Camp Pendleton Marine's crash-site claim (1967)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Date claimed | July 1967 |
|---|---|
| Informant | "RT", an anonymous former Marine |
| Claim | Flew from Camp Pendleton to a desert site where a damaged craft was being recovered |
| Published in | Leonard Stringfield, UFO Crash/Retrievals: Amassing the Evidence – Status Report III (1982) |
| Republished | Linda Moulton Howe, Earthfiles, 2005 |
| Status | Anonymous and uncorroborated; no records support it |
| Date | 3 July 1967 |
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic) |
| People | Leonard Stringfield, Linda Moulton Howe |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 70 |
| Year | 1967 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1967 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 6 |
"RT" is one of the anonymous informants of the UFO researcher Leonard Stringfield. He said he was a Marine who, in July 1967, flew from Camp Pendleton in Southern California to a crash-retrieval site in the desert, where military personnel were recovering a damaged craft.[5] The account appears in Stringfield's Status Report III, written in June 1982. Linda Moulton Howe republished it on her Earthfiles website in 2005.[1][5] As with most of Stringfield's sources, the witness is not named, the location is vague and no records support the story. It is included in the testimony this article draws on as one of a long list of unverified crash-retrieval allegations.[1][5]
The claim
According to the account, RT was stationed at Camp Pendleton in July 1967. He said he was flown from the base to a desert location where a craft had come down, and where military personnel were recovering the damaged vehicle.[5] The published summaries give no exact location, no name for the unit involved and no description of any occupants, and RT's identity was withheld.[5] The full text of Howe's republication sits behind a subscription wall, and no independent version of RT's account has been found.[4][5]
Camp Pendleton, in San Diego County on the Southern California coast, is the Marine Corps' major West Coast base. It was established in 1942 and has been home to the 1st Marine Division since 1946.[6]
Stringfield and his informants
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Leonard Stringfield (1920–1994) was an American ufologist with a particular interest in crashed-saucer stories.[1] He ran the group CRIFO (Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects) and its newsletter Orbit in the 1950s. He became public relations adviser to NICAP under Donald Keyhoe in 1957, served as an "Early Warning Coordinator" for the Condon Committee from 1967 to 1969, and later sat on MUFON's board.[1][2] In private life he was director of public relations and marketing for DuBois Chemicals in Cincinnati.[1]
In the 1970s crash stories were out of favor among ufologists, after Frank Scully's 1949–50 saucer-crash claims were exposed as a fraud and Robert Carr's promises of official disclosure came to nothing.[2] Stringfield nevertheless began collecting statements from people, mostly anonymous, who said they had seen or heard of crash retrievals. He presented the first batch as "Retrievals of the Third Kind" at the 1978 MUFON symposium in Dayton, Ohio.[1][2] One of those early informants, "Major J.M.", was the Roswell intelligence officer Jesse Marcel, whose 1978 account was the first published version of the Roswell story.[2]
Stringfield self-published seven "Status Reports" on crash retrievals between 1978 and 1994:[1][5]
- Retrievals of the Third Kind (1978), unofficially Status Report I
- The UFO Crash/Retrieval Syndrome: Status Report II (1980)
- UFO Crash/Retrievals: Amassing the Evidence – Status Report III (1982)
- The Fatal Encounter at Ft. Dix–McGuire: Status Report IV (1985)
- Status Reports V (1989), VI (1991) and VII (1994)
He died of lung cancer on 18 December 1994.[1] His reports typically identify informants only by initials. Status Report III, for example, also includes "KA", who said he took part in a desert retrieval in 1954 and suffered worsening nightmares about it until he told his story at a 1981 lecture.[5]
Republication
Howe, an investigative journalist and documentary maker best known for her work on cattle mutilations, republished Stringfield's Status Reports in parts on Earthfiles. Part 3 of Status Report III appeared on 7 March 2005.[3][4][5] Howe has herself been the target of deception. In 1983 the Air Force agent Richard Doty showed her fabricated documents, and he later said, "We gave Linda some good information, and some bad information".[3]
Assessment
RT's account cannot be checked. The informant is anonymous, no date beyond the month, place or unit is given in the available summaries, and no military records, press reports or other witnesses corroborate it.[1][5] The same applies to most of the many anonymous testimonies Stringfield gathered.[1][2] His reports remain an important source for the crash-retrieval literature, but they rest on secondhand and unverifiable accounts.[2]
People and topics
- Leonard Stringfield — Former Air Force intelligence officer and NICAP researcher who collected anonymous crash-retrieval accounts from 1978 to 1994.
- Crash retrieval — The alleged recovery of crashed non-human craft by governments.
- Linda Moulton Howe — Journalist and filmmaker who runs the Earthfiles website and has reported many crash-retrieval claims.
On the Timeline
- Wheless memo on UFO impostors (1967) (1 March 1967) — An Air Force memo warns of men in uniform telling UAP witnesses to stay silent.
- Northrop electroaerodynamics research (1968) (1968) — Northrop researchers publish work on reducing drag with electric fields.
See every 1967 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- UFO documents — CIA Reading Room · cia.gov · archived copy
References
- Leonard H. Stringfield — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Stringfield's 1978 report — Patrick Gross · ufology.patrickgross.org · archived copy
- Linda Moulton Howe — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Earthfiles — Linda Moulton Howe's news site · earthfiles.com · archived copy
- earthfiles.com · earthfiles.com · archived copy
- Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton · en.wikipedia.org
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Leonard H. Stringfield”, “Linda Moulton Howe”, “Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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