The Coyne Helicopter Incident

October 18, 1973. At about 10:30 p.m., four men took off from Port Columbus in Army helicopter 68-15444, a Bell UH-1H Huey. They were heading home to Cleveland Hopkins Airport. The pilot, Capt. Lawrence J. Coyne, was 36 and had 19 years of flying experience. Beside him sat co-pilot 1st Lt. Arrigo Jezzi. Behind them rode flight medic SSG John Healey, a Cleveland policeman, and crew chief SSG Robert Yanacsek. They were cruising at 2,500 feet.

Near Mansfield, Yanacsek noticed a red light on the east horizon. He watched it for "a minute to ninety seconds" before he reported it. Then it turned toward them. The Army report says it was converging "at an airspeed in excess of 600 knots on a midair collision heading."

Coyne took the controls and dove, eventually at about 2,000 feet per minute. He radioed the Mansfield tower. After the first contact, the radio went dead. It stayed dead for about 10 minutes.

Then the light stopped. "It wasn't cruising, it was stopped," Yanacsek said. A gray, metallic, cigar-shaped object filled the windshield. Coyne put it at about 60 feet long. There was a red light at the nose and a white light at the tail. "No noise, no flaps," Yanacsek recalled. "It reminded me very much of a submarine." A green beam swung through the canopy and lit up the whole cockpit.

The object hesitated over the helicopter. Then it moved off to the west, gaining speed, and made a "decisive 45 degree turn to the right." Coyne checked his instruments. The collective was full down. Yet the altimeter read 3,500 feet and showed a climb of 1,000 feet per minute. Coyne later told the News Journal that "we had climbed from 1,700 to 3,500 feet with no power in a couple of seconds."

A woman was driving four adolescents on Route 430 toward Charles Mill Reservoir. They saw red and green lights come down. Two 13-year-old cousins got out of the car and watched for about a minute. They said the object was "like a blimp" and "as big as a school bus," and that everything turned green. "It was real, real bright and absolutely beautiful," the mother said.

On November 23, 1973, all four crewmen signed an Army near midair collision report. The helicopter's magnetic compass had rotated slowly, and it was later replaced. Jennie Zeidman of the Center for UFO Studies interviewed each crewman in person and found the ground witnesses. J. Allen Hynek interviewed Coyne on January 24, 1974. The National Enquirer's Blue Ribbon Panel gave the crew $5,000.

Philip J. Klass proposed an Orionid meteor fireball. He said the green light came from the Huey's green-tinted overhead panels. He said the climb came from an unconscious pull on the collective. CUFOS answered that the event lasted about 300 seconds and that the object slowed down and turned sharply, which a meteor does not do. Klass admitted finding "nothing to corroborate" a fireball. Kevin Randle, a former Army helicopter pilot, argued that an unnoticed collective input was unlikely. In 2018 the Parabunk blog suggested a refueling tanker whose wingtip lights were misread, but no record of such a tanker has been found. Jezzi later said the object's speed was "closer to the 250 than the 600."

Coyne told his story on The Dick Cavett Show and in the Rod Serling documentary UFOs: Past, Present, and Future. In November 1978 he testified before the UN Special Political Committee. "I am convinced this object was real," he said, "and that these types of incident require a thorough investigation."