Albert Collins metal samples claim
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 7
| Type | Event (single-source claim) |
|---|---|
| Claimant | Albert Bruce Collins, "Barnabas" (died 31 December 1990, Big Bear Lake, California, aged 87) |
| Source | Researcher Timothy S. Cooper, said to have interviewed Collins in 1990 |
| Published in | Leonard H. Stringfield, UFO Crash/Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum – Status Report VI (July 1991) |
| Claim | Saw the Roswell craft at Berkeley in 1947 and helped analyse debris |
| Status | Unverified; no biography, affidavit or recording |
| Date | 1949 |
| Topics | Beings & bodies (topic), Nuclear & missile sites (topic), Government programs (topic) |
| People | Albert Collins, Tim Cooper |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 40 |
| Year | 1949 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1949 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 7 |
The Albert Collins metal samples claim is a story told by the researcher Tim Cooper. He said a metallurgist named Albert Bruce Collins had analysed strange metal-like samples recovered from a crashed craft in the late 1940s, before the Army took them away. Cooper said he interviewed Collins in 1990, shortly before Collins died. The story was published in 1991 by the crash-retrieval researcher Leonard Stringfield. The claim rests entirely on Cooper's account, and there is no verified biography of Collins.[1][2]
The claim
According to Cooper, Collins was an Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) technician and a member of an "Interplanetary Phenomena Unit". He said Collins had worked as a metallurgist for the University of California, Berkeley, and Occidental College on Manhattan Project research from 1942 to the late 1950s, developing alloys for electromagnetic propagation and magnetic propulsion. Collins reportedly said he heard rumours of "unusual metal-like wood being tested and results fed into a computer at Berkeley". He also said he saw the Roswell craft arrive in Berkeley in 1947 on a flatbed truck being backed into a warehouse, and then worked on analysing debris fragments. Cooper said Collins was known to a CIC agent named "Cantwheel" or "Cantwell".[1][2]
Publication
Leonard Stringfield included the story, with Collins identified as "Barnabas", in his July 1991 Status Report VI: The Inner Sanctum. Stringfield wrote that he was "indebted to Tim Cooper again" for the story. He quoted the local Big Bear newspaper, the Grizzly, of 10 January 1991: "The Valley watchdog is gone. Albert Bruce Collins, known as Barnabas, passed away on New Year's Eve." The paper described a stoop-shouldered man with white hair and a trailing beard, a friend of law enforcement who always had something to report to deputies. He was found dead by a repairman who had come to fix the heater at his apartment, after he had called 911 that morning to report a smell of gas.[1]
Stringfield also quoted Collins on Air Force space-weapons programmes. "The Air Force wanted to counter the 'Black Sky' UFO threat by the formation of the 'High Frontier' programs for space-based weapons systems in the early 1960s," Collins was quoted as saying. He claimed the Talon Gold and Teal Ruby projects "were a direct result of satellite recon photos of orbiting space craft of unknown origins". He said this led to the founding of the National Reconnaissance Office in 1960, with data classified by NORAD at Ent Air Force Base. Stringfield said Collins died at Big Bear Lake, California, on 31 December 1990, aged 87. The report was later reprinted in parts by Linda Moulton Howe on her Earthfiles website.[1][5][6]
Assessment
No biography, affidavit, recording or other researcher has confirmed that Collins held the jobs described or that the samples existed. Patrick Gross's Roswell witness file notes that there is "absolutely no verification by any other Roswell researchers" for Cooper's interview. It says many question whether Collins existed as described, and that the CIC agent Cooper named does not appear in Army records.[2][1]
Cooper was also the source of a large batch of Majestic 12-style documents, more than 100, which he said he began receiving in 1992. The researcher Karl Pflock suspected Cooper of authoring bogus documents and noted that Cooper had earlier supplied UFO stories to Stringfield. One Cooper-supplied MJ-12 document claimed to link Marilyn Monroe's death to her supposed knowledge of UFOs. The CIA concluded it was fraudulent, and the FBI had already called the MJ-12 papers "completely bogus". The Collins story should be treated as an unverified single-source claim. More generally, claims of exotic metal from crashed craft are common in UFO lore. No sample has been shown to be of non-terrestrial origin, and a 2024 Pentagon analysis of one famous specimen found it to be terrestrial.[3][4][7]
People and topics
- Albert Collins — Metallurgist described by author Tim Cooper as having studied recovered crash material; his existence is unconfirmed.
- Roswell — The New Mexico town at the center of the 1947 crash story.
- Tim Cooper — California researcher who said he received many MJ-12-style documents from anonymous sources in the 1990s.
- Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit — Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit
On the Timeline
- White Sands blown-window crash claim (1948) (1948) — An anonymous source claims a disc crashed at White Sands with its occupants dead from a blown-out window.
- Alleged CIA report on recovered disc technology (1949) (17 August 1949) — An alleged CIA report names a secret Defense Department program for exploiting recovered disc technology.
See every 1949 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Project Blue Book — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Project Blue Book records — National Archives · archives.gov · archived copy
- Project Blue Book files — The Black Vault · theblackvault.com · archived copy
- UFO documents — CIA Reading Room · cia.gov · archived copy
- Los Alamos National Laboratory — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Kirtland Air Force Base — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- Leonard H. Stringfield, "UFO crash/retrievals: the inner sanctum", Status Report VI (Jul 1991), Earthfiles · earthfiles.com · archived copy
- "Albert Bruce Collins", Patrick Gross · ufologie.patrickgross.org · archived copy
- Majestic 12 — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Vatican Observatory on UFO claims · vaticanobservatory.org · archived copy
- Linda Moulton Howe — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Earthfiles — Linda Moulton Howe's news site · earthfiles.com · archived copy
- "AARO Releases Findings on Suspected Extraterrestrial Alloy", The Black Vault · theblackvault.com
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Majestic 12”, “Linda Moulton Howe”, 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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