by Charles Lear
Some are born to it, some achieve it, and some have it thrust upon them. If one is talking about a life devoted to UFO research, Leonard Stringfield was in the last category. He was a prominent figure in the early days of UFO investigation and remained highly active until his death in 1994. Most notably, Stringfield was the only private investigator ever to have a direct line to the Air Force during their Project Blue Book investigation.
Born in 1920, Stringfield’s interest in UFOs began in 1945, just three days before the end of World War II. He was an Army Air Force intelligence officer, flying as a passenger in a C-46 headed for Iwo Jima. Mid-way, after taking off from Ie Shima, the plane developed a problem in its left engine and started losing altitude. As this was happening, Stringfield noticed “three unidentifiable blobs of brilliant white light, each about the size of a dime held at arm’s length.” The pilot regained control and as the plane ascended, Stringfield noted that the objects remained below and vanished into the clouds.
Writing about the incident in his 1957 book, “Saucer Post…3-0 Blue” he compared what he’d seen to the “foo fighters” reported by pilots from all sides of the war. He went on to write that he believed that the engine trouble had been caused by the objects.
In 1950, news reports of flying saucers revived Stringfield’s wartime memory. One report was from a family that had seen an object fly over their house that lit up the area under it as it passed. The other was of a blue light swinging like a pendulum over a ridge. The witnesses were fellow citizens of Cincinnati, Ohio and Stringfield was impressed by their “genuineness.” He became convinced that flying saucers were interplanetary and found this “ominous.” In 1952, there was a flap that included sightings in restricted airspace over Washington, D.C. during two consecutive weekends. On July 25th, Stringfield and other Cincinnatians observed a teardrop-shaped object moving quickly through the sky and changing direction. He was compelled to report it to the press and announce that he was forming a research group, the Civilian Investigating Group for Aerial Phenomena. Though the organization consisted only of Stringfield throughout its short, less than 2-year existence, he received hundreds of reports and was noted as a local flying saucer authority.