Larry W. and the 1968 capture claim
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 6
| Correspondent | "Larry W.", in a letter to Leonard Stringfield |
|---|---|
| Letter dated | 14 December 1980 |
| Claim | A former classmate said he had witnessed the "capture" of a UFO in 1968 while serving in the Army |
| Published in | Stringfield's crash-retrieval status reports |
| Chain | At least third-hand: witness → Larry W. → Stringfield |
| Corroboration | None; no place, unit or name given |
| Date | 14 December 1980 |
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic) |
| People | Leonard Stringfield |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 90 |
| Year | 1980 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1980 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 5 |
According to the earlier summary of Leonard Stringfield's crash-retrieval reports, a correspondent identified only as "Larry W." wrote to Stringfield in a letter dated 14 December 1980. A former classmate, he said, had told him he witnessed the "capture" of a UFO in 1968 while serving in the U.S. Army. Stringfield included the letter among the anonymous testimonies in his reports. The reports themselves are not among the readable sources, so the letter's wording could not be checked.[1][5] The account is at least third-hand. It gives no location, unit or names that would allow it to be checked, and no other source supports it.
The letter
The claim, as summarized, has three links:
- The witness. An unnamed former soldier said he saw a UFO "captured" in 1968 during his Army service.
- Larry W. He had been the witness's classmate, and heard the story from him.
- Stringfield. Larry W. passed it on by letter, which Stringfield published without the witness's identity.
The earlier citation gives the source as Stringfield's 1978 paper Retrievals of the Third Kind, page 151. That paper was presented at the MUFON Symposium in July 1978 and cannot contain a letter written in December 1980. The letter would belong in one of Stringfield's later status reports:[1][5]
- Status Report II. The UFO Crash/Retrieval Syndrome: New Sources, New Data (1980).
- Status Report III. UFO Crash/Retrievals: Amassing the Evidence (1982).
The exact report and page could not be checked.
Stringfield's method
Leonard Stringfield (1920–1994) began publishing on crash retrievals with his 1978 MUFON paper, presented in Dayton, Ohio. He went on to self-publish seven "status reports" by 1994.[1][2] His method:[3]
- Abstracts. The reports consist largely of numbered "abstracts" summarizing stories from unnamed informants. Many came to him after his 1977 book Situation Red.
- Hearsay. Stringfield acknowledged that cases "without names to back up the informant's testimony can be construed as hearsay". He said he "must make my stand on the merits of my credibility".
- Long chains. Some abstracts relayed stories through several hands. One came "first-hand" from the son of a man who had heard it from a cousin, a major in the Air Force.
- Recurring themes. Military witnesses blindfolded and driven to a crash site, or alien bodies seen packed in crates of dry ice.
Stringfield was respected for his diligence. He had founded Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects and its newsletter Orbit, worked with NICAP and MUFON, and left 60 volumes of papers to MUFON.[1][4] His 1978 paper was the first published account of the testimony of "Major J.M.", later known to be Jesse Marcel of Roswell.[2]
Assessment
The "Larry W." letter is a typical item in Stringfield's collection: a second-hand report from an anonymous correspondent about an anonymous witness.[3] As summarized, it does not say what was "captured", where, or by whom, and no witness has come forward. By Stringfield's own standard, it can be "construed as hearsay".[3]
People and topics
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- 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.
On the Timeline
- NSA Yeates affidavits (1980) (18 November 1980) — In a lawsuit, the NSA files a public and a secret affidavit about its UAP records.
- Spread of the Bennewitz disinformation (1980s Undefined) — Doty's fake document spreads to the public and into books and media.
See every 1980 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
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Leonard H. Stringfield”, 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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