Fort Polk crash claim (1953)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 9
| Alleged date | Summer (probably July) 1953, at dusk |
|---|---|
| Place | Maneuver area near Camp (Fort) Polk, Louisiana |
| Witness | "HJ", then a 17-year-old Army private in B Company, later a sergeant in Korea |
| Claim | An egg-shaped craft crash-landed; medics removed one body and three injured survivors; the area was cordoned off and troops were told it was a secret Army experiment |
| Published | Stringfield, Status Report III (June 1982), Case A-1 |
| Status | No corroborating witness, document or record |
| 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 | 8 |
An anonymous source identified only as "HJ" told the researcher Leonard Stringfield about an event in 1953. While HJ was in the Army on maneuvers near Camp Polk, Louisiana, he and others saw an egg-shaped object crash-land in soft, sandy soil. A special detachment and an ambulance were then sent out.[1][8] HJ said medics took away one body and helped three injured crew members, and that the troops were told they had seen "a secret Army experiment".[8] No other witness, document or base record has confirmed the story.[8]
The source
The account appeared as Case A-1 in Stringfield's UFO Crash/Retrievals: Amassing the Evidence, Status Report III, dated June 1982.[8] It is sometimes attributed to his first paper, "Retrievals of the Third Kind", given at the MUFON symposium in July 1978, but the engineer Robert Wood's index of the reports places it in Status Report III.[2][3][8] HJ's background, as Stringfield gave it:[8]
- Military service. He had served as a sergeant with the 24th Infantry in Korea, where he was injured.
- Later life. He was retired, lived near Greensburg, Pennsylvania, and was a VA hospital outpatient.
- The interviews. He was first interviewed in November 1978 and April 1980 by Lois Kukick of the Pennsylvania Center for UFO Research. Stringfield then spoke to him several times by phone in 1980.
Linda Moulton Howe later reprinted Stringfield's status reports on her Earthfiles site in 2005.[5][7] A scanned copy of one Earthfiles instalment is archived by UFO Scans without a text layer.[1]
The account
As a 17-year-old private in B Company, HJ said, he was on maneuvers near Camp Polk in the summer of 1953.[8] His account:[8]
- The crash. At dusk a patrol watched an egg-shaped object crash-land in soft, sandy soil. A and B Companies were ordered to stay at the site, and a special detachment arrived, followed by an ambulance and other equipment.
- The craft. He got within 15 yards before an officer pulled the men back to about 100 yards ("Peons like me had to get out of the way"). The large ovoid had no windows or lights and a fin-like protrusion.
- The crew. Top brass and medics went to an open hatch on the side. Two medics carried a body on a stretcher to the ambulance. Three more crew emerged and were helped as though injured; one "kept looking at the one in the litter and made strange noises".
- Their appearance. The occupants were 3½ to 4 feet tall and slight, and walked stiffly as if without knees. Their hands looked like mittens, their large heads seemed helmeted, and they wore tight dull metallic green uniforms.
- The aftermath. He later heard the survivors were isolated in a hospital and soon died, and that their bodies went to a medical centre near Washington. The site was roped off for "a 50 mile radius" and guarded by MPs.
- The warning. After two days confined to post, Company B was told it had seen "a secret Army experiment" and warned not to talk. Everyone involved was given "every kind of test" for three days at the base hospital.
Dr. Rank's interview
To answer charges that his cases were hearsay, Stringfield arranged for Dr. Peter Rank to question HJ. In a letter of 15 March 1982, Rank described an hour-long call that December, with some differences in detail:[8]
- The timing. It was probably July, at the end of basic training, at about 7 p.m., during red-and-blue team maneuvers.
- The landing. HJ's platoon of eight or nine saw the object "land 'out in the boondocks'". It was "as wide as a three bedroom single story ranch house", and a portion fell away to form a ramp.
- The aftermath. Medics carried one small humanoid out on a stretcher and helped the others walk. The platoon was then sent straight to Korea without leave.
Rank judged HJ "relatively unsophisticated", too naive to have invented the story, and probably unable to read well.[8]
The missing statement
HJ said he had names and addresses of other Company B men and eventually sent them, through Rank, to Stringfield.[8] In autumn 1981 he agreed to write a signed statement. His wife reportedly posted three signed pages in early October 1981, but they never arrived. When Stringfield called again on 3 February 1982, HJ's phone had been disconnected.[8] Stringfield reported no confirmation from the other Company B names.[8]
Wood's index
In a 2004 paper, "Correlating Leonard Stringfield's Crash-Retrieval Reports", Robert Wood tabulated 80 of Stringfield's witness reports. He listed Fort Polk as Report 26, sourced to Status Report III, with Rank and Kukick as backup contacts.[3] He cited it as one of three cases involving recovery teams. In his summary, "top brass and medics took one body on stretcher, three live crew aided as though injured. Crash witnessed by troops. Debriefings and follow-ups."[3] Wood also gave Stringfield's background: Air Force service in the Pacific in the Second World War, first as a journalist and then in intelligence, then 31 years at the DuBois Chemical Company.[3] Stringfield issued seven status reports from 1978 to 1994.[2][4]
Assessment
Fort Polk was a large Army training post in western Louisiana. Stringfield printed most accounts without names to protect his sources.[2][8] The ambulance, the stretcher and the three survivors all come from HJ's original account, though his versions to Stringfield and to Rank differ on some points. No other witness, document or base record has confirmed the story.[8]
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
- Leonard Stringfield, UFO crash/retrieval status reports (compiled text) · archive.org
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Leonard H. Stringfield”, “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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