The Coyne Helicopter Case

 

(Following is a long posting about the Coyne Helicopter UFO sighting from October, 1973. It is a detailed examination of the case that includes the skeptical arguments.

I will note one other point that I believe I am the only research who went through the same flight training as did Captain Coyne and Lieutenant Jezzi. I have about 1200 hours of combat flight time and another 500 hours of additional flight time in helicopters.)

Huey Helicopters in formation. Photo by Kevin Randle

 

The sighting began when a crewman in a UH-1H helicopter, Sergeant John Healey, in the rear, left seat, facing west out of the cargo compartment, saw a single red light traveling south. He thought it was brighter than the red navigation lights on an aircraft and he could see none of the other aircraft lights required by the FAA. This light disappeared behind the helicopter and Healy thought nothing more about it. He didn’t mention it at the time simply because it posed no threat to their aircraft and had disappeared behind them, traveling in the opposite direction.

A few moments later at 2302 hours, Specialist Five (Spec 5, E-5) Robert Yanacsek, seated in the right rear, saw a red light on the eastern horizon. He, at first, thought it was a red warning light on a radio tower, but the light wasn’t blinking and it seemed to be pacing the aircraft. He watched for a minute or two, wondering if the light was pacing the helicopter. Finally, the light seemed to turn so that it was coming toward the helicopter and when it did, he mentioned it to the pilot in command, Captain Lawrence Coyne. Coyne glanced out the right window (eastern side) and saw the light. He suggested that Yanacsek keep an eye on it, though there didn’t seem to be any real danger from it.

Thirty seconds later, Yanacsek said that the light seemed to be nearing the helicopter. Three of the crewmembers, Coyne, Healey and Yanacsek, all saw the light. The co-pilot, First Lieutenant Arrigo Jezzi, because he was in the left seat, could not see the light from that position.

As the continued to approach, Coyne took over the controls and then began a descent. It seemed to those on the helicopter that the light was on the same flight level and there was danger of a collision. He contacted the control tower at Mansfield Airport (now Mansfield Lahm Regional Airport) asking about other traffic in the area. At that point the radios in the helicopter failed.

The red light became brighter and more intense. Coyne thought that it was approached about some more then 600 knots. He had lowered the collective to begin a descent of 500 feet per minute but then increased it to 2000 feet per minute. He had been flying at about 1200 feet above the ground and the last he noticed it was at 1700 feet above sea level which meant he was about 500 feet above the ground.

Just as it looked as if the as if they two aircraft would collide, the light began to hover over the helicopter, meaning of course, they were now flying in a two craft formation. Coyne, Healey and Yanascek would later report that there was cigar-shaped, metallic gray craft just above them. There was a red light in the nose, a white light at the rear, and bright green, pyramid-shaped beam that came from the lower part of the UFO. According to them, the green beam swung up, over the front of the helicopter, through the main windscreen and into the upper, tinted window panels known to the crew as the “green houses.” That bathed the cockpit in a green light.

Jezzi, on the other hand, only reported the white light, and in some sources said it came from the upper windows. Yanascek said that he saw a “suggestion of windows along a top dome section. (Zeidman, NICAP) He heard no noise and felt no turbulence from the craft.

The object “hovered” over the helicopter for ten to twelve seconds and then took off toward the west, now with only a white tail of light. The light didn’t seem to dim as the distance increased, finally turning to the northwest, heading out over Lake Erie. It then “snapped out” over the horizon.

Jezzi later said that it moved faster than the 250 knot limit below 10,000 feet but not as fast as the 600 knot approach reported by the others. There was no noise or turbulence except for a bump as the UFO flew away.

After the object disappeared, both pilots saw that the magnetic compass was spinning, making about four revolutions per minute. Both also saw that the altimeter read 3500 feet, though Coyne insisted that the collective was still at the bottom stop. Because he couldn’t lower it farther, he pulled up on it. The aircraft continued to climb until it reached 3800 feet.

According to Zeidman, Coyne had been “subliminally” aware of the climb. While the others weren’t aware of the climb, Coyne regained control and he returned to his flight plan altitude of 2500 feet. The radios were working again, and he contacted Canton/Akron.

They landed at their home station without further incident. The story didn’t end at that point. Coyne, possibly annoyed by the close approach of another aircraft, met with F. J. Vollmer, the FAA Chief of Operations at Hopkins Field, Cleveland, to find out how and where to report the incident. Dr. J. Allen Hynek interviewed Vollmer about this. Vollmer told him:

I’ll never, all the rest of my life, forget that man [Coyne] coming in her. I have known Coyne for some time, not personally, not even socially, but I have an extremely high regard for his integrity and his capability. In a case of this kind, I don’t know anybody that I would believe more. I trust his judgement without a question of doubt… He needed advice on reporting it somewhere, but he didn’t know where to go.

Of course, this only tells us that Vollmer believed that Coyne believed what he was saying. Something had approached his helicopter, seemed to have paced it or flown formation with it and then taken off, disappearing rapidly.

Vollmer told Hynek that he couldn’t think of an official agency that would take the report. Coyne mentioned a newspaper article that had appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which it seemed Coyne believed would spark some sort of official interest. But that didn’t happen.

A month later Coyne filled out an Operational Hazard report to put the incident on the record. This would later cause long, involved, multi-agency FOIA requests from Robert Todd. That will be examined later.

Aircrew Statements

Captain Lawrence J. Coyne

Because of Coyne’s desire to learn what had happened and what they all had seen, there was publicity about the sighting that eventually reached Hynek. He was able to interview Coyne on January 24, 1973, a little more than two months after the encounter. Coyne told Hynek:

Basically, Jezzi was sitting here [right seat] and I was sitting here [left seat]… Jezzi had the controls We were flying along, level altitude, 2500 feet. Yanacsek said, “There’s a light on the horizon,” and I looked out and told him to keep an eye on it. And I looked out this window here [in the door] to the right…

He said this thing is paralleling us, and I looked again and I said, “Well, check it out.” And then he said that the thing was closing, and when I looked, the thing was coming at us. It was coming direct at the helicopter and it got larger and larger. And I’m looking out this window, now. I told Jezzi, “I have the controls,” and I took the controls, and the first thing I did was push it down [collective]. We started to descend… And we’re maintaining 90 knots, so then I took the cyclic and I pushed it forward. About 20 degrees lower than the horizon. Our airspeed was 100 knots, our altimeter, which was reading 2500, started down, ‘cause the [rate of descent] was showing 2000 feet per minute. It kept coming right at us, and I saw it was still coming, directly for the helicopter…

When it was paralleling, it didn’t look like it was closing. Then it started coming at us, and as it came at us, I saw it was closing, and going faster and faster and I said, “Holy Christ, that could be a jet,” and ... “No, that’s not a jet. It’s moving too fast because of our altitude,” and I looked and we were going through 2000 feet now…

It started coming at us, and I pushed the collective down. And I saw it was coming at us, and I saw we weren’t descending fast enough, so I pushed the cyclic forward to get our nose down, to get to 2000 feet per minute, and it still looked like it was still coming at us… it was descending in altitude also. It was coming to wipe us out, you know. We descended from 2500 feet, we’re down 500 feet already, and then… I said the son of a gun is gonna hit us, you know. And I braced… I figured this was it… And then they said look! And I looked, and there it was right here…

Now the light swung ninety degrees and came into the cockpit… Now we fly at night and these instruments are all red lights… Everything turned green. Now, it could be, maybe because of this [he indicated two panels set in the fuselage directly over the pilots’ heads known as the greenhouse].

…I looked and I saw it, right here, and then it moved this way… it went over this way, to the west.

…It stopped over us, and then it just slowly moved, while I thought we were descending, ‘cause I remember it was 1700 feet and I thought, “Oh. This is it,” and then I saw it right in front here, and I said, “That’s no F-100!” Then it moved this way, and I looked at my altitude and we were at 3500, climbing to 3800, past 3500, and the collective is still down. This [the cyclic] is forward…

I called Mansfield on UHF, 257.8… If this doesn’t work, you go to VHF. Then here’s your transponder… We had the transponder on. We called on this radio, and we called on this [other] radio, and we changed frequencies twice… And when you key your mike, you hear a keying tone… And we heard that, so when you press the key, the switch, you hear the transmitting sound, and there was nothing. They said, “Go ahead Army one-five triple four.

Hynek and Coyne discuss this discrepancy. Hynek asked if they, Mansfield heard Coyne, and Coyne said they did, but later then couldn’t find the tapes. They, Mansfield, said they had tapes going on three or four different frequencies at the time. Coyne said that they made radio contact with Mansfield earlier, then lost that communication, but after the UFO disappeared, they again established radio contact. Coyne explained that he contacted Mansfield as the UFO was approaching them. He added:

When I saw the thing coming at us, I said, “That thing looks like a fighter.” I said [in communication with Mansfield], “Do you have any high-performance aircraft in this area at 2500 feet?” And there was no answer. I said, “Mansfield Tower, this is Army one-five triple four… Do you have any high-performance aircraft flying in this area at a speed of 600 knots?” Nothing. I said, “Call them, Rick [Jezzi],” and he called them. Nothing.

Now you change frequencies, change channels, you hear a channel tone. A buzzing sound and then a stop. That means the channel change. And it did change. And then… nothing.

There was the tone. But then there was nothing. And yet the radio worked, because we were talking to Mansfield just before, without a change, and we got Ashland and Medina. We made contact. The first people we mad contact with [after] was Akron Approach, and we got a position report from them, and we just carried one, and I could see this object was moved away. I saw the read as it was coming, and I saw a red and green here…

At this point, Coyne is pointing at a picture he had drawn of the UFO so that Hynek would have a better idea about what the had seen and the placement of the lights on it. Coyne did tell Hynek, “The first line [at the front of the craft] indicates where the red light stops. To delineate where the red light stopped and the gray, metallic structure began. You could also see the red reflection off the gray metallic structure. As you looked farther aft, in the center of the structure, you could see gray, and… in the trailing edge you could see the green light and off the gray structure you could see the reflection of the green light.”

Hynek also asked about the structure wondering if it was fuzzy or sharp. This was a question I asked the first witness I had ever interviewed about a UFO sighting. I wanted to know, because the Air Force and the media were always talking about fuzzy lights seen in the distance. My witness told me the edges were distinct. Coyne told Hynek, “Distinct. Because the stars were blotted out, you know. It was dark, but you could see the ground. And with the stars you could actually see the outline of the structure.”

In a point that might have some relevance, Hynek, Coyne, Healey and Yanascek all went out to dinner together. Jezzi was conspicuous by his absent. I don’t know the reason he wasn’t there, though we’ll see that his description of the events doesn’t match, exactly, that of the other crew members. I will note, however, that the first thing that Jezzi said was that this was his first flight with the unit and that might explain this situation.

First Lieutenant Arrigo (Rick) Jezzi

Jezzi didn’t speak to Hynek or Zeidman until February 12, 1974. With this interview, Hynek and Zeidman asked him to just begin talking. He described the event this way:

I hadn’t flown for three months before that. We were through with our physicals and we took off without refueling. The weather was beautiful, and our visibility was unlimited. I was flying at the time, and we were cruising at 2000 or 2500 feet, I don’t remember exactly, and we were flying east of Mansfield, and there had been some conversation about UFOs because at the time there were a lot of stories coming out… The governor of Ohio had seen them [See Chapter One]. We were flying about ten miles east of Mansfield… there’s that F-100 Guard squadron stationed there, so you always look out for jets. I think we called the [Mansfield] tower and cleared ourselves through the zone.

At that time there was a mention of a red light on the horizon, the eastern horizon, to our right, and the conversation was that it looked like a radio tower, but it wasn’t flashing, and then a few seconds later [Yanacsek] said, “No, it’s not a radio tower, it appears to be moving.” The next comment I heard was “it’s coming toward us” and very shortly thereafter… I was sitting on the left side of the cockpit… I couldn’t see what was going on, it’s very hard to look toward the right, so Captain Coyne took the controls from me, put the collective down, reduced the pitch [of the rotor blades] and we descended, and we dropped, oh maybe 1000 feet to about 1500 MSL. We were trying to contact Mansfield but we couldn’t get them. And then all hell broke loose in the cockpit. Everybody was starting (sic) yelling and screaming about what the hell it was and that it almost hit us. That kind of conversation kept up for several minutes. Now I never saw the object until it was almost vertically on top of us. I never saw a body to it at all. I would say it was about 100 feet above us and maybe 500 feet to our front. Fairly close. The only thing I recall seeing was a white light, a very bright, intense white light on the aft portion of the object, on the back side moving away from us. I followed the light all the way to the horizon…

I just saw it go away and disappear. I assume it went over the curvature. What bothers me is that it was a very intense white light, comparable to some of the approach landing lights on a smaller aircraft. Not at all like the aft position light, which is an extremely small one, not very bright. It was much too bright, extremely bright, to be an aft position light.

At this point, Hynek and Zeidman attempt to get a size of the UFO compared to some familiar objects. It is clear that the object was larger than a point source of light and that it might have been larger than the full moon, though Jezzi said it was the size of two aspirins held at arm’s length. Hynek mentioned that a single aspirin is large enough to cover the full moon.

Zeidman then wondered if the edges were fuzzy or distinct. Jezzi said it was just a very bright, intense white light. Jezzi also said that he didn’t have a sense of the green light in the cockpit but did mention the plexiglass “greenhouses” over the pilots’ heads.

Jezzi explained that while there had been conversation that the UFO had hovered above their helicopter, he didn’t see that. According to him, “I hadn’t caught sight of it yet.”

Jezzi confirmed that the object, whatever it was, had been traveling faster than the 250-knot limit for aircraft flying below 10,000 feet. He also said, “I will say that it was moving faster than normal traffic at that low altitude.”

As a cautionary note, he added, “In a way, I’m kind of the odd-ball in this situation because I couldn’t see over to the right, and I really didn’t see the first part, what the others saw.”

The discussion then moved to the climb, which is a critical part of the incident. Jezzi said:

I was aware of the dive. Your stomach went. Because Coyne really grabbed it from me. You could tell he was concerned. He was much more aware of the proximity of the object than I was. I hadn’t seen it. I wasn’t aware of the climb at all… and 1000 fpm… it could have been less. It was not much of a climb that steeps, that much acceleration. But the climbing is something that occurs somewhat easily in a helicopter if you’re not paying attention. If you’re flying the aircraft and thinking about something else. We were talking rapidly about what was happening. You get excited and you just to like this [demonstrate by raising the left arm which would be holding the collective] and you’re climbing. And gong from 1500 to 3000 feet in two or three minutes is not going to be that extraordinary. There are thermals that are so bad that you put your collective down and you’re still climbing. I’ve had it happen to me.

As the only Army Aviator in this discussion, and having received the same flight instruction as both Coyne and Jezzi, I thought a few relevant comments should be made. First, I am not sure that you could inadvertently pull up on the collective, not realizing what you were doing. There is a friction ring on the collective that would allow you to increase the tension, making it more difficult to pull up. Even with that at its lowest level, the collective is not going to come up without the pilot knowing that he was pulling on it. I have flown in combat environments in which the level of excitement and tension would equal and surpass that in the encounter with a UFO. I find this explanation that any pilot, especially a pilot with Coyne’s experience to make that mistake.

Second, and I have heard this repeated by skeptics, is the theory that they might have encountered a thermal. But this was the middle of October, and it was five or six hours after sunset. Thermals are created by the unequal heating of the ground. Such heating would have disappeared with the setting sun. The weather conditions in October are not conducive to the creation of thermals. Cumulous clouds indicate the presence of thermals, but, according to the flight crew, there was no evidence of clouds. All this argues against a thermal being responsible for the unexplained change in altitude.

Jezzi explained that during the close encounter, he didn’t have the controls and that Coyne had taken over. Given the circumstances, that doesn’t seem to be unreasonable. Coyne had the other craft in sight and Jezzi, from the left seat couldn’t see it. He said:

I don’t know what he did. I saw the altitude. I recall it was over 3000 feet, it could have been 3500 feet, and we were still talking, still trying to get Mansfield on the radio. I’m pretty sure it [the UFO] had disappeared by then because it faded out, and I immediately looked back over [at the instruments] and that’s when I caught the altitude.

…I recall Coyne’s comment about the different light colorations. And the word “cigar-like shape” came out at that time. And they talked that it appeared to hover over us. Of course, there was a lot of “what the hell was it?” and “we almost got killed,” and then they talked about the climb. Was the climb the result of the vacuum the other aircraft left? I don’t know. It’s hard to really explain. I really did not see what the others did see. The thing that really grabs me, it was so spontaneous. The remarks in the cockpit, the dialogue was so spontaneous. There was something these, and it was different. That these people, who had been flying a long time, couldn’t identify it. The light didn’t vary in color or intensity all the time I saw it, even as it went away from us. It was really very bright. It was different from an air navigation light. As I said, it was just like a little ball…

The conversation then changed to the radio malfunction. Here Jezzi reveals something about his attitude. He said that their maintenance and their avionics were not that good. He talked about transmissions that were clear that would then just fade out and come in the clear or garbled. The suggestion seems to be that the radio failure at that time might be related to the poor avionics’ maintenance rather than the close approach of the UFO.

He did mention, when asked, that the helicopter’s magnetic compass was never the same afterwards. Jezzi said that Coyne had said that the compass had been changed but that compass never worked. The electronic compass, the RMI, was fine, it was just the magnetic compass that had been affected.

Jezzi did mention one other thing that might be of significance. He said, “We flew back to Cleveland and almost ran out of gas. Hand nine gallons left in our Huey. We have flown twelve minutes into a twenty-minute fuel warning light.”

There was something about that statement that bothered me. I realized that we didn’t measure the fuel by gallons but by weight. Maybe Jezzi just translated the number of pounds left into how many gallons, but this just didn’t seem right to me.

Sergeant John Healey

Although it was within eighteen hours of the sighting that John Healey would tell a colleague in the Cleveland Police Department what he had seen, the most important revelation came some time later. In an interview that is available on line at the NICAP website, Jennis Zeidman reported, “About ten miles south of Mansfield, Healey noticed a single red light off to the west, flying south. It seemed brighter than a standard aircraft port wing light, but it was not considered relevant traffic and he does not recall mentioning it.”

In his massive UFO Encyclopedia, Jerome Clark, wrote, “Healey would be the first to notice something out of the ordinary, though he would not immediately grasp its significance. Just before 11 o’clock, as the helicopter cruised at 1,200 feet above the farms, woods and hills of north-central Ohio (2,500 feet above sea level), Healey, seated at the left rear, noticed a steady, southbound red light. It looked like the port-wing light of an aircraft but it seemed brighter than normal. Also, it carried none of the other lights FAA regulations require. Healey watched it disappear from sight behind the helicopter, but said nothing about it to his mates.”

If this is true, then it rules out a number of possible explanations because it suggests an object that approached on the right side of the aircraft, flying in the opposite direction. It then, apparently turned around and then approached the helicopter from the left side. At first, according to the Yanacsek, the red light was pacing the helicopter, but then turned toward it.

This fact was reported some time later. There is no mention by Healey of seeing the light on the right side of the aircraft during his initial interviews. Zeidman does provide a transcript of what Healey had seen during the encounter. According to that interview, recorded on October 19, 1973:

When we first observed this little red light it looked like the navigation light, way out in the distance, but as it got closer this light got very big and very bright. It was almost like the landing lights of a 727, that’s how bright the light was… this light just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, so we didn’t know what it was until it was right over us, and we could see the outline. All we could see coming at us was this one big red light. It had no blinking lights at all, or the anti-collision beacon, just the red light in the front, the green light underneath and the white light in the back. It looked like the real bright landing lights we had just seen at Port Columbus. It was a steady light.

In December 1976, more than three years after the sighting, Healey spoke with Dr. Tom Evans, Professor of Psychology at John Carroll University in Cleveland. During that interview, Healey said:

It had no windows, and it was a cigar-shaped affair. It looked as though it was a solid object. It definitely had substance. It I had to guess the material, I’d say metal. Some of the light reflected on the object. From my point, between the seats, it appeared to take up the entire front… both…front windows. Surprisingly, I looked at it as a disinterested third party. I had no fear that we would be involved [in a collision]. It was just something interesting to watch. I was hoping it would turn around so I could get a better look…

The shaft of green light coming out of the underside of the aircraft. You could actually see a cone of light, a definitive cone, a light that stuck out at right angles. A spotlight has a condensed cone from the source… the filament… to the target; it doesn’t grow that big. But this opened up in a triangular shape. It opened up. It wasn’t a condensed beam. I saw the green beam as the [object] was in front of me, out the front windshield. I didn’t it as it was going away. Then I saw the tail light… a white light. I saw the red light coming toward us, and when the aircraft was perpendicular to us through the windshield. What happened was I had crouched down between the two seats and that way I could look right through the windshield. I couldn’t see the bright spot, the filament of the light; I could just see the cone.

His description of the light on the interior of the helicopter, the climb, and then the descent, matches that told by Coyne. The only revelation was that he had seen the red light on the right side of the helicopter, heading to the south, in the opposite direction from that of the helicopter. He said that he hadn’t mentioned this sooner because he hadn’t thought it was important.

Special 5 (E-5) Robert Yanacsek

Coyne and Yanacsek.

The only member of the crew I interviewed personally was Robert Yanacsek. Here is the transcript of that May 29, 2018 interview:

Begin with a little discussion about getting in touch with one another and that Yanascek likes to return calls as quickly as he can.

KR: I understand that you were on the helicopter with Capt. Coyne and the boys back in October of 1973.

RY: That’s right. Capt. Coyne, Larry Coyne. A good man.

KR: I’ve been caught up in a bit of a dust up… with a fellow who claims that what happened was you guys were mistaken for a helicopter that was supposed to be on a refueling mission and the refueling aircraft is what caused the sighting. So, I thought that I would just ask you a couple of questions about that and see if we couldn’t clarify some of that… I ask the first question right off the top of my head would be, what did the thing look like.

RY: Well, essentially there are several descriptions of it, all the same, I mean but over the years, the story’s been reported again and again. It was actually, it was a good night for this kind of thing because it was dark, of course, stars in the sky. It wasn’t cloudy at all, so all I really saw was the outline of this oblong shape cursing through this star background. And there was a lead edge light, red light, of some kind. I assume it was on the very lead edge for sure because, as you know, you’re an aviator yourself, you know, judging things at night is sometimes difficult but there was a red light at the front of this craft and then a bright light at the rear. And that was it.

Some of the reports have said that one of the other guys or couple of the guys saw a window… or something. I don’t recall seeing that. All I recall seeing was this round or oval black shape with the red light in the front and a very bright light in the rear.

KR: Did you get any impression that it was some kind of terrestrial, meaning Earth based aircraft?

RY: Well, I tell you what. Yes, in fact I did think it was an aircraft from around the area actually. We were just due east of a small college and I can’t remember the name now. They an airstrip there and I thought there was a student pilot… and anyway we were off the end of a runway, I’d say about a mile off the end of a runway and I thought a student pilot coming in for a landing… But the light arrangement didn’t look right exactly, with the red and the green and that kind of stuff and I wasn’t quite sure but I thought I just can’t believe this but we’re going to get taken out by a student pilot flying into this runway. That turns out that wasn’t the case. Yeah, but that’s what I originally thought. I thought it was a small aircraft of some kind.

And then, as they say, as the event unfolded, that wasn’t the case. But originally, I did think it was something terrestrial.

KR: Did you hear any sound or anything?

RY: No, I didn’t hear a sound. I didn’t hear any sounds at all. And, I guess mainly because we, I say we, the pilot Larry… Larry and myself both were fixed on this object. If there were a sound, I might not have heard it. You know how when you so concentrate on something. I don’t recall a sound. Not like a jet aircraft …

KR: How close did this thing come to you?

RY: You know, I’ll tell you what, that night it came, and I’m not being dramatic, it came so close off our front, near the rotor mast, I thought we were going to have a blade strike here. We’re going to hit this thing. Not that I saw any reflection off the craft whatever it was but it seemed so close. I think it was because the light on it trail edge was so bright it seemed it was right on top of us. In fact, I sit on the right side of the aircraft that night… and it’s funny how you notice little things when something like that happens. I noticed that I, both he and I were crouching like ducking out of the way, although it wouldn’t have done us any good. We were bot ducking. That’s how close we thought it was.

The thing is, it had paralleled us for a few minutes before it started to converge on our course… This craft off to our east and again it is hard at night to judge distances and such, I’d say it was a mile, maybe two miles to the east of us, heading north as well. I don’t know how I picked it out, that is to say, well there wasn’t a lot of traffic that night anyway, but I could see that this thing was turning into our course. I told Larry about it. I alerted the captain. You know, I said, “We’ve got an aircraft about three o’clock and closing to two o’clock. He looked over and he said, “Yeah, keep an eye on it.” I don’t think I said anything after that because he was aware of it. But he took the controls from the co-pilot who was flying that night.

KR: Which isn’t surprising because the thing was on his side do he had a better view of it.

RY: I don’t think the co-pilot that night and I don’t think he was aware of anything going on because our conversations, between he and I, Captain Coyne and I just bits and pieces… so he just took the aircraft and said, “I’ve got it.”

Talk a bit about the procedure for taking over the controls in the aircraft. And talk about Vietnam and mentions the 1^st Cav. And where he served in Vietnam.

RY: How did you get into this.

KR: There’s a fellow who thinks you might have seen a refueling aircraft.

RY: The light pattern on the international, you know the red green beacons… they didn’t look right. That’s what I first thought. We’ve got a student pilot here flying right across our bow here and is going to run into us. It was just a funny thing.

KR: Coyne had the collective down, yet the aircraft seemed to climb.

RY: That’s what Larry said. I didn’t feel that. I really didn’t feel that motion of being pulled up. The bottom did drop out suddenly when Larry pushed the collective down. And I just thought he recovered in level flight. I don’t recall being sucked up or anything like that.

KR: What I’m saying is that he looked at the altimeter and it was suddenly at 3500 feet.

RY: Yeah, but there was a lot going on in the cockpit at the time too. I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.

KR: I’m confused because… I understand it was an exciting time in the cockpit…

RY: Let me clarify that. People sometimes might think we’re going nuts. Actually, there was almost no comment, no word, nothing when the whole thing happened, I guess because Larry and I were looking at it. I think John came over up to the cockpit and looked up. By that time the thing was up over us. I don’t recall any noise or “look at this. Look at this,” or anything that. Everyone was just kind of reacting.

Again, talk about flying in combat and how well everyone was trained.

KR: You can’t really comment on this climb or what might have precipitated it.

RY: No. No, I … if Larry said, he’s the only one, unless Jezzi did, he was the only one who knows what was going on up front by the instruments because we all were looking at this object. I don’t know. I just have to take Larry’s word for it… I didn’t feel any ascent, let me tell you that. I did feel a sudden drop but I didn’t feel any sudden ascent…

KR: I was just wondering about some of this stuff from the guy who thinks it was a refueling aircraft.

RY: That’s funny. I would think that the refueling aircraft, I would think they would be very well lit up. Let me tell you this and I’m not trying to make a case for our sighting because it has already been correlated, as you know, by a woman on the ground. I will tell you this, if there is one vision that will remain in my mind, it was this. That night, because tracking the aircraft off to the east, as it headed toward us, against a starlit sky… this thing reminded me of a submarine cruising through the silent ocean. As I looked at it, but this thing was cruising right toward us, slightly above us, and it blotted out the stars behind it. Just a nice round or oblong shape. It just looked so serene, just cruising though the ocean. It didn’t look anything like a refueling aircraft. It had the wrong shape.

KR: You didn’t see any hint of engines? Glow from a jet engine or glow from turboprops? I’m thinking mainly of refueling aircraft.

RY: That’s what surprises me. Nothing terrestrial aircraft that I can think of comes close to what that looked like. That’s my thought. It just didn’t. I’d be lying if I said, “Oh, it could have been a Piper or a jet or whatever.”… It was not like a high-performance aircraft. It did have a bright light out of the back. It might have been a jet of some type but I can’t say for sure.

Lost a little bit of the discussion as I had to turn the tape over.

RY: We’d get challenges and they would tell us that it was something terrestrial and maybe it was… It sure didn’t look like anything that I had seen before.

KR: The other question I have is he, Larry, told Jenny Zeidman at some point that at some point he had tried to find any other aircraft in the area, meaning a couple of days later, and Mansfield told him that there was no other traffic. Are you familiar with that at all?

RY: Yeah, I am. They were adamant, Mansfield was adamant about no other traffic in the area.

KR: That’s an important point.

RY: I guess, you might say, clinch it. Then again there was something… that almost collided with us… You know, through all this, people have proposed what might have been and so I’ll say, okay, since I couldn’t tell what it was for sure in the darkness of the night, and they weren’t there, I guess it could be anything you say. With the refueling thing, had that been the case… those planes are lit up at night and I would have seen more than just Rudolph the Red Nosed on the front edge of this thing and a bright light in the ass.

Talk about the documents found on line and the search for the documents. And then talk about Philip Klass and how he tried to pin Yanascek down, kind of calling me a liar. So, we continue the discussion of Klass’ methodology.

Wrap it all up with a question about chatting again if additional questions come up.

The civilian witnesses

One of the skeptical complaints was that there were no other witnesses to the sighting. Only the aircrew had seen anything and their observations were not all consistent. Jezzi, for example, said that he hadn’t seen a craft although there were hints in his testimony that there was something solid behind the bright lights he observed.

Three years later, in 1976, investigators learned of additional witnesses, these people were on the ground. The Civil Commission on Aerial Phenomena (CCAP), described by Zeidman was a group of “technically-oriented central Ohio people interested in UFOs,” published in the August 19, 1976, Mansfield News Journal, an article recapping the Coyne sighting and asking for anyone who had seen anything that night to report it.

On that same even, according to the information supplied by Zeidman, Warren Nicholson, the CCAP director, spoke to a Charles C., the last name withheld at the request of the family, [though it seems this was Erma DeLong] who said that he, along with his mother and siblings had seen the encounter. Within days, Nicholson and William E. Jones, a well-known UFO researcher living in Ohio, interviewed the family.

There were additional interviews conducted. Nicholson was accompanied on his second interview by John Lenihan, a police helicopter pilot and Tim Wegner. Zeidman conducted her own two-hour interview as well. She credits Nicholson as the primary investigator, and her report has quoted material from Nicholson’s tapes, but for clarity, has inserted quotes from her interviews to clarify the sequence of events.

It was just after 11:00 p.m., that Mrs. C, accompanied by four children were heading east when she saw two lights in the sky. The leading light was a bright red and the other was a dim green. They appeared to be on a single craft, or flying in a tight formation, coming from the east. At first, they thought it was a small aircraft but said the speed was like that of a jet. The lights were blinking and they saw no rotating beacon.

Then to the south or southeast, they spotted other lights on a helicopter at a relatively low altitude. They would later say that the helicopter lights were blinking. They also heard the noise associated with the helicopter. As the helicopter converged with the red and green lights, she pulled the car over. She thought the two sets of lights were about to collide.

They thought that the red light was attached to a larger object that looked like a blimp with a dome on top. This object, described as the size of a school bus, flew “over the top of the other one [helicopter] and then stopped.”

Charlie, who had gotten out of the car so that he had a better view, said, “…it was right there, sitting there… it was long ways. It was a big old thing. They the green light flared up…. I saw that thing and the helicopter.”

According to them, the helicopter was just barely ahead of the object and below it. And then, according to Charlie, the helicopter flew over them without changing course. Everything turned green and there was more noise from the helicopter. The green light lasted about ten seconds, according to the witnesses. One of them said, “I think the green light came from the helicopter. It kind of looked like rays coming down.”

Curt, another of the witnesses, said, “It just flew off and got smaller and smaller toward the northwest.”

What is interesting it that the descriptions of the incident matches those given by those in the helicopter. However, it must be noted that these interviews were conducted three years after the sightings, and the witnesses had been inspired to come forward by the newspaper article that recapped the sighting from the aircrews’ point of view. If the ground witnesses were looking for some guidance, it was in the article, which is not to say that their observations weren’t made on the night of the incidence.

It must also be noted that there seems to be no motivation for the witnesses coming forward at the later date. The real question is how much of the report was prompted by the newspaper articles and other coverage of the event in 1973 and later in 1976 and how much was their raw memories. There is no real answer here.

But these weren’t the only witnesses on the ground. Zeidman found a mother and son, Jeanne and John Elias who also had a strange experience on October 18. Jeanne Elias said she remembered the date because it was her younger son’s birthday and there had been a party for him.

Just after a 11:00, she heard a helicopter flying over. She told Zeidman that she worried about aircraft crashing into her house. It was not such a strange fear. They lived on the approach to Mansfield Airport and they lived on an elevation, so she stuck her head under her pillow.

Her son, John, who was fourteen, yelled out. When she went to his room, he wanted to know if she had seen the green light. He said, “The whole room lit up green.” Zeidman would determine that the green was the same shade that John Elias described was the same as that described by other witnesses.

The real problem is that neither he nor his mother looked outside. She heard the helicopter and he saw the bright green light. Not exactly the best corroboration, but then, it does provide a little additional evidence.

The Skeptical Solutions

When there is a sighting that gains a great deal of media attention, some skeptics are quick to investigate. They suggest that they come into the investigation with an open mind, looking at the evidence, but all too often they are looking for a terrestrial explanation, regardless of that evidence. This case has had its critics, and some of the criticisms do make sense, but then the solutions offered do not.

The Philip Klass Solution

I’m going to base analysis this on my training and experience as a helicopter pilot and aircraft commander flying in the same type of aircraft Coyne that night. I will add here that my experience of nearly 1500 hours in helicopters, and my experiences in the stress of combat operations, provide me with a perspective that is not brought to the table by others.

The descriptions of the incident, from those directly involved, have been covered earlier and need no recapitulation here. Instead, I’ll examine this from the point of view offered by Philip Klass. I will note that Klass never met a UFO sighting he liked and offered explanations for everyone he investigated. Some of those explanations, to be fair, were spot on. Others seem to have been snatched from thin air, often overlooking relevant facts and witness statements. In this case, there are many things that Klass wrote that do not stand up to objective scrutiny.

Klass, when he heard about the case in October 1973, decided to take a closer look at it. He appeared on a television show about UFOs with Healey, and he recorded another show that aired the next night that featured Coyne as the guest. Klass, in his book UFO’s Explained, wrote, “As I studied the transcript of my tape recording [of Coyne on the Dick Cavett Show] my attention began to focus on the possibility that the UFO might have been a bright meteor-fireball.”

Klass explained his long search for a meteoric explanation but found nothing to corroborate his idea. He did bring up the Zond IV reentry in 1968 where a number of people believed they saw a cigar-shaped craft with lighted windows as the rocket broke up. He seems to have confused Yanacsek’s sighting on the right side of the aircraft, with Healey’s sighting of the red light that was seen out the left that slid to the rear, heading south. If it was the same object, then that approach from the other side moments later clearly proves that it wasn’t a meteor.

He also reported that he had asked others in a position to have seen the fireball or bolide if they had, but there were no reports of anyone else seeing it. Given the time of day, meaning not all that late at night, and the area over which it would have flown, it seems reasonable to believe that someone else would have seen it. In today’s world, a fireball would be widely reported, often with video of the event. At that time, it would have made the news, though the reports probably would have been confined to the immediate area.

Klass mentioned that the cockpit was bathed in green light as the object passed overhead and reported that there are two Plexiglas panels set above the pilots’ heads and these are tinted green. They were called, cleverly by the flight crews, the greenhouses, but they are directly over the pilots and are not part of the windshield. Klass seemed to have confused these green tinted areas for something on the windshield (or canopy as he called it) much as cars used to have a green tint at the top of the windshield. The crew was not looking through the greenhouses and the light was not coming directly through them. Besides, the crew described other colored lights on the object which they were watching through the clear, Plexiglas windshield.

Klass admitted that the climb was the “real puzzler.” He discussed it with Dave Brown, an “experienced pilot with some hours in a helicopter [which tells nothing about his experience in a helicopter and it doesn’t say if those hours are as a pilot or a passenger and if there are very many of them. I have made it clear that my training was the same as Coyne and Jezzi and I have more than a thousand hours in the Huey helicopter. Klass never bothered to talk to me about, though we knew each other]. Brown suggested that perhaps the pilot or co-pilot might have unconsciously pulled back on the collective [though the proper term here would be pulled up on the collective] and or cyclic-pitch control(s) as he leaned back in his seat to view the luminous object overhead.”

Lieutenant Arrigo Jezzi, the co-pilot, would never have pulled up on the collective in the way Klass speculates. Had Jezzi felt the aircraft was in danger and he needed to take over the controls, he would have put his hands on them and said, “I’ve got it.”

Coyne would have relinquished control taking his hands off and said, “You’ve got it.” We had all learned that sometimes the other pilot saw something that we did not. It was standard procedure.

This was done so that the pilots wouldn’t be fighting each other for control. In similar circumstances, meaning if one of them in the cockpit saw something the other didn’t that might endanger the aircraft, this is what was done, and that includes combat assaults under enemy fire, which can easily be even more stressful than seeing a UFO. Every Army trained helicopter pilot followed this ritual even at times like that, so, it is clear that Jezzi didn’t take over control and didn’t touch the controls without alerting Coyne to that. In fact, it would have been quicker for Jezzi to say, “Watch your altitude,” which he said that he had done.

Could leaning back in the seat, trying to see the UFO above then as Klass suggested have caused Coyne to pull up on the collective (as opposed to have pulled back as Klass suggested)? Not really given the way the controls are configured. Could he have pulled back on the cyclic in such a circumstance? Maybe, but there would have been other consequences to that action, including a slowing of the airspeed, a change in the engine noise and a change in the orientation of the view in the cockpit which would have suggested that something had happened. Or, in other words, that would have been noticed because that is how the Army pilots were trained.

Klass, continued his speculation about all of this, based on the information he had collected, some of which he failed to report, and he concluded, “…we should all be grateful for the instinctive, if unconscious, reactions of pilot Coyne or co-pilot Jezzi in pulling their helicopter out of its steep descent barely four hundred feet about the ground.”

He then solved the case. He wrote, “…it will not be easy for them to accept the explanation that the UFO was merely a bright fireball, that the seemingly mysterious behavior of the helicopter was due to the unconscious, instinctive reactions of well-trained pilots…”

With absolutely no evidence of a bright meteor that night, Klass has created one out of thin air and the skeptics have not asked him to explain that position. They don’t ask him why Yanacsek’s account is not mentioned, or the confusion about which crewmember saw what and where. Finally, no one asks him how it would be for the pilot to have lowered the collective to arrest the ascent when it was already at the bottom stop and couldn’t be pushed down any further. He just speculates, contrary to the pilot testimony, that one or the other had pulled up on the collective earlier (which he could have then pushed down, but said that he couldn’t, so he pulled up). It is clear that Klass does not understand the Army procedures, and that he reports his speculations as if they were facts. None of this means that Coyne and his crew saw an alien craft, only that Klass’ analysis of it is flawed by what others would call “Ufological thinking” if Klass was at the other end of the spectrum. So, now let the defense of Klass begin, regardless of the facts.

There are other aspects of this case that I haven’t addressed here. Klass suggested that the low altitude of the aircraft accounts for the failure of the radio, but doesn’t mention that they had been in contact with Mansfield prior to the encounter in which the radios, all the radios failed. Nor does he mention that once the UFO had disappeared, the radios then worked again. While distance and low altitude might account for the failure to reach the other, more distant airports, it does not explain the failure while the UFO is nearby.

Klass’ explanation of a bright meteor and the overreaction by the crew is not a good answer. It simply does not fit the facts.

Parabunk and the Refueling Scenario

Another, and more entertaining and better thought-out explanation for what Coyne and his crew saw was a misguided refueling operation. Although the theory is based on some interesting analysis, in the end it fails. To understand, it is necessary to take a look at it. There might be some limited redundancy for the ease of understanding, most of the testimony cited by Parabunk has been examined earlier.

There is one point that needs to be made. He cited a 74-page document he used as the basis for his analysis. This was a chapter in Peter Sturrock’s book, The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence. Sturrock lists as his source for the information, Jennie Zeidman’s work, which is a 122-page investigative report published as A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio. He also cites another paper by Zeidman. I, of course, used all these sources in preparation of this chapter, along with a large number of other articles and books. As noted above, I interviewed one of the participants in the encounter, as well as communicating with Jennie Zeidman. This, I believe, among other things, provides a better basis for comment on the event.

The essence of the theory is that a refueling aircraft’s flight crew believe that the helicopter flown by Coyne was scheduled to be refueled. Given the track of the refueling aircraft, that is flying south, along the left side of the helicopter, the looping turn behind it, and then the approach to fly in front of the helicopter is the sort of maneuver expected during a refueling operation. It was only after it was discovered that the helicopter wasn’t the aircraft to be refueled that the refueling aircraft broke away.

Parabunk believed, based on the description of the lights, that is the red and green navigation lights, the bright green light displayed, and the brighter white light were evidence of the nature of the craft that paced the helicopter. Even the description of the craft, sort of cigar shaped with a dome on top resembled, to a degree, the description of a C-130 refueling aircraft. Satisfied that he had solved the case as mistaken identity, he published his findings at:

http://parabunk.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-coyne-incident-big-picture.html

His initial report provided details about refueling aircraft, the rules and regulations governing the operation of refueling aircraft over the United States and military regulations about it. And, without critical comment, it seemed that it was a reasonable explanation.

There were problems with it however. There were no records covering the situation. Given that this was a military operation, there should have been a great deal of documentation for it. The flight plans for the refueling aircraft, the FAA notifications and coordination. The military orders for both the refueling aircraft and the helicopter or helicopters to be refueled. None of that was provided. I engaged with Parabunk in an email exchange in which we both commented about the case from our rather different perspectives. For example:

I had written, in response to his theory, "Here’s where we are on this. The refueling aircraft theory is unproven and seems unlikely as the explanation."

He wrote back saying, “Here's where we really are on this: There's a limited set of possible aircraft to choose from. Nobody has been able to choose anything except a tanker, which is compatible with all the witness accounts. It's not just a matter of evidence, which might not even exist, and which the case has never had to begin with. It's a matter of not even having other serious alternatives.”

My response was, “That is, of course, assuming that a terrestrial aircraft was responsible for the sighting. This hasn’t been established, and that there is no evidence of a tanker in the area makes it problematic. Besides, the witness statements do not conform to the tanker explanation, unless you force them into that pattern. There could be some sort of natural phenomenon that we haven’t even considered… or we could just agree that the tanker scenario suffers from a lack of evidence putting such an aircraft in the area. Not to mention the idea that a tanker is the only aircraft from which to choose (or to be accurate, of the limited number of aircraft) because it presupposes that an aircraft is the culprit here.

Please note in his response that he said there were a limited number of aircraft to choose from. He has assumed, in the beginning, that the encounter was caused by the close approach of an aircraft, and began his search looking for aircraft that fit into that point of view. However, if what Coyne and the crew had seen, then an aircraft is not a viable explanation. Besides, if it was a refueling aircraft as claimed, then there should have been records. A search, even a quick search should have provided some clue. Instead, we learn:

I don't live in Ohio and I'm not familiar with all those military bases, their organizational structures, record keeping practices, FOIA processes and so on. So, I'm not really in the best of positions to try to acquire that information and it would take me a lot of work to familiarize myself with all that would be needed, and I have no reason to expect any financial or other significant gains for all that work. I also don't have any emotional attachments to the Coyne Incident, and it has never been among my favorites. So why would I be so interested in using my time on it?...

Later, in a posting to his website, he expanded on this lack of documentation and the reason that is unimportant. He wrote:

At the moment we don't have any records one way or another of what was or wasn't flying there, other than Coyne reportedly having asked from Mansfield that their F-100 fighters had landed before. Everything indicates there was never an official investigation of that case. The local FAA chief Coyne talked to couldn't even tell where to report it, so Coyne eventually filed an army disposition form to have it officially on record, but there's no indication it ever led to anything. Coyne himself should at least have known, and be interviewed for it and so on, but even though he talked about the incident years later, even in the UN, I'm not aware he ever mentioning anything about any official investigation.

We don't know if the necessary records still exist, where they should be found, and whether they are complete, accurate or even written in the first place. Hopefully those will be found, but it can take months or years to get the results, and even then they might simply inform us that the records are already gone.

This would seem to end the discussion about a refueling aircraft because he admits there are no records. Of course, it is the responsibility of the one advancing the theory to provide the evidence for that theory.

I will note here that Coyne hadn’t asked about the Mansfield F-100s, but had asked, according to the interview conducted by Zeidman, Coyne had asked, “Do you have any high-performance aircraft in your area.” Not quite the same thing and certainly can be interpreted as Coyne asking about the F-100 aircraft because he knew they were based at Mansfield.

While there are many points that can be countered by using the very documents that Parabunk used, I’ll limit myself to one more. He wrote:

Jezzi also already suspected the Climb could have been just a simple mistake from Coyne:

I wasn't aware of the climb at all - and 1,000 fpm - it could have been less. It was not that much of a climb, that steep, that much acceleration. But the climbing is something that occurs somewhat easily in a helicopter if you're not paying attention. If 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 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. There are thermals that are so bad that you put your collective down and you're still climbing. I've had it happen to me.

Zeidman: Do you think Larry was responsible for the climb?
Jezzi: I don't know. Larry said, "Son of a gun, it pulled us up!"
Zeidman: You weren't following through [on the controls] ...
Jezzi: No, I didn't have the controls. I don't know what he did [emphasis in the original].

It also doesn't seem to speak too highly of Coyne as a professional pilot if he actually tried to fly the helicopter to the ground for an estimated couple of minutes after the danger of collision was already over, and they were just looking at the white light receding, not paying attention to their altimeter. But that's basically what Coyne has been describing having happened. It's either that, or he just didn't notice or remember all he actually did in his state of panic.

But the record doesn’t reflect that. Using Zeidman’s report for CUFOS that includes Hynek’s interview, you get the impression that Coyne was well aware of the altitude. He was attempting to dive under the object, whatever it was. Coyne said, “No, it stopped over us, and then it just slowly moved, while I thought we were descending, ‘cause I remember it was 1700 feet and I thought, ‘Oh, this is it,’ and then I saw it right in front here, and I said, ‘That’s no F-100!’ Then it moved this way, and I looked at my altitude and we were at 3500 feet…”

Or, in other words, Coyne had situational awareness. Although it was night, it wasn’t pitch black, and there was a visible horizon. He knew that there was no danger of flying into the ground as both Parabunk and Phil Klass allege. The idea that Coyne was not paying attention to the altimeter seems to have been debunked.

Parabunk quotes Jezzi about the climb. Jezzi mentions thermals that can cause an aircraft to climb, even when trimmed for descent. But the problem here is that it was the middle of October in northern Ohio and it was after 11.00 p.m. Thermals are caused by the uneven heating of the ground by the sun and the presence of thermals is often signaled by cumulous clouds. In this case, there were no thermals to cause the climb. Jezzi was suggesting something that had happened to him in the past, and something that nearly all pilots have encountered. It’s just not something encountered at night, in October, in Ohio, in this case.

The fatal flaws in this analysis are evident. According to regulations, when refueling operations are being conducted, the aircraft involved must make contact with the local FAA facilities, which means that the tower at Mansfield should have been contacted. There is no evidence that there was any sort of contact.

Refueling operations are conducted at high altitude so that if there had been a refueling aircraft in the area, Mansfield would have known about it. When Coyne began talking to the FAA about the near miss, those records would have identified the aircraft involved.