Unmarked helicopter claim (1975)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 5
| Date | 14 March 1975 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Beings & bodies (topic), Nuclear & missile sites (topic), Military encounters (topic) |
| People | Leonard Stringfield, Kenneth Rommel |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 80 |
| Year | 1975 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1975 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 5 |
Unmarked helicopter claim (1975) — An Air Force officer says unmarked helicopters are sent to UAP-related sites.
According to an anonymous Air Force officer quoted by Leonard Stringfield, unmarked helicopters were sent to sites connected with UFO incidents in the mid-1970s. The officer suggested these were part of a quick-reaction capability for recovering material or controlling witnesses.
The 1970s saw many reports of mysterious unmarked helicopters, especially in connection with cattle mutilations in the western U.S. Several states, including Colorado and New Mexico, investigated, and in 1979 a former FBI agent, Kenneth Rommel, studied the mutilations for New Mexico, concluding most were caused by scavengers. Military and law enforcement agencies denied flying the helicopters.
The officer's claim was published in Stringfield's crash-retrieval papers, and like his other anonymous material, it can't be independently checked. No records of such a helicopter unit have been released.
In the testimony
The testimony cites: Retrievals of the Third Kind presented at MUFON 1978, Leon Stringfield, p155.
People and topics

- U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
- Leonard Stringfield — Former Air Force intelligence officer and NICAP researcher who collected anonymous crash-retrieval accounts from 1978 to 1994.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- Federal Bureau of Investigation — The U.S. federal police agency, which helped check flying disc reports from 1947 to 1950.
- Kenneth Rommel — Former FBI agent whose 1980 report attributed most cattle mutilations to natural causes.
- Crash retrieval — The alleged recovery of crashed non-human craft by governments.
On the Timeline

- Midwest engineers group claim (1974) (10 December 1974) — Kit Green tells Vallée 15 engineers in the Midwest secretly research UAP for the CIA.
- Goldwater letter to Shlomo Arnon (1975) (28 March 1975) — Goldwater writes that UAP information is classified above Top Secret.
See every 1975 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- Leonard H. Stringfield — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Stringfield's 1978 report — Patrick Gross · ufology.patrickgross.org · archived copy
- Leonard Stringfield's status report at the 1978 MUFON symposium — Podcast UFO · podcastufo.com · archived copy
- Retrobituaries: Leonard Stringfield — Mental Floss · mentalfloss.com · archived copy
- UFO Crash Retrievals: Status Report I — Goodreads · goodreads.com · archived copy
Further reading
- Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Hangar 18 (the legend and 1980 film) — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- UFO documents — CIA Reading Room · cia.gov · archived copy
- Los Alamos National Laboratory — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Holloman Air Force Base — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
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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