Roswell-area helicopter crash claim (1954)

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Contents 4
Roswell-area helicopter crash claim (1954)
Main Street in Roswell, New Mexico , USA
Main Street in Roswell, New Mexico , USA Photo: Phil Campbell · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
Date12 April 1954
TopicsCrashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic)
PeopleLeonard Stringfield, Linda Moulton Howe
TestimonyShellenberger testimony, p. 51
Year1954 in UFO history
Timeline1954 on the UAP Timeline
Sources5

Roswell-area helicopter crash claim (1954) — An Air Force helicopter trainee says he was sent to a desert crash near Roswell in 1954.

According to this anonymous account, an Air Force helicopter crewman in training said that in April 1954 he was flown to a desert crash site northwest of Roswell, New Mexico, near a small lake. He described a saucer-shaped craft that had crashed edgewise into the ground and a scene secured by military personnel.

The story appears in Leonard Stringfield's UFO Crash/Retrievals: Status Report III – Amassing the Evidence (1982) and was republished in 2005 by journalist Linda Moulton Howe on Earthfiles. Like most of Stringfield's material, the witness is unnamed, and no records or other witnesses confirm it.

The Air Force's 1997 report The Roswell Report: Case Closed noted that, starting in the 1950s, it dropped human-shaped test dummies from high-altitude balloons over New Mexico in projects such as High Dive and Excelsior, and suggested these explain some later "alien body" stories. Critics point out that the dummy drops began a few years after some of the claimed sightings. The 1954 account doesn't match any known Air Force accident.

People and topics

Skyline of Roswell, New Mexico, looking south along Main St
Skyline of Roswell, New Mexico, looking south along Main St Photo: Vasiliymeshko · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
  • U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
  • Roswell — The New Mexico town at the center of the 1947 crash story.
  • 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.
  • Earthfiles — Linda Moulton Howe's website.
  • The Roswell Report: Case Closed — The Roswell Report: Case Closed

On the Timeline

Roswell Daily Record . July 8, 1947. Top of front page. Article titled: "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region". The flying saucer…
Roswell Daily Record . July 8, 1947. Top of front page. Article titled: "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region". The flying saucer… Photo: Roswell Daily Record. · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
  • JANAP 146(C) (10 March 1954) — Directive JANAP 146(C) covers UAP reports and bars civilian pilots from discussing them.
  • Navy FLYOBRPT reporting instruction (1954) (23 July 1954) — A new Navy directive orders UAP sighting reports sent to several intelligence commands.

See every 1954 event on the UAP Timeline →

References

Further reading

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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