Navy reserve pilot's Wright-Patterson saucer claim (1962)

Navy reserve pilot's Wright-Patterson saucer claim (1962)

Alleged date	April 1962
Place	Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio
Witness	"PJ" of Dallas, Texas, a Captain in the U.S. Naval Reserve
Published	Leonard H. Stringfield, UFO Crash/Retrievals: Amassing the Evidence – Status Report III (June 1982), Case A-6
Object	Rivetless disc about 12–15 ft across and 8 ft deep, on engine test stands, under guard
Status	Unverified; witness anonymous
Date	1962
Topics	Military encounters (topic), Bases & Area 51 (topic)
People	Leonard Stringfield, Linda Moulton Howe
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 65
Year	1962 in UFO history
Timeline	1962 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	7

The Navy reserve pilot's Wright-Patterson saucer claim is an account published by the UFO researcher Leonard H. Stringfield in 1982. An anonymous witness, "PJ", a U.S. Naval Reserve captain and former Ling-Temco-Vought test pilot, said that in April 1962 he and five men of his flight ran into a hangar at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, looking for a gym. Inside, eight guards stood around a roped-off, rivetless disc-shaped object resting on two engine test stands. A sentry told them they were not supposed to be there, and they left. After returning to their home base, PJ was called in by a brigadier general and told he had broken security.^[6] The witness has never been named publicly, and the story has not been confirmed.

The witness

• In Stringfield's Status Report III the witness appears as Case A-6: "PJ of Dallas, Texas, Captain, U.S. Navy, USNR". He was credited with 6,100 military and 7,500 civilian flight hours, had been a test pilot for Ling-Temco-Vought on F-8 and A-7 aircraft, and was by then a commercial airline pilot.^[6]
• Stringfield ranked PJ "highest on the scale" for credibility because of his military and commercial aviation background. He said PJ wished to stay anonymous because of his airline job, not out of fear of reprisal.^[6]
• The researcher Tommy Blann of Lewisville, Texas, put Stringfield in touch with PJ. Stringfield first reached him at home on New Year's Eve 1981. He then spoke to him several times by phone, received a copy of Blann's taped interview with him, and obtained a signed letter dated 13 April 1982 describing the experience.^[6]
• The earlier version of this article called PJ a "Navy reserve test pilot". The report describes a naval reserve captain who had been a company test pilot and, in 1962, was an exchange pilot with an Air Force fighter wing.^[6]

The account

• According to PJ's letter, in April 1962 he was an exchange pilot with the Air Force's 354th Tactical Fighter Wing. Its 352nd Tactical Fighter Squadron deployed to Wright-Patterson from Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, South Carolina, on a hurricane evacuation.^[6]
• As commander of "B" Flight, the "Bluebirds", he kept his men fit with running and handball. On the first day of the five-day deployment he led five crew members on a run across the base, looking for a gym, which was usually tucked away in a hangar. After crossing two baseball fields they reached the first hangar, assumed it was the Special Services hangar, and burst through both doors at a sprint.^[6]
• Inside there was "dead silence", and an air police sentry with a submachine gun came toward them. About 8 ft away stood an object 12–15 ft long and 8 ft deep, like two plates stuck together or a large discus. It rested on two engine test stands, had no markings or insignia and, most noticeably, no rivets. It was roped off, with eight guards standing at parade rest around it.^[6]
• The guard said, "I don't think you're supposed to be here, Sir." PJ agreed, and the group turned and left. Outside, they told each other that the United States had developed, or had always had, flying saucers in service.^[6]
• The earlier version of this article said PJ "wandered into a hangar" and was "quickly escorted away". In his own account the group ran in by mistake and left when challenged, and no escort is mentioned.^[6]

The debriefing

• A week later, back at Myrtle Beach, PJ was told to report to the brigadier general commanding the combat wing. The general told him he had broken security and asked only one question: "What did you see?" PJ answered "Nothing!", and the general replied, "You have the right answer to the question," and dismissed him.^[6]
• PJ said the incident led him to research the object fully, and that his Top Secret clearance gave him information he could not otherwise have obtained. He declined to repeat what he called hearsay or second-hand information. He would confirm only that for about thirty seconds he had seen a metallic, disc-shaped object about 15 ft wide and 8 ft deep.^[6]
• He said the lack of security had always puzzled him. The object was not in the base's test facility but near the flight line, which he guessed meant it had just arrived or was awaiting deployment.^[6]

Stringfield's comment

• Stringfield withheld the names of the officers involved at PJ's request. He suggested that if the craft had been freshly retrieved, the year 1962 was significant, because he had other crash-retrieval reports from that period: Case A-6 in Status Report II and Case B-4 in Status Report III.^[6]
• Stringfield (1920–1994) had been public-relations adviser to the civilian group NICAP in the 1950s. From 1978 until his death he self-published a series of "status reports" on alleged UFO crash retrievals, most of them based on anonymous informants. Status Report III, UFO Crash/Retrievals: Amassing the Evidence, appeared in 1982.^[1]
• The series began with his July 1978 MUFON symposium paper "Retrievals of the Third Kind". It included the earliest published version of the Roswell account of the then-anonymous "Major J.M.", later identified as Jesse Marcel.^[2]

Republication

• The journalist Linda Moulton Howe reprinted Status Report III in parts on her Earthfiles website in 2005. Part 4 was published on 13 March 2005 and notes that the report was written in June 1982. The text is open only to subscribers.^[4][5] Howe is a journalist and documentary-maker best known for promoting claims that aliens are behind cattle mutilations and that the government works with extraterrestrials.^[3] A scan of the original report is on the Internet Archive.^[6]
• The anonymous UAP timeline in the journalist Michael Shellenberger's November 2024 written testimony to the House Oversight Committee summarises the account closely, citing the Earthfiles reprint.^[7]

Assessment

• The witness gave Stringfield a detailed, signed account, but he has never been identified. The other members of his flight, the general and the officers involved are also unnamed. None of the sources read here offers a record of the deployment or the security incident to check it against.^[6]
• PJ himself concluded at the time that the craft was American, and he claimed nothing beyond having seen it.^[6] Wright-Patterson was already notorious in UFO lore as the supposed home of crashed saucers at "Hangar 18", a story promoted by Robert Carr in 1974. This makes accounts set there especially hard to weigh.^[2]

People and topics

• U.S. Navy — The U.S. naval service, whose pilots reported the UAP encounters revealed in 2017.
• Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — The Ohio air base that housed Project Blue Book and is linked to the Hangar 18 legend.
• Leonard Stringfield — Former Air Force intelligence officer and NICAP researcher who collected anonymous crash-retrieval accounts from 1978 to 1994.
• Linda Moulton Howe — Journalist and filmmaker who runs the Earthfiles website and has reported many crash-retrieval claims.
• Hangar 18 — The legendary hangar at Wright-Patterson said to hold alien craft and bodies.

On the Timeline

• Gun-camera films sent to the CIA claim (1962) — Researcher Richard Hall says jet gun-camera UAP films were routinely sent to the CIA.
• Arthur Sylvester's "right to lie" remarks (29 October 1962) — A Pentagon spokesman defends withholding information when it's in the public interest.

See every 1962 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Leonard H. Stringfield”, “Linda Moulton Howe”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.