# The Green Light over Mansfield [View on uap.fun]() CASE FILE 027 · 1973 A red light rushed at an Army Reserve Huey over dark Ohio farmland. The crew dived for their lives—then reported a metallic shape overhead, green light in the cockpit and a climb no one remembered commanding. ![Original illustration from inside a 1970s helicopter cockpit above dark Ohio farmland, with an unresolved red-white light overhead and muted green illumination on the windows.]() Not a real photo. Original illustration grounded in the night flight, UH-1H cockpit framing, distant farmland and reported colored lights; it does not reconstruct measured geometry or depict the actual crew, helicopter or object. ## AT A GLANCE - **DATE:** October 18, 1973 - **LOCATION:** Southeast of Mansfield, near Charles Mill Lake, Ohio - **REPORT TYPE:** Military encounter - **ENCOUNTER KIND:** [Second kind (CE2)]() — CE2 marks a close report with claimed effects on equipment. Here it refers to the radio, compass and unexpected-climb accounts; it does not establish that an unknown object caused them. - **RECORD STATUS:** Unresolved report; instrument effects unverified ## The story ### 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 Report]() · [A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio]() · [Special 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 Report]() · [A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio]() · [Special 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 Report]() · [A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio]() · [Special 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 Ohio]() · [Incident Named After Pilot]() · [Special 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 Ohio]() · [Helicopter Nearly Tangles With UFO]() · [Incident Named After Pilot]() · [Special 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 Report]() · [A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio]() · [Special 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 Report]() · [A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio]() · [Special 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 Report]() · [A 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 UFO]() · [A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio]() · [Special 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 Report]() · [A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio]() · [The 1973 Mansfield UFO Encounter]() · [The Case of Ohio’s Best Documented UFO]() ## The evidence ### What the Army form establishes The November 23 form is the case’s strongest primary document. It names aircraft 68-15444, all four crewmen, the time, location, heading and altitude; records an apparent high-speed convergence, descent from 2,500 to 1,700 feet, one tower acknowledgement, the object’s westward departure and a later 3,500-foot reading with a 1,000-foot-per-minute climb indication. It does not contain the sixty-foot estimate, green beam, spinning compass, total radio failure or a claim that an external force caused the climb. Those may be genuine recollections, but they must not be folded backward into the narrower official text. Sources: [Near Midair Collision with UFO Report]() · [A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio]() ### Four viewpoints, not one perfect account The witnesses agreed on the central emergency but differed in what their seats allowed them to see. Coyne, Healey and Yanacsek supplied most of the structured-object description; Jezzi chiefly saw the departure light. Healey’s earliest account was reportedly recorded within eighteen hours, while Jezzi’s detailed interview came more than three years later. Even Zeidman’s sympathetic monograph charts disagreements about duration, cabin illumination, altitude sequence and final turn. Multiple trained witnesses strengthen the event’s reality as an alarming observation; their differences limit any exact reconstruction. Sources: [A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio]() · [Helicopter Nearly Tangles With UFO]() · [Incident Named After Pilot]() ### Meteor, aircraft and cockpit workload Philip J. Klass proposed an Orionid fireball approaching from the east: a bright meteor can appear to rush directly at an observer, trigger evasive action and flood a cockpit with light, while green-tinted roof panels could color that illumination. A separate aircraft could account for Healey’s earlier red light. The theory struggles with the crew’s prolonged structured view and apparent stop; Zeidman’s reconstructed five-minute duration is also too long for a meteor, though it depends on retrospective estimates. Conventional-aircraft proposals face the reported hover, silence and acceleration. The climb may reflect recovery from a steep descent, stress, delayed control input or instrument reading, but no recorder survives to choose among them. Sources: [A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio]() · [The 1973 Mansfield UFO Encounter]() ### Classification and evidence note This archive classifies the report as a military CE2 because the crew claimed radio, compass and flight-control effects during a close aerial encounter. Its status remains unresolved, not confirmed exotic: the instrument effects are unverified and no physical trace was recovered. Sources, links, chronology, classification and media provenance were reviewed September 18, 2026. The hero is an original 1600 × 800 illustration and is publicly labeled exactly “Not a real photo.” It depicts no named witness, actual airframe, measured flight path or documentary evidence. Sources: [Near Midair Collision with UFO Report]() · [A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio]() · [Special Political Committee, 35th Meeting: Verbatim Record (Partial)]() · [The 1973 Mansfield UFO Encounter]() ## Timeline - **18 OCT 1973 · ABOUT 10:30 PM:** Army Reserve UH-1H 68-15444 departs Port Columbus for Cleveland after the crew’s flight physicals. - **ABOUT 11:00 PM:** Healey notices a red light west of the helicopter; Yanacsek soon tracks another or the same steady light to the southeast. - **11:05 PM · ARMY REPORT:** The light appears to converge at 2,500 feet on heading 030 southeast of Mansfield Airport. - **NEXT MINUTES:** Coyne takes control, calls Mansfield and dives; the tower acknowledges once but gives no traffic answer. - **NEAR 1,700 FEET:** The crew braces for impact, then reports a gray streamlined form stopping above and ahead of the Huey. - **SECONDS LATER:** Three crewmen describe green illumination through the cockpit; the object moves west and accelerates away. - **AFTER DEPARTURE:** The altimeter reads about 3,500 feet with a climb indicated; Coyne later says control returns near 3,800 feet. - **19 OCT 1973:** Coyne reports to FAA operations personnel; the Army chain is notified at 3:30 p.m., and early witness accounts begin. - **21–22 OCT 1973:** The Plain Dealer and Associated Press bring the near-collision account to a national audience. - **23 NOV 1973:** The four crewmen attest to the Army disposition form “Near Midair Collision with UFO Report.” - **1976–1979:** Ground witnesses are located; Jennie Zeidman interviews crew and civilians and publishes the CUFOS monograph. - **27 NOV 1978:** Coyne recounts the event in a private capacity before the UN Special Political Committee. - **18 SEP 2026:** This case file’s sources, evidence layers, classification and artwork provenance are reviewed for publication. ## Sources & interviews - [Near Midair Collision with UFO Report]() — U.S. Army DA Form 2496 · 83rd U.S. Army Reserve Command · November 23, 1973 · FOIA transcription preserved by NICAP - [A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio]() — Jennie Zeidman · Center for UFO Studies · March 1979 · Crew interviews, reconstruction and document appendices - [Special Political Committee, 35th Meeting: Verbatim Record (Partial)]() — United Nations General Assembly · A/SPC/33/PV.35 · November 27, 1978 · Coyne statement in a private capacity - [Helicopter Nearly Tangles With UFO]() — Associated Press · Lancaster Eagle-Gazette · October 22, 1973 · Contemporary clipping at Newspapers.com - [Incident Named After Pilot]() — United Press International · Mansfield News Journal · November 4, 1973 · Contemporary article transcription - [The 1973 Mansfield UFO Encounter]() — Brian Dunning · Skeptoid · September 2026 · Critical review with meteor and aircraft proposals - [The Case of Ohio’s Best Documented UFO]() — Vince Guerrieri · Ohio Magazine · September/October 2023 · Fiftieth-anniversary history - [The 1973 UFO Chronology]() — NICAP · Francis Ridge and documentation team · Updated April 10, 2022 · Regional sighting context ## Connected files - [The Tehran Intercept]() — Another military aircrew reported lost communications and instruments while closing on a brilliant light. - [The Lakenheath Radar Night]() — Radar rooms and an interceptor crew turned a night-flight mystery into a disputed official record. - [The Lights Beside Flight 1628]() — A professional crew, colored lights and missing confirming data shaped another enduring aviation case. - [Close Encounters, Explained]() — How claimed electromagnetic and vehicle effects move an observation into Hynek’s second kind. ## A NOTE ON EVIDENCE Unidentified describes a limit of the available information. It doesn’t identify an origin. [NEXT CASE FILE: The Lights beside the Newspaper Plane]()