Bell Labs source on 1950 crash files
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 4
| Date | 1950 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic) |
| People | Leonard Stringfield |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 41 |
| Year | 1950 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1950 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 5 |
Bell Labs source on 1950 crash files — A Bell Labs source says a former NASA employee had technical files on a 1950 crash retrieval.
This account says a source at Bell Laboratories told researcher Leonard Stringfield that a former NASA employee had technical files on a 1950 crash retrieval. The details are thin: the original informant, the employee and the files themselves were never identified.
The story is one of dozens of anonymous reports collected by Stringfield, a former Air Force intelligence officer and NICAP researcher from Cincinnati. He first presented them in "Retrievals of the Third Kind" at the July 1978 MUFON symposium in Dayton, Ohio, and in a series of "Status Reports" published until 1994. He promised his sources anonymity, which helped people come forward but means the claims can't be checked.
Stringfield's work made crash-retrieval stories a central topic in UFO research and inspired later investigations of Roswell. It also drew criticism: some of his informants were later found to have embellished or invented their stories. It's also worth noting that NASA didn't exist until 1958, so the "former NASA employee" must have been describing records from before the agency was founded.
In the testimony
The testimony cites: Retrievals of the Third Kind presented at MUFON 1978, Leon Stringfield, p180.
People and topics
- NASA — The U.S. civilian space agency, created in 1958.
- Leonard Stringfield — Former Air Force intelligence officer and NICAP researcher who collected anonymous crash-retrieval accounts from 1978 to 1994.
- U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
- NICAP — The leading U.S. civilian UFO group of the 1950s and 1960s.
- MUFON — The largest civilian UFO organization in the United States.
- Crash retrieval — The alleged recovery of crashed non-human craft by governments.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- Roswell — The New Mexico town at the center of the 1947 crash story.
On the Timeline
- Hebgen Lake disc report (1949) (17 August 1949) — An Air Force base reports an informant's account of seven discs and two crashed ones; a lake search finds nothing.
- Henry J. Taylor secret-weapon broadcast (1950) (27 March 1950) — A broadcaster announces saucers are secret U.S. weapons; the story is later called CIA disinformation.
See every 1950 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
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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