Army 15444 heads north
At about 10:30 p.m. on October 18, Army Reserve helicopter 68-15444 left Port Columbus for Cleveland Hopkins after its four-man crew completed routine flight physicals. Capt. Lawrence J. Coyne, thirty-six, was pilot in command; 1st Lt. Arrigo Jezzi sat at the controls, with crew chief Staff Sgt. Robert Yanacsek and flight medic Staff Sgt. John Healey behind them. The UH-1H cruised north-northeast at roughly ninety knots and 2,500 feet above sea level. Below lay rolling farmland and woods; ahead was Mansfield. The signed Army report fixes the encounter at 23:05, southeast or east-southeast of Mansfield Airport, on heading 030.
Sources: Near Midair Collision with UFO ReportA Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over OhioSpecial Political Committee, 35th Meeting: Verbatim Record (Partial)
A red light crosses the dark
Healey first noticed a bright red light west of the helicopter moving south. Minutes later Yanacsek found a steady red light on the eastern or southeastern horizon. He watched it long enough to consider a tower beacon or an aircraft navigation light, then warned Coyne that it had turned toward them. The light held an apparent collision bearing and swelled with unnerving speed. The crew’s estimate—more than 600 knots—was a judgment made without radar range, but the danger felt immediate. Coyne took the controls and pushed the Huey into a powered descent.
Sources: Near Midair Collision with UFO ReportA Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over OhioSpecial Political Committee, 35th Meeting: Verbatim Record (Partial)
Mansfield answers once
Coyne suspected one of Mansfield’s Air National Guard F-100s. He called the tower and asked whether high-performance traffic was nearby. The Army form records an acknowledgement, then no answer. In later testimony the crew said Jezzi tried UHF, VHF and the emergency frequency: keying and channel tones were audible, but no voice came back. Zeidman reported that the last local F-100 had landed at 10:47 p.m. and that Mansfield retained no tape of even the first exchange. The public record contains neither that tower tape nor a radar plot, so the radio episode survives through the report and recollection rather than technical data.
Sources: Near Midair Collision with UFO ReportA Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over OhioSpecial Political Committee, 35th Meeting: Verbatim Record (Partial)
The dive toward 1,700 feet
Coyne increased the descent from about 500 to 2,000 feet per minute while searching the black ground for an emergency landing field. The red light still appeared locked onto them. As the altimeter passed 1,700 feet, the crew braced for impact. Nothing struck the helicopter. Instead, according to their later interviews, the light stopped just ahead and above, close enough to become a form: gunmetal gray, streamlined like a fat cigar or airfoil, with a red glow at the front, white at the rear and a shallow dome. Estimates around sixty feet long came from perception in darkness, not a measured range.
Sources: A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over OhioIncident Named After PilotSpecial Political Committee, 35th Meeting: Verbatim Record (Partial)
Green through the roof
The Huey’s overhead windows turned the next seconds into the image that made the case famous. Coyne, Healey and Yanacsek described green light beneath or behind the object; in the fullest version, a pyramid-shaped beam swept across the nose, through the windshield and into the tinted roof panels. The cabin glowed green. Jezzi’s view was poorer: he mainly remembered an intense white light moving overhead. The men heard no jet roar and felt no rotor wash from another aircraft. The signed Army form does not mention a cigar, dome or green beam; those details belong to early press accounts, interviews and Coyne’s later testimony.
Sources: A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over OhioHelicopter Nearly Tangles With UFOIncident Named After PilotSpecial Political Committee, 35th Meeting: Verbatim Record (Partial)
A helicopter climbing with the collective down
When the object moved west, Coyne looked back to the panel. The Army report says the altimeter read 3,500 feet and the vertical-speed indicator showed a 1,000-foot-per-minute climb while the collective—the control used to change rotor lift—was still full down. Coyne later said the helicopter rose to about 3,800 feet before a small bump or patch of turbulence ended the ascent. He also described the magnetic compass card rotating slowly. No flight recorder captured control position, power or altitude, and the official form does not say the object lifted the aircraft. What it preserves is narrower and still startling: a remembered descent to 1,700 feet followed by an indicated climb to 3,500 feet that the pilot said he had not commanded.
Sources: Near Midair Collision with UFO ReportA Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over OhioSpecial Political Committee, 35th Meeting: Verbatim Record (Partial)
The white light snaps away
The object accelerated west with its white rear light still brilliant. Coyne and Healey said it then made a sharp forty-five-degree turn toward the northwest and seemed to vanish toward Lake Erie; Jezzi did not see that final turn. Communications worked again farther along the route. Coyne returned the Huey to 2,500 feet, completed the flight to Cleveland and closed the flight plan. The FAA Flight Service Station told him to contact the General Aviation District Office, and the Army reporting chain was notified the following afternoon.
Sources: Near Midair Collision with UFO ReportA Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over OhioSpecial Political Committee, 35th Meeting: Verbatim Record (Partial)
Four signatures and five late-found witnesses
All four crewmen signed the November 23 Army disposition form, titled “Near Midair Collision with UFO Report.” It verifies the flight, red-light approach, evasive descent, tower acknowledgement, apparent hesitation above the helicopter, departure and climb indication. Three years later, after a newspaper appeal, investigators found a woman and four adolescents who said they had watched a red light, a helicopter and a green-lit conjunction from a car below. Zeidman considered their geometry strongly supportive, but their account was not contemporaneously recorded, and the family had already heard about the famous case before being interviewed.
Sources: Near Midair Collision with UFO ReportA Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio
From an Ohio cockpit to the United Nations
The story moved quickly through the Associated Press and UPI, then into documentaries and television. A National Enquirer panel awarded the crew $5,000 for the year’s “most scientifically valuable” UFO report—a publicity prize, not a scientific ruling. On November 27, 1978, now Lt. Col. Coyne retold the encounter at a United Nations Special Political Committee meeting convened around Grenada’s UFO proposal. The chair explicitly received him as a private individual, not a U.S. government spokesman. His appearance authenticated his testimony on an international stage; it did not turn the encounter into a United Nations finding.
Sources: Helicopter Nearly Tangles With UFOA Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over OhioSpecial Political Committee, 35th Meeting: Verbatim Record (Partial)The Case of Ohio’s Best Documented UFO
Five minutes that never acquired a machine
Coyne’s encounter endured because trained aircrew did more than glimpse a wandering point: they reacted to a collision threat, described structure and light at close range, reported instrument oddities and put their names on an Army form. Yet the surviving record never gained the things that could settle an aviation mystery—radar returns, synchronized radio audio, flight-recorder data, maintenance findings or an event photograph. The result is an unusually well-attributed story with an official paper trail, but no identified aircraft and no instrument record capable of showing what crossed the Huey’s path.
Sources: Near Midair Collision with UFO ReportA Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over OhioThe 1973 Mansfield UFO EncounterThe Case of Ohio’s Best Documented UFO
Sources & interviews
Near Midair Collision with UFO ReportU.S. Army DA Form 2496 · 83rd U.S. Army Reserve Command · November 23, 1973 · FOIA transcription preserved by NICAPA Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over OhioJennie Zeidman · Center for UFO Studies · March 1979 · Crew interviews, reconstruction and document appendicesSpecial Political Committee, 35th Meeting: Verbatim Record (Partial)United Nations General Assembly · A/SPC/33/PV.35 · November 27, 1978 · Coyne statement in a private capacityHelicopter Nearly Tangles With UFOAssociated Press · Lancaster Eagle-Gazette · October 22, 1973 · Contemporary clipping at Newspapers.comIncident Named After PilotUnited Press International · Mansfield News Journal · November 4, 1973 · Contemporary article transcriptionThe 1973 Mansfield UFO EncounterBrian Dunning · Skeptoid · September 2026 · Critical review with meteor and aircraft proposalsThe Case of Ohio’s Best Documented UFOVince Guerrieri · Ohio Magazine · September/October 2023 · Fiftieth-anniversary historyThe 1973 UFO ChronologyNICAP · Francis Ridge and documentation team · Updated April 10, 2022 · Regional sighting contextConnected files
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