What happened
On October 18, 1973, at around 11:00 p.m., a U.S. Army Reserve UH-1H helicopter was flying from Columbus to Cleveland. Near Mansfield the crew spotted a red light approaching at high speed on a collision course. The commander, Captain Lawrence Coyne, put the aircraft into a steep descent, but the object stopped right above them. According to the crew, it was a gray, metallic, cigar-shaped hull with a red light at the front and a green beam at the rear that lit up the cockpit. When the object flew off, they found that the helicopter was climbing at about 300 meters (1,000 feet) per minute, even though the controls were set for descent. The radio briefly stopped working. The object was reportedly also seen by witnesses on the ground.
Witnesses
The four-man crew: Captain Lawrence Coyne, Lieutenant Arrigo Jezzi, Sergeants John Healey and Robert Yanacsek; several ground witnesses were later identified.
Explanations and hypotheses
Philip Klass believed the crew saw a bright fireball from the Orionid meteor shower and that the climb was an unconscious reaction by the pilot. Critics of this explanation point out that the object reportedly stopped above the helicopter, which a meteor does not do, and that the ground witnesses’ accounts matched the crew’s description. The case is considered one of the best documented of the 1970s.
Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.