Skeptoid #1057: The 1973 Mansfield UFO Encounter

The 1973 Mansfield UFO Encounter

0:00One night in 1973, something happened in the skies above Mansfield, Ohio. It was a close encounter between an Army helicopter and, well, something. We still don't know what. But the story has become the stuff of legend among ufologists. Today, we're going to go back and see what we can find out, what we know for sure, and what we don't know, and see if we can find the truth. And in our extended content for premium members, a quick refresher on how you can, or cannot, tell how far away a single light in the night sky is. All of that is coming up right now on Skeptoid.

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2:23and helps us all make better life decisions by knowing what's real and what's not. Today, we have for you yet another UFO case that's often said to be the single most convincing or best evidence for the existence of extraordinary craft in our skies. I'll leave the decision of whether that's justified to you, but for now, come back with me to 1973, when a Vietnam-era Huey helicopter was wop-wop-wopping its way through the dark night sky over Ohio.

2:57On Thursday, October 18th, 1973, at approximately 11 p.m., four U.S. Army Reservists of the 316th Medical Detachment were flying from Columbus, Ohio to Cleveland, Ohio. They were an air ambulance unit flying a Bell UH-1H Iroquois, better known as the Huey. At 90 knots, it's about an hour and a quarter trip, and their altitude was 2,500 feet. They were on AFTP duty, which means just flying some hours to keep current.

3:32At the controls was the co-pilot, Lieutenant Jetsi, and in command in the right seat was the aircraft commander, Captain Lawrence Coyne. This incident is also commonly known as the Coyne Encounter. When they were approaching Mansfield, Ohio, the town from which the incident gets its name, they spotted a red light way off to their left, which sped in the opposite direction. Then, a few moments later, reappeared off to their right, but seemed to be closing in on them. Coyne took over the controls.

4:03To avoid a collision, Coyne pushed the collective down. That's the pilot's left-hand control that changes the pitch angle of all the rotor blades downward. Suddenly, the UFO hit them with a powerful spotlight, so bright that the entire interior of the helicopter was bathed in green light. Then it shut off, and the UFO veered away and climbed off to the west, out of sight.

4:29Coyne then noticed that they had unknowingly ascended from 1,700 to 3,500 feet in only a minute or so. Crew reports vary from one to four minutes. He tried to push the collective down farther, but it was already all the way down, yet they continued ascending another 300 feet, before feeling a bump and some turbulence. The crew attributed this to some kind of tractor beam or other mysterious attractive force. And that was the end of the encounter.

4:59As we see, nearly every time someone in the military is involved in a UFO sighting, this one was called the, quote, best evidence, and the, quote, best documented case. And the four young guys are generally considered beyond reproach and inerrant in their memories. Nothing justifies this nearly universal elevation of soldiers to the status of perfect witnesses, yet we see it happen in every case.

The Meteor Hypothesis

5:28The first truly skeptical explanation for this event came from Philip Klass, 34-year senior editor of Aviation Week and Space Technology, founding member of PSYCOP alongside Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, James Randi, and others, and prolific researcher and author on the subject of UFOs. Klass dedicated two chapters of his 1983 book, UFOs the Public Deceived, to this case. His basic explanation is a meteor.

6:00Klass noted that this was during the annual Orionid meteor shower. The first red light off to their left could have been any random plane. Then a bright fireball could have streaked in, frightening Khoin into dodging it with his down maneuver. As we know, it's not possible to judge the distance of a single bright light. That's not training or experience. It's geometry. It could have been 50,000 feet above them. Bright fireballs could easily fully illuminate the cabin in the helicopter with green light.

6:31A meteor is a great explanation for that part of the story, not so much for the rest of it.

6:38Klass did note that no fireballs were reported to the American Meteor Society that night in Ohio. However, this doesn't mean much. That part of Ohio is pretty rural and sparsely populated. And anyway, how many people take the trouble to report a shooting star? Who do you even report it to? I've seen many, and it's never once occurred to me to report it to anyone. And even if I wanted to, I'd never even heard of the American Meteor Society before this. To summarize the meteor hypothesis, I think it's a bit too minimalist.

7:10A bright fireball could have played a role in part of this incident, but I wouldn't be close to closing the book and calling this one solved.

The Refueling Tanker Hypothesis

7:18A newer popular explanation for the event came from an anonymous UFO blogger writing as Parabunk in 2018. Parabunk proposed that the red light first spotted to the left of the Huey was the port wingtip light of an aerial refueling tanker flying in the opposite direction. The tanker then circled around behind the Huey and came up on its right side high, then adjusted its position relative to the Huey to be in front of it and above in order to refuel. Though it's without evidence, this is a fundamentally sound conjecture,

7:53as the maneuver Parabunk described, and which does match the path of the red light as described by the crew, is a standard NATO rendezvous procedure. When the helicopter failed to get into refueling position, the tanker turned on its powerful spotlight to see who they were, thus causing the bright cockpit illumination reported by the crew. Seeing that it was a Huey, and perhaps realizing that Hueys were never designed with any aerial refueling capability, the tanker then veered off and flew away,

8:24accounting for their report of the light making a turn and heading off to the west. The Huey then flew through its wingtip vortices, which explains the sudden turbulence the crew reported. Now there are a number of problems with this hypothesis, all relating to the mismatch between a low-slow Huey and high-altitude, high-speed refueling tankers. Parabunk solved almost all of these by suggesting that the refueling tanker was an HC-130P, a tanker variant of the C-130 Hercules turboprop transport aircraft.

8:57which was equipped to fly low and slow and to refuel helicopters. However, no documentation supports a powerful refueling spotlight ever being on the HC-130P. That's a feature that only appeared on the KC-135T tanker, which flew much too fast to have been a candidate for this incident. Moreover, there was not a single C-130 of any kind assigned to any Ohio Air National Guard in 1973.

9:28The nearest was at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Michigan, where they did train on nighttime helicopter refueling. I contacted public affairs at Selfridge's 127th wing to ask if there was any record of exercises near Mansfield on the night in question, but did not hear back as of the date of this episode. I've read accounts from others who have tried to find this out, and nobody has ever learned anything either way. The local aerial tankers were Boeing KC-97Ls

9:58with the Ohio Air National Guard's 160th Air Refueling Group, and those are all excluded as possibilities. None were ever equipped with the hardware needed to refuel helicopters. They flew far too fast for any helicopters to keep up, and only refueled in shallow high-speed dives from 18,000 feet down to about 12,000 feet. If a KC-97L saw an aircraft way down at 2,500 feet, there is no circumstance on the planet in which it would have descended that low to initiate an operation.

10:36Hey everyone, Brian here. Quick news, I'm teaming up with guest expert Curly Tlapoyawa this December for Mysteries of the Maya, an on-site educational adventure running December 6th through the 13th. And we don't want finances to be the reason someone misses out. We're offering a limited number of scholarships, and we're strongly encouraging students and educators to apply. Here is what you'll need. Get yourself to New Orleans.

11:07Be at the port ready to board by 1 p.m. on Sunday, December 6th, share a double occupancy cabin, and cover 10 or 50% of the standard ticket price. Applications are reviewed in the order we receive them, so don't wait. Apply now at skeptoid.com slash events. That's skeptoid.com slash events. Now, back to the show. You might also ask, what the heck was a tanker doing,

11:38flying around in the dark at 11 p.m., just looking for random aircraft to refuel, and not even making radio contact before just boldly taking the refueling position right above them? Well, this is not as far-fetched as it may seem. We already know the guys in the Huey were changing radio channels and would not very likely have been on the one that the refueling training guys were using. In addition, pilots did train on refueling without radio communication. It's conceivable that this conjectural HC-130P tanker

12:11was doing just this and mistook the Hueys' lights for those of some other aircraft in the vicinity that may have been expecting them. Another thing to keep in mind is that since Hueys were never designed for aerial refueling, none of the crew on board that night, all dedicated Huey air ambulance guys, had ever had any aerial refueling experience, and certainly not at night. They wouldn't have known what it looks like, what to expect, or anything about it. So if this is what happens to them,

12:42they likely wouldn't have had any idea what was going on, and we shouldn't be surprised at any crazy explanation they came up with, even a close encounter with a really weird UFO.

12:54Parabunx is not a perfect explanation, but it's also not terrible. It's just 100% evidence-free. Even if we did confirm that an HC-130P was doing night refueling training in Ohio on that date, Ohio is still a big place, and there would still be no way to connect that tanker to the encounter with this Huey. Then, there's the tractor beam pulling the helicopter upward, despite Coyne trying to go down.

13:24This is often the most contentious part of the story, but from reading all the accounts, including the interviews with the crew, I really don't see anything mysterious about it. In 1973, Hueys did not have an autopilot. The pilot had to keep his hands on the controls and fly manually all the time, and helicopters are sensitive. It's quite easy to make unintended maneuvers if your attention is diverted. Given their description of events, Coyne had more than enough reason to be momentarily distracted.

13:56Moreover, given all that activity, they were more than likely at least somewhat disoriented. With the powerful spotlight in their eyes, the horizon and instruments all disappear. It's little wonder that once he had a chance to come up for air, Coyne found that his hands on the manual controls may have taken him somewhere unexpected. In a later interview, the co-pilot, Jetsey, told ufologist Jenny Zeidman, Climbing is something that occurs somewhat easily in a helicopter if you're not paying attention.

14:27If 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 his 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. I've had it happen to me.

14:47Zeidman, who was also UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek's personal assistant for a time, is probably the best source for this case. For brevity, I've omitted lots of details that don't have any impact on the conclusions. But if you want to get everything, her paper is linked in the online transcript of this episode at Skeptoid.com.

Considering the Hoax Angle

15:08There's another possibility that is considered unfashionable to suggest, but that always needs to be considered. And that's the possibility of a hoax. There are three big glaring reasons that this could have possibly been a hoax, more likely than in most other UFO cases. I want to state up front that I think a hoax is unlikely. An honest misidentification combined with disorientation is most likely. And an actual extraordinary craft, alien or otherwise,

15:39is certainly least likely. Here are my three main reasons we need to keep the possibility of a hoax on the table. Number one, these were four guys out with a humdrum task and given a quarter million dollar helicopter, 1973 dollars, at 11 o'clock at night. Ask anyone who was ever in any branch of the military if they ever screwed around, pranked each other, or played practical jokes. Anyone who thinks military service people are beyond reproach

16:09and would never act goofy or make something up doesn't know very many service people. Number two, for whatever reason, UFOs were all the rage in that part of Ohio that month. Beginning two days before this incident, newspapers in the Mansfield and Ashland areas began reporting UFO sightings, and this went on for some three weeks. Our four guys were very likely aware of this, and it might have sounded like fun to get in on the game. And number three,

16:40at the time, the National Enquirer tabloid famously offered cash prizes for the best UFO story of the year, which our four guys actually did win. The National Enquirer awarded Coyne and the others $5,000 on June 23, 1974 for this story. It would have been neither the first nor the last time hoaxers won that prize. Two years later, Travis Walton and six buddies deliberately set out to win that prize, and they did win it

17:11as well, with their story that was later turned into a movie called Fire in the Sky.

17:17So, has this case been solved? No, it has not, and the reason is there simply isn't enough information to justify any of the possible explanations discussed. For some people, the lack of adequate information constitutes sufficient evidence that an alien spacecraft must be the explanation. As if this is a process of elimination and alien spacecraft is always the sole remaining alternative. A ludicrous conclusion, yet a common one. Here are the options

17:48I see. A meteor? A refueling aircraft? A hoax by the crew, possibly for the prize money which they did receive? An honest misidentification of ordinary lights in the sky, very likely different unrelated aircraft, by Coyne and the crew. In my experience, this is probably most likely. And, something nobody has thought of yet. Also, a strong possibility. It doesn't ever make sense to play process of elimination

18:18with UFO reports, because that last possibility, something nobody's thought of, is always going to be there. If we did play, then I can come up with 20 oddball things that are just as galactically unlikely as an alien spaceship. So, thanks to Lawrence Coyne and the other men of the Huey Air Ambulance for making 1973 just a little bit more interesting. But, I stop short of going any further than that. There just isn't enough information,

18:49and no evidence whatsoever, to even state for a fact that anything happened at all. We continue with how to tell how far away a single light in the night sky is, and whether pilots are better at that in the ad-free and extended premium feed. To access it, become a supporter at skeptoid.com slash gopremium. A great big

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