COYNE

Opening

At about 11 p.m. on 18 October 1973, an Army Reserve UH-1H Huey helicopter was flying from Columbus to Cleveland, Ohio, with a crew of four. Near Mansfield, a red light came straight at them on a collision course. Commander Captain Lawrence Coyne dived to avoid it.

Instead of passing, it stopped directly over them: a grey, metallic, cigar-shaped object about the size of the helicopter, with a red light at the front, a white light at the back, and a green beam from underneath that swung up through the canopy and turned the whole cabin green. When it left, the helicopter was climbing fast, though the controls were set to descend. Four military men signed statements, and people on the ground saw it too.

Timeline

About 10:30 p.mThe Huey of the 316th Medical Detachment leaves Columbus for Cleveland Hopkins Airport, flying at about 2,500 feet in clear weather.

About 11:00 p.mSergeant Robert Yanacsek reports a red light to the east, closing fast. Coyne takes the controls, drops the collective and dives at around 2,000 feet a minute to 1,700 feet. He tries to call Mansfield airport tower, which acknowledges and then goes silent on both radio bands.

Seconds laterThe object stops just above and in front of them. All four men see the grey metal hull, a dome or raised section on top, the red light at its nose and a white light at its tail. A green, pyramid-shaped beam from underneath sweeps up over the helicopter and floods the cockpit.

About ten seconds laterThe object moves off to the west and the green light fades. Coyne sees the altimeter reading 3,500 feet and climbing at about 1,000 feet a minute, with the collective still down. The magnetic compass is spinning. He has to pull up to regain control. The radio works again.

That night and afterThe crew lands in Cleveland and reports. The Army files the report, and the crew's account is later investigated in detail by Jennie Zeidman for the Center for UFO Studies.

LaterColumbus researchers William E. Jones and Warren Nicholson find a mother and four teenagers who were driving near Charles Mill Reservoir at about 11:05 p.m. They describe a helicopter and an object above it, "like a blimp", with a green light that lit up the ground around them.

Key figures

Captain Lawrence Coyne, a pilot with 19 years' experience, was in command. First Lieutenant Arrigo Jezzi was the co-pilot, with Sergeant John Healey and Sergeant Robert Yanacsek in the back. All four told the same story, and Coyne repeated it publicly for decades.

Jennie Zeidman, a researcher who had worked with J. Allen Hynek, interviewed the crew and the ground witnesses and wrote the main study of the case.

Physical and documentary trail

The strongest evidence is the crew itself: four trained military men, named, in one aircraft, giving matching accounts the same night. The ground witnesses add an independent view from below. What is missing is a radar track and a photograph. The helicopter's own instruments, the altimeter reading and the spinning compass, are known only from the crew's account.

Things you might not know

• The crew won $5,000. The National Enquirer's Blue Ribbon panel of scientists gave the four men its award for the most scientific and valuable UFO report of 1973.
• Two of the crew were police officers. Coyne and Healey both worked as police officers when they weren't flying for the Army Reserve. Healey was a Cleveland detective.
• The compass kept spinning. After the encounter the magnetic compass disk was turning about four times a minute, and it had to be replaced.
• There is no tape of the radio call. The crew heard Mansfield tower acknowledge them, but no recording of the exchange was ever found.
• Two 13-year-olds got out of the car to watch. One of the ground witnesses said the object was "as big as a school bus".
• Coyne told the United Nations. On 27 November 1978, by then a lieutenant colonel, he described the encounter to a UN committee alongside J. Allen Hynek, Jacques Vallée and astronaut Gordon Cooper, at the invitation of Grenada's prime minister, Eric Gairy.

Competing explanations

An unknown craft. The crew's account, the matching ground sighting and the unexplained climb all point to something solid that interacted with the helicopter.

A meteor and a startled crew. Sceptic Philip Klass suggested a bright fireball from the Orionid meteor shower, which peaks in mid to late October, and argued Coyne had pulled up himself without realising it. The problem for this reading is the length of the encounter and four men describing the object stopping and hovering, which a meteor cannot do.

An aircraft. No aircraft has ever been matched to the time, place and description.

Later life of the case

The Coyne helicopter encounter is regularly ranked among the best UFO cases on record, and studied as a model multiple-witness military sighting. Zeidman's report, published by the Center for UFO Studies, remains the most detailed source.

Finding

Four Army airmen and witnesses on the ground saw the same thing over Mansfield that night, and no explanation offered since has fitted everything they described. This is one of the strongest close encounters with an aircraft ever recorded.

What still will not resolve: what lifted a helicopter whose controls were set to go down. No radar data has surfaced to show the object from the outside.