Navy linguist and the Soviet crash report
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 9
Navy linguist and the Soviet crash report
| Published | Leonard H. Stringfield, UFO Crash Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum – Status Report VI (July 1991), section "Over There" |
|---|---|
| Informant | "S. M. Brannigan" (pseudonym), former Petty Officer Third Class |
| Alleged message | 1964, received at sea aboard a U.S. Navy amphibious-force flagship |
| Alleged crash sites | Near Penkridge, Staffordshire, England (main section); West Germany (remains) |
| Republished | Earthfiles (Linda Moulton Howe), 30 August 2004, Part 16 (subscribers only) |
| Status | Unverified; single anonymous source |
| Date | July 1991 |
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Military encounters (topic), Bases & Area 51 (topic) |
| People | Leonard Stringfield, Linda Moulton Howe |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 111 |
| Year | 1991 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1991 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 6 |
The Navy linguist and the Soviet crash report is an anonymous story published by the UFO researcher Leonard H. Stringfield in July 1991. A former U.S. Navy petty officer, trained to translate intercepted Russian transmissions and identified only by the pseudonym "S. M. Brannigan", said that in 1964 his ship received a coded message about "artifacts" recovered with three dead crew. According to the message, a UFO had crashed in two parts: the main section near Penkridge in Staffordshire, England, and the remains in West Germany. Air Force Intelligence recovered the parts and the occupants and shipped them to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and U.S. and other NATO interceptors were involved.[4] No record of such a crash or message has been found.
The account
- Stringfield's report sets the story "some time in 1964", "somewhere at sea" between the Caribbean and the Atlantic. A specially rigged tank landing ship (LST), serving as flagship of a naval amphibious force and described as a "spy ship", received a coded radio message in its "crypto-machine" room. The message reported that "artifacts" had been retrieved along with three dead personnel.[4]
- Brannigan, a former Third Class Petty Officer, told Stringfield that the decoded report said the UFO had come down in two parts. The main section fell near Penkridge, Staffordshire, and the rest in West Germany.[4]
- He said Air Force Intelligence recovered both the wreckage and the occupants and shipped them to Wright-Patterson. U.S. and other NATO interceptors had been involved. He added that there was more to the incident, involving coded information, which he preferred to keep confidential.[4]
Stringfield's interpretation
- Stringfield admitted the disclosure was "sketchy" but suggested it might be only the tip of the iceberg regarding military crash-retrieval operations abroad. Crash reports, he noted, came from every continent.[4]
- He suspected that U.S. special retrieval teams had been, and still were, ready to go to any crash site within America's sphere of military or economic influence, as he believed had happened with NATO in England and West Germany. He thought the USSR would have done the same in Warsaw Pact countries and as far as Cuba.[4]
- He then moved on to Soviet-era UFO reports that were emerging after glasnost. These included a Russian correspondent's claim of a military UFO data centre at Mytishchi near Moscow, and a 1981 NORAD message about objects heading toward Moscow.[4]
What the earlier version got wrong
- The earlier version of this article said the linguist decoded "an intercepted Soviet report" and suggested "that the Soviets were tracking UFO crashes in the West". Stringfield's text does not say that. It describes a coded message received by an American ship, and Brannigan's Russian-translation training is mentioned only to describe his job. The recovery is attributed to U.S. Air Force Intelligence and NATO, and the speculation about Soviet retrievals is Stringfield's own and concerns the Eastern bloc.[4] The title of this article reflects the earlier reading.
- The earlier version also gave no date for the alleged event. The account places the message in 1964; July 1991 is when Stringfield published it.[4]
Republication
- Stringfield, a former U.S. Army Air Forces intelligence officer, published seven privately printed "status reports" on alleged UFO crash retrievals between 1978 and 1994. Status Report VI, The Inner Sanctum, appeared in July 1991. He died on 18 December 1994.[3][5]
- In 2004 the journalist Linda Moulton Howe reprinted Status Report VI in parts on her Earthfiles website. Part 16, published on 30 August 2004, begins with a separate anecdote about a boy who said he saw bodies in a Wright Field hangar in 1946. It is open only to subscribers, so it could not be read for this article.[2][3] A scanned copy of the original report is available on the Internet Archive; the account above is taken from it.[5]
- Howe is an American journalist and documentary-maker best known for promoting the idea that extraterrestrials are behind cattle mutilations, and for claims that the U.S. government works with aliens. In 1983 the Air Force sergeant Richard Doty showed her fabricated documents, as part of what he later described as a disinformation effort.[1]
- The anonymous UAP timeline in the journalist Michael Shellenberger's November 2024 written testimony to the House Oversight Committee summarises the story under July 1991, from the Earthfiles reprint. It does not mention the 1964 setting and adds that the phrase NATO "artifact" retrievals was used.[6]
Assessment
- The story rests on one pseudonymous informant recalling, decades later, the contents of a single coded message. He withheld further details. The account names no ship, gives no exact date, and offers no documents.[4]
- No record has surfaced of a 1964 crash near Penkridge or in West Germany, or of any related NATO recovery. The Soviet Union did have UFO-related research, some of which came to light after its collapse in 1991, but nothing links it to this report.[4]
People and topics
- U.S. Navy — The U.S. naval service, whose pilots reported the UAP encounters revealed in 2017.
- 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.
- Linda Moulton Howe — Journalist and filmmaker who runs the Earthfiles website and has reported many crash-retrieval claims.
On the Timeline
- Tim Cooper's German saucer source (1991) (July 1991) — A retired colonel says early UAP were first thought to be German and used unknown materials.
- Oliver Henderson and the Roswell flight (9 July 1991) — Oliver Henderson's widow swears he told her he flew Roswell crash debris and bodies.
See every 1991 event on the UAP Timeline →
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
References
- 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
- Leonard H. Stringfield, UFO Crash Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum – Status Report VI (July 1991), section "Over There" (scan) · archive.org
- "UFO Crash Retrievals, Status Reports 1–7, by Leonard Stringfield" (Internet Archive collection description) · archive.org
- Michael Shellenberger, written testimony to the House Oversight Committee (13 November 2024), p. 111 · oversight.house.gov
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Linda Moulton Howe”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
Categories: 1991 | Bases area 51 | Crashes retrievals | Leonard stringfield | Linda moulton howe | Military encounters | Timeline event | Unidentified flying object | Us navy
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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