by Charles Lear
As one looks into UFO history, there are cases that turn up again and again in books, blogs, magazines, newspapers, and documentaries. These are the “classic cases” and they’re classics because they still intrigue those who come across them. A case known as the “Coyne Incident” is one of those, and it has all the elements that make a good case: multiple credible witnesses, an official report, extensive investigation, and contemporary news coverage.
According to the report, on October 18, 1973, four men with the U.S. Army Reserve took off from Port Columbus, Ohio, in a UH-1H helicopter at around 10:30 p.m. headed for Cleveland Hopkins airport. In command and at the controls in the right front seat was 36-year-old Capt. Lawrence J. Coyne. At the controls in the left front seat was 26-year-old 1st Lt. Arrigo Jezzi. Sitting behind them were 35-year-old Sergeant John Healey and 23-year-old Sergeant Robert Yanacsek. They were flying at an altitude of 2500 feet above sea level, 1300 feet above the ground over farmland with an elevation of 1200 feet. It was a clear night lit by a quarter moon.
At around 11:00 p.m., they were over Charles Mill Lake near Mansfield, Ohio, when Healy spotted a red light to the west moving south. Shortly thereafter, Yanacsek spotted a red light on the southeast horizon that he thought might be a tower beacon or airplane wing light. Then the light turned and moved rapidly towards the helicopter.
Worried about an impact, Coyne made a powered descent of 500 feet per minute and radioed the National Guard tower in Mansfield to find out if they had an aircraft in the area. After getting an initial response, radio contact was lost.
Coyne increased the descent speed to 2000 feet per minute moving at around 100 knots, but it didn’t seem as if they would be able to avoid a collision. As the crew braced for impact, the light suddenly stopped and hovered in front of them just above the helicopter.
At this point, the men could make out the shape of what seemed to be a physical object. Coyne, Healey and Yanacsek described seeing a cigar-shaped, grey metallic object with a red light on the front and a white light on the back. They said it had a slight dome and Yanacsek added that he saw what seemed to be two rows of windows near the top of the dome.
The men reported that as they were looking at the object, a green pyramid-shaped light emitted from the object that traveled up the helicopter’s nose and then filled the cockpit. Then the helicopter was dragged upwards for about ten seconds. The object then moved off to the west, turned and flew away over Lake Erie at an estimated speed of between 250 and 600 knots. The men had regained control of their helicopter and they headed for Cleveland.
The crew was mystified by the encounter. In the Center for UFO Studies file on the case is a news report, dated October 29, 1973, prepared by National Enquirer reporter Gerry Brown. According to the document, Coyne told Brown, “The crew kept asking me, ‘what is it?”’ Coyne said, “I have always been skeptical about UFO [sic] and I hope there might still be some logical explanation for this.”
Coyne would later describe the craft during a segment on the incident in the 1979 documentary “UFOs Are Real” as having “a high degree of technology,” that it “was composed of a structure and a design that we do not have,” that it could “move through the atmosphere without causing any turbulence,” and he speculates that “it could fly in space.”
According to the segment in “UFOs Are Real,” a family of five in a car on the road below witnessed the entire encounter. A man claiming to be a witness, Jim Carver, wrote about the incident in his blog, “The Rust Belt Chronicles.” According to him, he, his father, and his brother Bill began to observe three lights to the southwest. The middle light was making maneuvers with “incredible laser precision angles and speed.” The light then merged with the larger light to its right and moved to the northeast towards Mansfield. Carver describes getting in his car and driving towards Mansfield to get a better look and says he missed the actual encounter with the helicopter. He says it was witnessed by his brother who recalled “the UFO shooting across the sky towards the chopper.”
The case was investigated for CUFOS by Jennie Zeidman, who was a former Project Blue Book investigator. She wrote a book about the encounter, “Helicopter-Ufo Encounter over Ohio” that was published by CUFOS in 1979. The case file can be found in the CUFOS files housed by David Marler in his home-based archive and research library in New Mexico.
The men filed an official report to the Commander of the 83rd U.S. Army Reserve Command dated November 23, 1973. The Army didn’t prevent the men from speaking about the incident publicly and all four of them appear in the 1979 documentary “UFOs: It Has Begun.” Coyne was the most vocal of the group and spoke about the incident on numerous occasions including a 1978 UFO presentation for the U.N. organized by Lee Spiegel.