The Kingman, Arizona Crash-Retrieval Claim

May 19, 1953. The nuclear test Upshot-Knothole "Harry" was fired at Yucca Flat, on the Nevada Test Site. Its heavy fallout earned it the name "Dirty Harry".

Arthur G. Stansel was a mechanical engineer with Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The next day, his calendar read: "Got funny call from Dr. Doll at 1000. I'm to go on a special job tomorrow."

May 21. "Got picked up at Indian Springs AFB at 4:30 p.m. for a job I can't talk about." About 15 other specialists went too. Stansel recalled a bus with blacked-out windows and a ride of about four hours. An Air Force colonel told them they were investigating the crash of a "super-secret test vehicle". Stansel was to work out its forward and vertical speeds at impact.

The object lay in the desert near Kingman, Arizona. It was oval and "looked like two deep saucers, one inverted upon the other." About 30 feet across. Embedded about 20 inches in the sand. Dull silver metal like brushed aluminum. No wings, no engines, no landing gear, no seams. A hatch had been "vertically lowered and opened". Inside were two swivel seats and many instruments.

Its only occupant lay in a tent nearby. Dead. It stood "about 4 feet tall", with a "dark brown complexion" and "two eyes, two nostrils, two ears, a small round mouth". It wore a silvery, metallic suit and a matching skull-cap. The team was sworn to secrecy. Stansel kept the secret until 1971.

Raymond E. Fowler investigated the case for NICAP. Stansel's education, employers and dates held up. On June 7, 1973, he signed a statement before Fowler under the name "Fritz Werner". It began: "I, Fritz Werner, do solemnly swear that during a special assignment with the U.S. Air Force, on May 21, 1953, I assisted in the investigation of a crashed unknown object in the vicinity of Kingman, Arizona."

In 1971 Stansel had told Jeff Young and Paul Chetham a different version. That craft was about 12 ft long, teardrop or cigar shaped, with a flat bottom. When Fowler raised this, Stansel said he had been describing another sighting, over Thule, Greenland. He also said he had "lied or embellished" after four martinis. The interviewers said he had not been drinking.

No Project Blue Book record has turned up. In October 1981 William Moore found Dr. Ed Doll, who said he knew nothing about the incident. David Rudiak searched the Mohave County Miner and found no crash story. Kevin Randle's verdict: "There really was no evidence for a Kingman crash."

Leonard Stringfield's sources spoke of "three small bodies packed in dry ice" arriving at Wright-Patterson from Arizona. In 2000 Bill Uhouse described four occupants, two of them alive. Later tellings added Area 51, S-4, J-Rod and element 115. None of it is in the 1973 affidavit. Researcher Harry Drew argues for three craft, brought down by nuclear tests or powerful experimental radar. Sceptics take the colonel at his word and suggest a secret test vehicle, perhaps a QF-80 drone like those used during Upshot-Knothole. No drone lost near Kingman has been documented.

April 22, 2024. Christopher Mellon published a redacted Signal exchange with "a senior government official" about a UAP that landed at Kingman in the 1950s. Mellon noted that the official was "ultimately denied access". Randle called the message "essentially worthless". Kingman is still one engineer's sworn story, told twenty years after the fact.