidence. And even if it happened more or less as has been described, no anti-gravity needed, normal capabilities of a helicopter suffice.

Remember there are physicists like Puthoff who believe things like remote viewing, scientology, measuring feelings of chicken eggs with an E-meter and so on.

I have some leads to follow as for who that physicist might have been. Haven't had the time to check those out properly yet. My first guess would be that it was a physicist employed by the DIA (AATIP was a DIA project).

@Realm, you have a phenomenal acumen for details. I have a feeling that you if you were to be charged by an elephant, you would stop there to analyze if elephant was made angry by a mosquito bite swelling on it's left ear flap. While a big picture would be telling you to start running as fast as your legs can carry you.

Big picture here is that 4 pilots and 4 civilians had seen something, that was bigger than their helicopter and wasn't man made. From there, all the way downhill are details. Sometimes details matter, sometimes they are irrelevant. As every member of legal profession, who attended any trial by court, human memory is very fallible tool and that doesn't help.

Check this investigation.

It has nothing to do with UFOs, just an tragic, but extremely unconventional, event from WWI. If you analyze that incident you'll find all the same elements as in thousands of UFO stories: rumors, multiple witnesses, disbelief by authorities, mistrust towards testimonials of ordinary people, skeptics blowing up on trivial secondary memory slips and bringing whole investigation in question. But eventually, after almost 90 years, however unbelievable, it was confirmed that incident was true:

What I am trying to say, big picture trumps marginal details.

 

[Realm]

Big picture here is that 4 pilots and 4 civilians had seen something, that was bigger than their helicopter and wasn't man made. From there, all the way downhill are details. Sometimes details matter, sometimes they are irrelevant. As every member of legal profession, who attended any trial by court, human memory is very fallible tool and that doesn't help.

Sorry but you seem to be the one missing the big picture. That Coyne case is basically just a collection of spurious details, all of which weaken the credibility of the case, and even Coyne himself didn't seem to be too convinced he saw something extraordinary.

If Coyne had actually thought it had to be something that wasn't man made, why did he contact the airport later to ask if there were F-100 fighters flying? Why did he himself come up with that as an explanation, and said that it would have been a logical one? Why did he even say meteors would be logical explanation that sounds good?

Coyne gained some money and fame from that story, and as explained by Klass, those other ground witnesses only came forward 3 years later after a newspaper story, and gave contradicting accounts. So there are good reasons to question the credibility of those later stories. It's exactly because of fallible memory and tendency to storytelling that makes the initial reports and interviews the most valuable data, and those cast a lot of doubt for that case.

 

[CuCullen]

@Realm. Not wanting to bog you down, but what is your take on these ostensibly anomalous cases: Father Gill 1959, 1976 Tehran, RB-47 1957.

I consider myself a skeptical and scientifically minded person, but you just shot some holes in Coyne, which is one of my go to cases.

 

[Realm]

@Realm. Not wanting to bog you down, but what is your take on these ostensibly anomalous cases: Father Gill 1959, 1976 Tehran, RB-47 1957.

Honestly, I remember reading about those years ago, but not much else. I would have to take a closer look at some point to be able to comment.

I consider myself a skeptical and scientifically minded person, but you just shot some holes in Coyne, which is one of my go to cases.

Whatever holes I shot, I don't think they are nearly as big as those Jezzi made in his interview with Zeidman and Hynek on February 12, 1977. He was literally a front seat witness to this whole thing, actually piloting that helicopter until Coyne took the controls. Apparently the view from his seat was restricted towards the direction the object came from, but surely he would see a craft that reportedly filled the view of the entire windscreen, lit the whole helicopter with green moving light and so on, right? Here are some parts of his testimony from the "The UFO Enigma" by Peter A. Sturrock:

That was my first flight with the unit
...
there had been some conversation previously about UFOs because at the time there were a lot of stories coming out ... the governor of Ohio had seen them
...
Everybody was yelling and screaming about what the hell it was and that it almost hit us. That kind of conversation kept up for several minutes.
...
I never saw a body to it at all. I would say it was about 100 feet above us and maybe 500 feet to our front. Fairly close.
...
The only thing I recall seeing was a white light, a very bright, intense white light on the aft portion of the object, on the back side moving away from us.
...
I just saw it go away and disappear. I assume it went over the curvature.
...
What bothers me is that it was a very intense white light, comparable to some of the approach or landing lights on a smaller aircraft. Not at all like an aft-position light, which is an extremely small one, not very bright.
...
it was mentioned that there was a greenish light that colored the aircraft, that turned the Huey green for a moment as it went by. I didn't see that or sense it, and I think that since the cockpit has a greenhouse - a green Plexiglas roof - that was the effect we saw.
...
There was conversation while it was happening that it was stopping over the helicopter, that it hovered, but I didn't see that. I hadn't caught sight of it yet.
...
I will say that it was moving faster than normal traffic at that low altitude. Closer to the 250 than the 600 [knots].
...
I wasn't aware of the climb at all - and 1,000 fpm - it could have been less. It was not that much of a climb, that steep, that much acceleration. But the climbing is something that occurs somewhat easily in a helicopter if you're not paying attention. If you're flying the aircraft and thinking of something else. We were talking rapidly about what was happening. You get excited and you just go like this [demonstrates by raising left arm] and you're climbing. And going from 1,500 to 3,000 feet in two or three minutes is not going to be extraordinary. There are thermals that are so bad that you put your collective down and you're still climbing. I've had it happen to me.
...
I really did not see what the others did see.
...
Zeidman: Do you think Larry was responsible for the climb?
Jezzi: I don't know. Larry said, "Son of a gun, it pulled us up!"
Zeidman: You weren't following through [on the controls]...
Jezzi: No, I didn't have the controls. I don't know what he did.
...
Zeidman: Going back to the radio malfunction, to what do you attribute the radio malfunction? Was that an unusual event?
Jezzi: In that unit, no. It happened from time to time. Because our maintenance, our avionics, were not that good.
...
Zeidman: Do you know anything about the magnetic compass malfunctioning?
Jezzi: Oh yes. Triple-four's magnetic compass was never the same afterwards. Whether it was like that before I don't know.
Zeidman: Larry says the compass was changed, replaced.
Jezzi: Yeah, they did that, I recall. I know they did that after the incident. That mag compass never worked.
Zeidman: He said the RMI was fine.
Jezzi: Yeah. But that's true about the mag compass. But I think the new one was goofy, too. It was funny because I did fly that aircraft months later, and it would do a 360 without any reason at all
...
Hynek: Do you think it has a natural explanation?
Jezzi: Well, I was trying to figure out if it was an aircraft or a jet with a navigational light problem
...
But the lighting [configuration] shoots my whole theory down. If it was a high-performance aircraft, it must have had a nut for a pilot. The lights were all wrong, and only 500 feet above the hills? At night? I'd hate to do that with a Lear at that speed.
...
We flew back to Cleveland and almost ran out of gas ... That's what really scared me the most, the fuel problem.

So the "new guy" saw pretty much just a bright white light, and was more scared of low fuel. Quite a bit different story from someone who was at the center of it all. It almost sounds like a prank for the new guy that went way too far.

It's also quite a coincidence that they had been talking about UFOs and even the governor had seen one. So how recently had that happened? Guess what had happened just a day before? Walter Cronkite made a news report about the sighting of that governor and others:

Apparently there was a bit of UFO hysteria at the time, with pranksters and all:

In mid- to late-October of 1973, just days before tens of thousands of costumed kids were to hit the streets of Cincinnati and surrounding communities for Halloween night, southwest Ohio was under invasion — an invasion that seemingly came from the heavens, and police and government officials across the region were on edge.

The Cincinnati police told The Cincinnati Post their phones were “ringing off the hook” nightly about those strange bright lights in the sky.
...
When Oct. 31 finally arrived in 1973, the UFO fever began to cool. Police phones weren’t ringing off the hook. Stories of glowing disks skimming the tree tops had dried up. The buzz was tapering off mostly because the public’s sudden rush of a mind-boggling reality was being tempered with heavy doses of explanation.

Just across the border in Indiana, police had spied on pranksters preparing to launch homemade hot-air balloons made of balsa wood, plastic dry cleaner bags and birthday candles for lift-off.

In Xenia, three man-like creatures with silver skin were spotted walking along U.S. 35. Scared out of their wits, drivers called police, who were quickly on the scene. The “creatures,” however, turned out to be high school-aged pranksters wrapped in tin foil.

Perhaps the most sobering answer to the UFO wave of October 1973 is offered by none other than Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a mythological location in UFO history to begin with, as UFOlogists believe the apparent spaceship that crashed at Roswell, N.M., in 1947 was transported to “Wright-Patt” and stored in Hanger 18.

On Oct. 6, 1973, the Yom Kippur War erupted when Egypt and Syria, along with 10 other Arab nations, invaded Israel. Desperate for survival, Israel threatened to launch nuclear warheads against the Arab world. Thus seeing the apocalypse on the horizon, the White House made the decision to come to Israel’s aid, ordering the U.S. Air Force to execute “Operation Nickel Grass” beginning Oct. 13.

Within hours of the order, Wright-Patt was buzzing as an armada of military cargo planes stuffed with war materials were taking off for the Mediterranean Sea around the clock and would do so for the next 30 days.

Could it be that all those witnesses from southwest Ohio were seeing military ships and crafts from this world?

Space Invaders!

If you were paying attention in 1973, the headlines in the papers and the evening news on television were full of UFO sightings all over the country the entire year. Even the Governor of Ohio went on record as having spotted one; and Walter Cronkite relayed the news of the Governor’s revelation on Oct. 17—the evening before Mansfield skies hosted its own news-making moment.

Everyone started watching the night sky, and it was during these evenings of ripe opportunity that the firemen of Mansfield Fire Department No. 1 got the inspiration to launch their own unidentified flying object.

There was a tank of helium in their garage on South Walnut Street that they had been using to fill Smokey-the-Bear balloons for kids, so they created and inflated their own makeshift weather-balloon-like apparatus with latex gloves.

The young men took parts from a fire department flashlight and mounted them on metallic pie pans, and when the lit apparatus was suspended from their lighter-than-air unidentifiable object it created ‘an eerie glow.’

It was a clear night and very still, and when the illuminated craft launched from the Municipal Building it lifted slowly over the north end of the city and wafted leisurely out to the airport.

After sightings of their UFO made headlines in the News Journal the next day with 911 calls, City cops, County Sheriffs and State Patrol involvement, the MFD guys knew that if they wanted to keep their jobs they needed to maintain absolute silence about their prank.

They are all retired now though, and in retrospect wish they had taken pictures…especially at the airport where they retrieved pieces of the UFO at the crash site. Holding the tin pie pans ‘it looked like the Army at Roswell…more or less.’

UFOs over Richland County: 1973

 

[Realm]

I began thinking that bright light at the tail of an airplane, which Jezzi considered to have been the oddest thing he actually saw. Why would anyone put something like that to the tail? Here's one reason:

The only external difference between a KC-135R and a KC-135T is the presence of a clear window on the underside of the empennage of the KC-135T where a remote controlled searchlight is mounted.

Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker - Wikipedia
Apparently those also have some sort of traffic lights to guide the planes to be refueled.

Remember how that operation Nickel Grass was ongoing:

The Stratotankers had left Pease AFB, New Hampshire, the night of Saturday, 13 October (one of the bases El Al was using to re-supply the war effort); the tankers were ferrying factory-fresh Douglas A-4 Skyhawk and McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II aircraft flying non-stop from the factory in St. Louis, Missouri to Ben Gurion Airport.

Operation Nickel Grass - Wikipedia

There might be something worth investigating further...

 

[O'Rilly]

I've read about the Coyne case in various places, including Sturrock's book. I don't think the change in altitude needs to be attributed to a tractor beam, or to intense gravitation or to anything out of the ordinary. One issue I've never seen addressed, and I might have missed it, is the fact that Jezzi indeed said he had been flying the helo for a while when the strange light approached. So, in a military helicopter, at night, all cockpit instrumentation and lights are red-lighted to help preserve the pilot's vision acuity. However, I don't think that means that the operator will see all colors necessarily in the right "shade" of color, so I've wondered if the reason Jezzi saw a white light (compared to green by the others) was attributable to having had his head down in the red-lighted cockpit for quite a while, and then looking for a moment at some light of a different color (?greenish?), that would be perceived by Jezzi as white. Just a thought. And yes, I'm aware of the overhead green-tinted plexiglass panels. I leave this case in the grey basket; I don't see it as a slam dunk for a flying saucer, but it might have been anomalous.

 

[Realm]

One issue I've never seen addressed, and I might have missed it, is the fact that Jezzi indeed said he had been flying the helo for a while when the strange light approached. So, in a military helicopter, at night, all cockpit instrumentation and lights are red-lighted to help preserve the pilot's vision acuity. However, I don't think that means that the operator will see all colors necessarily in the right "shade" of color, so I've wondered if the reason Jezzi saw a white light (compared to green by the others) was attributable to having had his head down in the red-lighted cockpit for quite a while, and then looking for a moment at some light of a different color (?greenish?), that would be perceived by Jezzi as white. Just a thought.

It was a short flight, they had flown only around 30 minutes, so I would guess the instrumentation lighting wouldn't have that much an effect. And I don't think it would affect color vision that much in any case. Here are some answers to why those instruments are red:
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-cockpit-lights-red
So basically the red light should have little effect to those cells that detect green and blue.

Does anyone know some good reason why that UFO couldn't have been a stratotanker? I'm kinda starting to like that theory of mine, as it seems to have potential to explain a lot.

We know those were active at the time. Wright-Patterson base was relatively close. It kinda looks like that drawing, submarine type of thing, if you can't see the wings because of the darkness. It had a searchlight near it's tail, and at least the current ones have red/yellow/green guiding lights on the bottom (I need to find what sort of lights those had in 1973):
http://www.cormusa.org/uploads/Visu...ts__Improvement_for_Pilot_s_Visual_Acuity.pdf
At least nowadays tankers use steady red light to signal the tanker is not ready for refueling yet, or can't refuel because of some problem, but don't know how bright that is or was at the time.

Most importantly, it could explain why it seemed to follow, came close, slowed down, and turned on the bright light: it might have mistaken that chopper to a customer.

At least some tanker models are capable of refueling at speeds between 100 and 270 knots (which enables them to refuel slower helicopters) and max speeds are in the range of 400-600 knots. According to Coyne, the airspeed of the helicopter was 100 knots at the time, so "hovering" above it would mean matching that speed.

Interestingly, KC-97 Stratotanker actually has a dome, even though not quite as large as in those pictures:

 

[O'Rilly]

Most importantly, it could explain why it seemed to follow, came close, slowed down, and turned on the bright light: it might have mistaken that chopper to a customer.

So you're suggesting that a KC 97 was flying around at night at about a 2000 ft and at about 100 kts to perform night refueling operations for some random aircraft? I'm no expert, but there used to be a squadron of KC 97's at the base I was once stationed at. I am not sure that a loaded KC 97 will even get off the ground at a 100 kts, but don't quote me on that. In any case, in your proposed scenario, what happened after the flight? Refueling flight operations at night? Surely Klass and everyone else would have looked for such a possible mundane answer, if there actually was a KC 97 winging its way at 100 kts and at 2000 feet looking for random aircraft to refuel. That's my guess.

 

[Realm]

So you're suggesting that a KC 97 was flying around at night at about a 2000 ft and at about 100 kts to perform night refueling operations for some random aircraft?

Here's one scenario I was actually thinking:

We know Operation Nickel Grass was ongoing and tankers were used to enable long distance flights to Israel. I don't know if that location happened to be within any of the primary corridors for that traffic, but there could have been other somewhat related transfers elsewhere as well. I don't think that tanker would have actually planned to perform refueling at such a low altitude, but I'm thinking of scenarios where it wanted to check out who was flying there. After all, it had the right kind of tools to do that, being designed for close approaches and having bright lights to see who's underneath.

We know the helicopter had some issues with the radio, although that seemed to be just because of the altitude in that case. Apparently their connection was cut while they tried to talk to Mansfield, so the tanker could have heard the controllers trying to get back to them without success, and decided to take a closer look if it's in trouble or something. Or there could have been some other target they were trying to find that also had some radio problems or something. It happened in the proximity of airports, so the tanker could have been flying low already to make a landing soon. According to Coyne, the area they were flying was an approach and departure corridor for the nearby airport.

I'm no expert, but there used to be a squadron of KC 97's at the base I was once stationed at. I am not sure that a loaded KC 97 will even get off the ground at a 100 kts, but don't quote me on that.

The accounts seem to differ a bit so it didn't necessarily quite match the speed of the helicopter but apparently flew relatively close to that 100kts. I don't know how accurate this is, but according to this, another tanker, KC 130, was able to refuel at speeds as low as 100 kts (at some altitude at least):
What is the stall speed of the KC130?

According to the given testimonies, it was flying faster before and after meeting the helicopter, so it only needed to fly anywhere close to that slow for a short distance at that point. As for the altitude, we know speeds and distances are hard to estimate, and the testimonies of the crew already differ on the speeds, and we know one of them couldn't even see anything except the bright light, so the real altitude could have been more than they thought, especially if they though it would be a somewhat smaller target.

In any case, in your proposed scenario, what happened after the flight? Refueling flight operations at night?

Considering the altitude, I think the most likely scenario would be it was just about to land (and likely wouldn't be in heavy load then). Coyne apparently wasn't quite sure where exactly they were at the time, so I don't know if we know whether it was heading towards an airport?

Surely Klass and everyone else would have looked for such a possible mundane answer, if there actually was a KC 97 winging its way at 100 kts and at 2000 feet looking for random aircraft to refuel. That's my guess.

Actually, I just found another very similar case while trying to google what sort of signaling lights those tankers had. Here's CSI declaring they have solved another "one of the best" UFO case, the 1965 Exeter case, by it being a KC-97:
‘Exeter Incident’ Solved! A Classic UFO Case, Forty-Five Years ‘Cold’ - CSI
So basically they are saying exactly that, everyone overlooked that exact mundane answer for that long. Here's a report that disagrees with their conclusions:
http://www.nicap.org/reports/650903exeter_shough.pdf

Those signaling lights are at the center of the debate. There's disagreement of their colors and how they were used. Both of those agree that the lights are very bright, so at least I got an answer if they are bright enough for that red light that was seen:

Firstly, the lights are neither point sources nor clearly separated - they are lamps housed behind diffusing filters that almost almost abut; secondly, there is atmospheric extinction and refraction to consider; and thirdly, and more importantly, these lights are very bright (they have to be turned down during closest approach so as not to dazzle the pilot of the receiving plane) and bright lights in darkness suffer significant loss of distinctness due to glare caused by the structures of the eye.

Here's an interesting pic of a plane being refueled at night. Why does that dude look so green? Is that because of some internal lighting or does it also have a "greenhouse" window?

 

[MrBeliever]

So, the gigantic refueling plane saw a random helicopter at night and decided to try and refuel it with no radio coordination whatsoever, getting dangerously close to its stall speed in the process. It was flying very low because it was trying to land, but mid-landing, the pilot was like "hey, let me abort this landing and try to surprise-refuel this random helicopter."

You say this tanker was likely part of operation Nickel Grass, which refueled planes on their way from St. Louis, MO, to Israel. The wiki page said refueling happened at a logical time, after the planes spent hours in the air crossing the Atlantic Ocean. But in this instance, the tanker decided to surprise-refuel a random helicopter at night in Ohio, a couple hundred miles from St. Louis.

You go on to cite an example of a mistaken UFO sighting that was actually a tanker, and in that instance, the eyewitness clearly reports seeing 5 red lights going along a pair of wings with a 60-degree angle, blinking intermittently in a set pattern. These are described as "sequencing lights" that are characteristic of this refueling plane.

But here, the refueling plane mistook the helicopter for an aircraft it was supposed to refuel in an area where there wasn't any reason to refuel anything, and the helicopter pilots failed to see the blinking red sequencing lights.

Pretty absurd explanation, if you ask me...

 

[Realm]

Pretty absurd explanation, if you ask me...

I wouldn't ask you anything, since obviously you once again didn't even read what I actually wrote, so it would be just a waste of time.

 

[Realm]

I don't think that tanker would have actually planned to perform refueling at such a low altitude

On a second thought, why not. I was thinking that in terms of where they thought they were instead of where they actually might have been. They were originally cruising at 2500 feet. When descending, the last altitude Coyne noted was 1700 feet. After it left, the first altitude they noted was 3500 feet, and Coyne thought it had pulled them up, indicating he though they were already close to that altitude while it was over them. Additionally they may have believed it was much closer to them than it actually was. As in:

Consider that even something as distant as a meteor hundreds of miles away, passing out of sight behind trees, can seem to have landed in a nearby woodland—a common illusion. The brightness of the Exeter UFO’s lights (greater than that of a mere airplane and ultimately providing a clue to its identity) probably made the craft seem much closer than it really was.

‘Exeter Incident’ Solved! A Classic UFO Case, Forty-Five Years ‘Cold’ - CSI

I believe the refueling would happen so that the jet or helo would approach the tanker by moving higher up, and the tanker would maintain its altitude. It will cause turbulence behind it, so it would make sense for a helo to clear some space for it first by descending and them ascending back. So if the tanker actually mistook the helo as someone to be refueled, it could have acted as they expected. Maybe they didn't notice their mistake before they illuminated it.

Here's another UFO case from 1959 that was officially declared to be solved with a night-time refueling mission of a KC-97, although some again disagree:
KILLIAN CASE

Some additional details from page 11 onwards:
http://www.astronomyufo.com/UFO/SUNlite9_1.pdf

There was a refueling group located to Lockbourne Air Force Base near Columbus, which is now Rickenbacker International Airport. They were operating with KC-97Ls at the time:

The 160th Air Refueling Group (160 ARG) is an inactive unit of the Ohio Air National Guard.
...
In 1964 the 160th ARG participated in Operation Ready Go, the first all United States Air National Guard (ANG) non-stop deployment of fighter aircraft to Europe. In 1965 the group's KC-97Gs were upgraded to KC-97Ls with addition of jet engine pods mounted on the outboard wings.
...
1967 saw the beginning of Operation Creek Party. This operation provided air refueling support to United States Air Forces in Europe tactical aircraft through the rotation of ANG aircrews and aircraft flying from Rhein Main Air Base, Germany This operation, which continued until 1975, demonstrated the ability of the ANG to perform significant day-to-day missions without being mobilized.
...
In 1971 Clinton County Air Force Base was closed in an economy move by the Nixon Administration to divert military funding to support the Vietnam War. The 160th ARG moved from the closing base to Lockbourne Air Force Base near Columbus, Ohio. The group earned a second Air Force Outstanding Unit Award for the period of 11 May 1968 to 30 June 1975.
...
In 1975 the 160th ARG became the first Air National Guard unit to convert to the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker.

160th Air Refueling Group - Wikipedia
Coyne was returning from Columbus to Cleveland.

AFAIK, the list of possible tankers that were in active use at the time includes these: KC-97,KC-130(B/F),KC-135(A/B/Q/R),(E)KA-3B,KA-6D,HC-130P.

At the moment KC-97 feels like the best option, because of that dome (what is that for?) that sort of matches the pictures witnesses draw (although I think one might mistake an engine for a dome from a suitable viewing direction as well), and because of that refueling group above.

The pilot director lights of an older KB-29, which I believe was already retired at the time, looked like this:

Here is an interesting image showing the pilot director lights of the Boeing KB-29. In this image, the director light panel has been swung out from under the belly of the aircraft, presumably for maintenance. The director lights illuminate to give the receiver aircraft’s pilot information on his position in the air refueling envelope. One set of lights indicates his forward-aft position and the other set indicates the up-down position. All subsequent tanker aircraft including the KB-97, KC-135, KC-10, and now KC-30 and KC-46A include a similar arrangement of pilot director lights.

Here's what the current new LED lights of KC-135 look like:

KC135 LED Lighting
Note that those are located close to the nose landing gear. In Coyne's picture the red light was at the nose.

There's a current refueling track close to the route and direction of Coyne:
https://forums.radioreference.com/a...q-aug-2017-ap1b-air-refuel-routes-aug2017.pdf
A map like that for 1973 would be nice...

 

[Realm]

I think this hasn't been here yet:
Luis Elizondo said U.S. Navy is one (of a couple) sources for AATIP cases -- U.S. Navy says NOPE • r/UFOs
So the navy also gave a "no results" FOIA response for any data that would have come from them to the AATIP, and based on what Elizondo has said, such data should have existed. That's basically further indication of the insignificance of the AATIP.

As for the Coyne tanker, oh sorry, UFO (I just got a bit ahead of myself, but not necessarily much): If you still list that among your favorites, prepare to feel some further anxiety. I just found some killer material that really seems to refuel my theory. I just need a day or two for checking some stuff and writing it down. I think I can already make a stronger case for it than what CSI did with the Exeter case, let alone Klass with his meteor theory for the Coyne case.