In this episode, I cover the 1973 incident where a helicopter has an encounter with a tic tac shaped UFO.
In this episode, I cover the 1973 incident where a helicopter has an encounter with a tic tac shaped UFO.
Ep 32 Coyne Helicopter UFO
Hello and welcome back to the UFO and Aliens Podcast. I’m your host Rick Black and today I’m going to tell you about the 1973 Mansfield Coyne UFO Incident. October 18th, 1973, at about 11:00 p.m. four professional military pilots (Captain Lawrence Coyne, Lt. Arrigo Jezzi, Sgt. John Healy, and Robert Yanacek) were in a helicopter when they encountered a strange red object that was travelling along-side their Helicopter. They were flying in an Army Reserve UH-1 which is commonly referred to as a Huey. They were on their way back to Cleveland having travelled to Columbus earlier that day for a regular standard medical exam and they were at that time about 8 miles east of Mansfield. So, the four men see this object and they’re watching it when it suddenly turned towards them. The object kept getting bigger and bigger and the men in the helicopter braced for impact expecting a collision. Then the thing just stopped right in front of them and hovered silently. It was obvious to the men in the helicopter that it wasn’t moving.
They were flying at 2,500 feet over a combination of woods, hills and farmland. It was actually Healy who saw the red light first on their left. It was pretty far away and too bright to be a standard aircraft light. He didn’t say anything about it to the rest of the crew, but kept his eye on it. Then Yanacek noticed it. As it got closer to their Huey he told his commander, Captain Coyne.
That is the moment they thought they were on a collision course so Coyne pushed down on the throttle and descended to 500 feet. As he was doing this he was radioing the control tower in Mansfield for information. A few seconds after contacting the tower, their communications began to be interrupted. The red object was still heading in their direction. The men braced for impact.
That had to be terrifying. Just imagine yourself in a helicopter and you just know this object is going to hit you. It’s not like a car crash, you don’t just open the door after the collision and walk away.
But just when they expected it to hit, the object came to a complete stop directly in front and slightly above them. It was metallic, cigar-shaped and was described eerily similar to the Nimitz tic tac UFO. And it filled the entire windshield as it just hung there in the air. The crew estimated the object to be around sixty feet in length and around twenty feet high.
The men are sitting there watching this thing when a green light “swung” from underneath and hit the windshield of the helicopter. Coyne said “the whole cabin turned green” as the light illuminated everything in a bright green wash.
After a few seconds, Yanascek guessed 10 -12 seconds, the object moved up and to the west at incredible speed. Coyne, who had the helicopter’s height locked throughout the incident aat 1,700 feet, realized they were suddenly at a height of 3,500 feet. They had climbed almost 2,000 feet “in a matter of seconds and never knew it!” We went from 1,700 feet all the way up to 3,500 feet. There’s no explanation for why the throttle in down and you’re gaining altitude.”
Then they all felt like a bump had nudged the helicopter, and Coyne instinctively climbed slightly. The helicopter was back in his control. The crew, still shaken, but all calm continued on to Cleveland where they would make an official report of the incident. They described the UFO very similarly to the Nimitz tic tac that we have all seen. The said it was cigar shaped, it changed direction in a split second and it flew off at an incredible speed.
Now here is where the story is different than other encounters with aircraft pilots. Before Coyne makes his official report, he tells the media of the incident upon landing. A local Cleveland reporter ran the story the following day. Not too long after that, Coyne appeared on the ‘Dick Cavett Show’ and told his story about the incident to a national audience. Because Coyne did this, the military didn’t do their usual ‘swamp gas’, or ‘weather balloon’ cover-up. And many saw this as a credible claim.
The Saturday after the incident, Yanacek and Healy both drew pictures of the UFO. And both pictures were incredibly similar. Almost identical.
In addition to the four men in the helicopter, there were also witnesses on the ground. One of them was Jim Carver and his family who were driving from their grandmothers house to their home just outside of Mansfield. The family included Jim, his three siblings and his mother Emma. It was shortly after 11 p.m. when they noticed a strange red light in the sky above them. It appeared to be getting closer.
Emma Turned the car onto Route 430. As she did this, they could see two lights above them. One was red and the other was green. As each of them watched the lights in fascination, they noticed the sound of an approaching helicopter. Emma pulled the car to the side of the road and she and her children stepped out to watch the events in the sky above them.
They could see the huge cigar-shaped object hovering over the helicopter. One of the kids said it was as big as a school bus. Suddenly, they witnessed the bright green light shoot out from the underside and bathe not only the entire cockpit in fluorescent green but everything in sight. “The woods, the car, everything turned green” was one report from a witness below.
As the crew reported, after a few seconds the light went out and the object moved away, casting a brief flash of bright, white light as it did.
Fifteen years after this incident another witness came forward with information. Jeanne Elias from the south-east Mansfield area was laying in bed watching the 11 oclock news when the sound of an extremely low flying helicopter made her stop watching the tv. She was used to low-flying aircraft because their house was only six miles from the Mansfield Airport runway. But this aircraft sounded lower than normal and she was afraid there was going to be a crash.
As she panicked, she “hid her head under the pillow” on her bed. She could hear her teenage son, John calling to her from his room next door. The loud rumbling sound had waken him up and the bright green light filled his entire room from the outside.
The Mansfield News Journal sent out an appeal for witnesses to the Manfield incident in 2015. The got responses from many people. One was Brian Stevens, who at the time of the incident was 13 years old. He would recall seeing a red-orange ball that he “couldn’t take his eye off” as he walked along Ohio 39.
What’s this 13 year old kid doing walking down the road at 11:00 at night? It was a different time and place I guess.
Another new witness, Glenn Stout, worked at Mansfield Tire. He and several co-workers were on a break at the back dock when “a crazy looking light” sped towards a helicopter, nearly crashing. One particularly bizarre detail offered b y Stout was his home electric bill for the month following the incident was only $4. He wondered if the surprisingly low bill had a connection to the UFO that evening?
Judith Hamm was yet another person who witnessed the bizarre events of October 1973. She claimed to have almost “screamed out loud’ as she witnessed what she thought was “two planes about to crash into each other!” Hamm believed it was a military plane until reading stories of the encounter afterward.
Les Kiser, who was 13 years old at the time of the sighting, would witness the strange events from his back garden along with his 30 year old sister. As they were doing chores in the yard, a huge oval-shaped craft came into view over them. There were two red lights on the object which suddenly vanished to be replaced with an intensely bright green light. He could clearly see the helicopter in front of the craft, glowing in the green waves.
Kiser felt immediately it was a UFO. His sister, however, would state to him that “it’s probably military! Don’t say anything to anyone about it”. He would tell the Mansfield News Journal in 2015 “I know what I saw, and it wasn’t anything military!”
His sister’s warning, however, wasn’t entirely lost on Les. He wouldn’t talk about it until the appeal for witnesses through the newspaper. He would state that the experience “was so strong for me that I never lost it in my mind!”
There was an uptick in UFO sightings in 1973. There was a report on the UFOs on CBS with Walter Cronkite. They covered many sightings in the report from Michigan to the Gulf Coast.
Ben Hansen in his show UFO Witness tracked down one of the pilots of the helicporter, 1st Lt. Rick Jezzi. Jezzi is one of if not the only remaining crew member from that night and he hasn’t spoken about the incident since it happened but Ben was able to sit down with him for an interview. So Rick explained his experience like this:
“ We were about 2,00 feet above the ground, and we were flying, everything was copacetic. It was a clear night. And I think it was Yanacek who said, Gee there’s a red light in the eastern horizon. And it’s approaching. And all of a sudden, the commentary increases in tempo. Uh it seems to be coming right at us. It, it’s a red light and it just seems like the intensity began to increase. So, it was travelling relatively fast. Was it 600 knots? Was it 500 knots? I can’t say. Was it 1,000? Who knows. But, it was much much faster than what we were used to seeing at that altitude on a regular flight. Coyne says ‘I’ve got the aircraft’. Immediately he went into a…autorotation. Which on a helicopter you cut the throttle you put the collective down and you drop and you drop pretty aggressively.”
But the helicopter didn’t drop at all, instead he started gaining altitude. Completely out of the pilots control.
Rick continued, “Something happened. Something came in..and it rattled the crew. I have no idea what it was. I only got to see the object when it was directly above us and what I noticed was a very bright white light and it was close enough to be a major concern” he laughs.
So as mentioned before they tried to dive to avert it, but the unknown craft pulled the helicopter towards it. According to the crew they went from 1,700 feet to 3,500 feet in 10 seconds. All while directing the helicopter to do the opposite.
Rick said “It moved quickly, and I recall following it all the way to the horizon where it disappeared. And all of a sudden, we noticed that we were a little higher altitude than we typically would fly.”
After the encounter, the returned to their normal altitude and proceeded on to Cleveland/Hawkins and landed. They reported with the FAA and found that no other flights were in the air that day. The strange craft was truly an unidentified flying object. They reported it as a near miss and that was the official position that was taken.
Ben asked Rick if after they reported the event was there any follow up and Rick answered that no, there was no further mention of the incident.
In the show, Season one Episode one of UFO Witness. Ben is actually covering the tic tac UFO from 2004, and comparing that report with this incident that happened in 1973. Both are very similar. Both involve military aircraft and the UFO is described similarly. Could it be the same craft or the same type of craft in both cases?
Another thing that Rick Jezzi mentions is that the compass on the helicopter never worked the same after the incident. It would periodically spin for no known reason and sometimes it would point to a direction that it shouldn’t be pointing to. It was later replaced and that piece of hard evidence was unfortunately destroyed. It is believed by Jezzi that the government knows a whole lot more than they are telling us.
I can’t find anything to argue against this incident. It sounds to me like a real close encounter with a UFO. If what was described could have been a top secret government experimental aircraft, then something would have come out by now. If we had technology to move machines the way that they were described here, some of that technology would be obvious 50 years later. But there is nothing. Our aircraft are more advanced now than they were in 1973, but not so much more than I would think would be normal. Nothing like what has been described.
Now, the witnesses on the ground. There are a couple of things that bother me. One is, the 13 year old and his 30 year old sister in the garden doing chores. What was going on in 1973 where people are outside doing chores at 11:00 at night. And it October. Isn’t it a little chilly in Ohio in October? Maybe not too cold, but still…11:00 at night? And what about the 13 year old boy walking down Ohio 39 at 11:00 at night? That wouldn’t happen today I’m sure. Where are this kids parents? Did they normally let him just walk down the road late at night. It didn’t mention if he was alone or not. I assumed he was.
And the last thing was the crew at Mansfield Tire. What were their hours? Was there a shift that late. I am imagining a place where you go to get tires for your car or truck and they probably also are a full auto repair shop where they do oil changes and things of that sort. I may be totally wrong here, but that’s what I have in my head. So I match that up with what I know about those kinds of places and I know that their hours are like, 6 or 7 in the morning until 7p.m. at the latest. Who’s still working at 11:00 p.m.? But, for the benefit of the doubt, maybe it’s a tire plant or warehouse or distribution center that has shifts around the clock. Then maybe it makes sense.
The witnesses on the ground combined with the four experienced crew members in the helicopter make this one of the most compelling cases I’ve read about. Even without the witnesses on the ground, it’s a compelling case.
I’m not convinced that all of the witnesses on the ground are telling the truth here. The story was already out there before they said anything. They could definitely be inserting themselves into the story, but for what reason I have no idea.
But it really doesn’t matter. I don’t need them to believe that what happened was real.
In trying to find alternative explanations for what happened I found this great article in “Ohio Life” from October 2023 by Vince Guerrieri.
“In the fall of 1973, central and southwest Ohio were abuzz with a series of sightings of unexplained aircraft. It was a fraught time in world history. Richard Nixon was trying to hang on to the presidency as the investigation deepened into the Watergate break-in. Meanwhile, Syria and Egypt attacked the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights on October 6th, which was the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. It was a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union, which were closer to nuclear war than any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Wright Patterson Air Force Base was a hub of activity that fall as the United States airlifted supplies to its Israeli allies. Could some of the sightings be waved away as misidentification of U.S. aircraft arriving and departing? Were Soviet spy aircraft watching? Or was it begins from another world, keeping an eye on ours to make sure we didn’t immolate ourselves?
There were hundreds of reported UFO sightings in Ohio alone during the end of 1973. Tremors reminiscent of those created by sonic booms were recorded by earthquake detectors in Pennsylvania that October. Also that month, two men in Pascagoula, Mississippi, claimed they were abducted by aliens, and Ohio Gov. John Gilligan claimed to have seen a UFO in the sky over Michigan while driving with his wife through Ann Arbor. “
Well it wasn’t misidentification of U.S. aircraft because according to the FAA, there was nothing in the air at that time. The crew checked on that. Soviet spy aircraft? I really don’t think so.
I’ve become somewhat of a skeptic since I started this podcast, but I can’t refute this one. I believe it really happened. So now what? Have they always been here? Are they friendly? Do they have our best interest at heart? Given what we’ve seen of their technology, which is probably just the tip of the iceberg, they are so much more advanced than us that if they were a threat, we’d already be gone. I think that they are just observing us. To see what us earthlings are up to. We’re getting to the point that we can cause problems for other lifeforms in our universe and they probably want to check to see where we are exactly. That’s why we have so many sightings at nuclear facilities and around the military.
That’s just a theory of course. Who knows what’s going on. What do you think?
I’ve only seen a couple of episodes of UFO Witness, but I really like it. Ben Hanson investigates some good cases and has some really good interviews. If you haven’t watched it, check it out. There are a lot of UFO shows out there and I don’t like most of them because you are only getting one side of the story. But I like this one. Ben went so far as to see if a helicopter could actually climb from 1,700 feet to 3,500 feet in 10 seconds. They got a helicopter and tried it. It took over a minute and a half. He goes into the dreams that the crew had after the incident and they discovered that they were all having out of body experiences. And the helicopter. I told you about the compass. They replaced that. But the helicopter itself was decommissioned, had it’s number changed and was sent to Columbia where it crashed killing all five crewmen. Was it inherently damaged because of the UFO encounter? Makes you think!
But you don’t have to believe. Remember, believe none of what you hear and half of what you read.
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Do you have a UFO story that you’d like to share? Is there a UFO story that you’d like for me to look into? Just send me an e-mail at ufoandalienpodcast@gmail.com I’m Rick Black and I’ll talk to you next time.