Fort Polk crash claim (1953)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 7
| Date | 1953 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic), Military encounters (topic) |
| People | Leonard Stringfield, Linda Moulton Howe |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 47 |
| Year | 1953 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1953 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 7 |
An anonymous source identified only as "H.J." told researcher Leonard Stringfield that while he was in the Army at Fort Polk, Louisiana, in 1953, he and others saw an egg-shaped object crash-land in soft, sandy soil, after which a special detachment and an ambulance were sent out.[1]
The source
The account appeared in Stringfield's first crash-retrieval paper, "Retrievals of the Third Kind", presented at the MUFON symposium in Dayton, Ohio, in July 1978. Linda Moulton Howe later quoted it in a 2005 Earthfiles series reprinting Stringfield's reports.[1][2]
The account
In engineer Robert Wood's 2004 summary of Stringfield's 80 crash-retrieval reports, the Fort Polk case is report 26: the crash was witnessed by troops, senior officers and medics took away one body on a stretcher, three crew members were helped away as if injured, and debriefings followed. Wood used it as an example of a case with many potential witnesses.[3]
Context
Fort Polk was a large Army training post in western Louisiana. Stringfield received many letters and calls after his 1978 paper and printed most accounts without names, to protect his sources.[2][3]
Assessment
No other witness, document or base record has confirmed the story. The Earthfiles version and Wood's summary differ in detail, the first mentioning an ambulance and the second a body and three surviving crew.[1][3]
People and topics
- 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.
- 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.
- Earthfiles — Linda Moulton Howe's website.
On the Timeline
- Fort Monmouth desert-disc film (1953) — A radar technician says he was shown a film of a silver disc embedded in the desert at Fort Monmouth.
- Pentacle memo (9 January 1953) — A Battelle scientist suggests using Project Stork to reassure the public that everything is under control.
See every 1953 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- "Final Part 3: UFO crash/retrievals: Status Report V", Earthfiles (Feb 2005), reprint via UFO Scans (PDF) · ufoscans.com · archived copy
- Leonard H. Stringfield — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Robert M. Wood, "Correlating Leonard Stringfield's crash-retrieval reports", 2nd Annual UFO Crash Retrieval Conference Proceedings (Nov 2004), Internet Archive (PDF) · archive.org · archived copy
- Stringfield, Status Report V: Is the cover-up lid lifting? (1989) · thriftbooks.com · 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
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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