PORTAGE COUNTY

Opening

At about 5:00 a.m. on 17 April 1966, Portage County, Ohio, Deputy Sheriff Dale F. Spaur and posse member W. L. "Barney" Neff stopped to check an abandoned car on Route 224 between Atwater and Randolph. A light rose over the trees and came overhead: a large, self-lit object, they said, that hovered about 150 feet up and lit the ground and their cruiser, car P-13.

They followed it east in the same car for about 86 miles, through Ohio and into Pennsylvania, clocking it at up to 103 mph. East Palestine patrolman Wayne Huston joined in, and in Conway, Pennsylvania, patrolman Frank Panzanella watched it with them until it climbed out of sight. Project Blue Book put it down to a satellite and then Venus. The officers never accepted that.

Timeline

17 April 1966, before 5:00 a.mPolice radio in Summit and Portage counties carries reports of a flying object.

About 5:00 a.mSpaur and Neff see the object at the abandoned car. It hovers overhead, then moves off. They radio in and follow it down Route 224, onto Route 14, into Pennsylvania on Route 51, through Rochester and up Route 65.

About 5:30 a.mHuston, waiting on Route 14, sees the object pass over at what he estimates as 800 feet, "like a large Ice Cream cone with point down". He falls in behind the Portage cruiser.

Near Rochester. The deputies lose the object at a bridge underpass and find it waiting lower down when they emerge.

5:20 to 6:15 a.mIn Conway, Panzanella watches a bright object shaped like half a football. It rises in two rapid climbs to about 3,500 feet. A passenger plane passes about 1,000 feet below it. Pittsburgh airport is called. The tower's radar shows nothing.

18 April 1966The Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Beaver County Times report the chase.

Following daysMajor Hector Quintanilla of Blue Book interviews Spaur by phone for a few minutes. On 22 April Blue Book announces the officers saw the Echo satellite and then Venus.

10 May 1966A meeting with the officers at Ravenna is taped by NICAP investigator William Weitzel.

30 September 1966The Air Force refuses Congressman J. William Stanton's request to re-evaluate the case.

9 October 1966The Plain Dealer revisits the case.

Key figures

Dale F. Spaur was the deputy who drove. Neff was in the passenger seat of the same car. An earlier version of this report said Neff drove a second car, and an earlier catalogue entry gave Spaur badge number 15. Their own statement puts both men in cruiser P-13, and I could not source the badge number.

Wayne Huston of the East Palestine police and Frank Panzanella of the Conway police were independent officer witnesses at different points on the route.

Sheriff Ross Dustman backed his deputies publicly.

Hector Quintanilla ran Project Blue Book and issued the satellite-and-Venus explanation. William Weitzel of NICAP and the atmospheric physicist James McDonald, who interviewed witnesses later in 1966, challenged it.

Mantua police chief Gerald Buchert photographed the object. He said the Air Force asked him not to release the photograph.

Physical and documentary trail

The record includes signed statements from Spaur and Neff (to NICAP), Huston and Panzanella, a 17 May 1966 letter from William Ackers, the Pittsburgh tower watch supervisor, saying his radar showed nothing, contemporary newspaper coverage, Weitzel's tape and correspondence, and Blue Book Record 10073. The abandoned car turned out to hold junk. Later stories of a mysterious emblem on it are legend.

There is no physical evidence. Buchert's photograph has not been published in a form anyone has analysed. An earlier catalogue entry put the start at 3:00 a.m. and the object 500 feet over the car. The statements give about 5:00 a.m. and about 150 feet at first.

We were, and are, sure we were not chasing an illusion, or seeing a reflection, star, planet, or similar still object.

Things you might not know

• The sheriff had a line ready for Blue Book. Ross Dustman told UPI he had seen Venus many times but "never saw Venus 50 feet above a road and moving from side to side".
• It became a film scene. The police chase in Close Encounters of the Third Kind is widely reported to be based on this case.
• The object waited. Spaur and Neff said that after losing it near Rochester, they found it hovering lower, as if it had waited for them.
• Venus really was there. A calculation for this report puts Venus about 11 degrees up in the east-southeast at 5 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, at magnitude -4.2, with a thin crescent Moon just below it. The deputies were driving roughly east.
• The case cost the witnesses. Within months Spaur had been arrested after a domestic dispute, left the force and divorced. Huston resigned and moved to Seattle to drive a bus. Panzanella disconnected his phone.

Competing explanations

An unidentified craft. Several officers in different places described a large, bright, structured object that hovered, changed speed and climbed fast. The Conway sighting, with a plane passing below the object, puts it at a definite height.

Venus, after an initial satellite sighting. Blue Book's view rested on Venus being bright and low in the east as the officers drove east at dawn, and on the human tendency to misjudge the distance and motion of a bright point. The planet was there. The officers' descriptions of size, structure, hovering overhead and losing and regaining it do not match a planet well.

A mix of the two. On this reading the officers saw something genuinely unusual at the start and later followed Venus without noticing the switch. The statements give no sign of the object changing character during the chase.

Later life of the case

Portage County became a standard example of Blue Book's quick explanations and a case for critics such as McDonald. Stanton's request to have it reopened was refused. The Close Encounters connection keeps it in popular memory.

Finding

Several police officers, in different places, saw and followed something bright for about an hour on 17 April 1966. That is well documented. The Venus explanation is possible for parts of the chase but does not fit the description of an object overhead at 150 feet, the hovering, or the Conway sighting with an airliner passing beneath. The Air Force never investigated in depth, so the best reading is that it remains unexplained.

What still will not resolve: what Buchert's photograph shows, and why Pittsburgh's radar saw nothing.