Coyne helicopter 1973: an Army near-miss report, a climb and an unknown light

On 18 October 1973 an Army Reserve helicopter crew near Mansfield, Ohio, reported a near midair collision with an unidentified flying object, followed by a climb to 3,500 feet with the collective fully down. The Army's own report came five weeks later, and the case is absent from AARO's 2024 historical report.

40.7638° N · 82.3740° W · Route 430 bridge, Charles Mill Reservoir, near Mansfield, Ohio · 18 Oct 1973

Source: U.S. Army · CUFOS

A red light off the east horizon

The U.S. Army's own account of the incident is a Disposition Form headed "Near Midair Collision with UFO Report", sent from the USAR Flight Facility at Cleveland Hopkins Airport on 23 November 1973. It states that at 2305 hours on 18 October 1973, in the vicinity of Mansfield, Ohio, Army Helicopter 68-15444 encountered a near midair collision with an unidentified flying object. The crew were CPT Lawrence J. Coyne, pilot in command; 1LT Arrigo Jezzi, copilot; SSG Robert Yanacsek, crew chief; and SSG John Healey, flight medic, all members of the 316th Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance), a reserve unit based at the Cleveland facility ^[1].

According to the form, the helicopter was returning from Columbus to Cleveland at 2,500 feet on a heading of 030 degrees when Yanacsek saw a red light on the east horizon, 90 degrees to the flight path. About 30 seconds later he reported that it was converging on the helicopter at the same altitude, at more than 600 knots, on a collision heading. Coyne took the controls and began a powered descent from 2,500 to 1,700 feet. Mansfield Tower acknowledged a radio call, but when Coyne asked whether any high-performance aircraft were flying near the airport, no response came ^[1].

Army Helicopter 68-15444 assigned to Cleveland USARFFAC encountered a near midair collision with a unidentified flying object.

— U.S. Army Disposition Form, 23 November 1973 [1]

What the crew described

The fullest account of the crew's testimony is the report Jennie Zeidman wrote for the Center for UFO Studies, published in 1979. Her summary says Coyne and Yanacsek watched the light from their seats while Healey got up and stooped in the aisle; Jezzi's view was obstructed. Coyne began a descent of about 500 feet per minute, later increased to 2,000, and the last altitude he noted was 1,700 feet above sea level. After the first contact with Mansfield, the radios malfunctioned on both VHF and UHF ^[2].

As a collision seemed imminent, the summary continues, the light slowed and held a position above and in front of the helicopter. Coyne, Healey and Yanacsek reported a cigar-shaped, gray, metallic object filling the front windshield, with a red light at the nose, a white light at the tail and a green beam from its underside that swung over the nose and bathed the cockpit in green light ^[2]. The Army form records that the object hesitated momentarily over the helicopter, then continued west, accelerating, cleared Mansfield Airport to the west and turned 45 degrees to the northwest ^[1].

As a collision appeared imminent, the light decelerated and assumed a hovering relationship above/in front of the helicopter.

— Jennie Zeidman, summary of the crew's account, 1979 [2]

The climb nobody commanded

The detail that made the case famous is in the Army form itself: Coyne indicated that the altimeter showed a climb of 1,000 feet per minute and read 3,500 feet with the collective in the full down position. He brought the aircraft back to 2,500 feet and flew on to Cleveland; after the flight plan was closed, the FAA Flight Service Station told him to report the incident to the FAA office at Cleveland Hopkins ^[1].

Zeidman recorded Coyne's statement that the collective was fully down when he noticed the climb, the cyclic set about 20 degrees nose-down and the power setting never changed from cruise. She also noted the limits of the evidence: no one knows at what altitude the dive turned into a climb, none of the crew felt the g-forces of a sudden change, and because the lake below lies at 997 feet, the 1,700-foot reading meant perhaps 650 to 670 feet above the trees ^[3]. Her conclusion leaves open how far, if at all, the object affected the helicopter's instruments or flight path ^[4].

Coyne says that the collective was in the full down position when he noticed the climb

— Jennie Zeidman, A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio, 1979 [3]

Reporting it: slow and unofficial

The day after the flight, Coyne went to P.J. Vollmer, the FAA chief of operations at Hopkins Field, to ask how and where to report what had happened. Vollmer could not suggest an official agency. Coyne then told the story to his cousin, a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, but even after the newspaper account there was no official interest, so he filled out Operational Hazard reports a month later to put the incident on record ^[5]. The Army form notes that the 83d USARCOM was told of the incident at 1530 hours on 19 October ^[1].

Popular retellings say all four men gave sworn depositions to the Army within 48 hours; the documents do not show that. The Army form is dated 23 November 1973 and says only that the report had been read and attested to by the crew, with their signatures, and Zeidman writes that the hazard reports were completed a month after the event ^[1][5].

I don't know what happened, but I do know—I could tell from the tremor of his voice, which wasn't much—that he was shook.

— P.J. Vollmer, FAA, in a taped interview with J. Allen Hynek [5]

A family at the Route 430 bridge

Ground witnesses surfaced almost three years later. On 19 August 1976 the Civil Commission on Aerial Phenomena, a small central Ohio group, published a story in the Mansfield News Journal calling for witnesses. That evening its director, Warren Nicholson, received a call from a youth, identified only as Charles C., who said that he, his mother and his siblings had seen the event. Nicholson and William E. Jones interviewed the family, and Zeidman later spent nearly two hours with them at the site; the mother asked that the family's name not be published ^[6].

Driving east on Route 430 toward the bridge over the Charles Mill Reservoir, they saw ahead a red and a green light moving together and coming down rapidly toward them; the red was brighter and seemed to lead ^[7]. With the car stopped at the roadside, they became aware of a second group of lights, some flashing, approaching from behind, and heard noise for the first time. Mrs. C. thought the two sets of lights were helicopters about to crash ^[8].

Verdicts, then and now

Zeidman concluded that the object remained unidentified. Because the aircrew and the ground witnesses, who had never communicated with each other, gave substantially the same description and chronology, she judged it very probable that they had seen the same event, and she considered a meteor or a high-performance aircraft and rejected both. She proposed no theory of what the object was ^[4].

On 27 November 1978, by then a lieutenant colonel, Coyne addressed the United Nations Special Political Committee during the debate on Grenada's proposal for a UN study of unidentified flying objects ^[9].

The case is sometimes said to appear in AARO's 2024 Historical Record Report. Volume 1 of that report, cleared for publication in March 2024, does not mention Coyne, Mansfield or a 1973 helicopter encounter ^[10].

Last fact-checked: 2026-10-03. Every claim cites its source.