Mansfield helicopter ufo incident

Discussion in 'UFOs, Ghosts and Monsters' started by Magical Realist, Oct 23, 2017.

  1. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    They say they were. We only have their statements about where they were and what they saw, and Klass's investigation revealed that some of those statements can't be trusted.

    Klass send his analysis to the Army Agency for Aviation Safety whose deputy commander, Col. Samuel P. Kalagian replied: “I thought your analysis was accomplished in a sound, logical manner.” Subsequently, Kalagian requested permission to reprint highlights of the analysis in the agency’s safety publication, The Army Flier.

    So somebody doesn't agree with you that Klass was biased.

    But wait a minute! You always say we ought to assume that people don't have agendas and don't make stuff up unless there is proof to the contrary, right? So, where's your evidence that Klass had "an agenda" on this case? According to what you preach, we should accept that Klass was upright and honest throughout, unless something shows that was not the case.

    Why do you have these double standards - one for your "witnesses" and one for the "skeptics"?

    You are very certain about everything. A meteor can only be a blinding white flash. No other possiblities. How do you know this?

    Is this like where you claimed that the planet Venus can only ever look like a bright white light?

    Over and over again, you make assumptions before you even start to investigate the possibilities. And all your assumptions point consistently in only one direction: this or that can only be an alien spacecraft (or other "paranormal" manifestation).

    Let's face it, you are hopelessly biased.

    Presumably he could read the airspeed indicator. And yet, he gets the speed wrong in his recollection. And if he got the speed of the helicopter was wrong, then why on earth should we trust his estimate of the speed of the UFO?
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    What do you regard as "the beginning"? Especially since the ground witnesses didn't come forward until years after the incident.

    You're right. But you might get it from post-incident imaginings and false memories, or fantastical embellishment of the story to make it sound more impressive.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    That's actually a very interesting insight into the way the UFO believer community works.

    It's interesting because, as far as I can tell, several of the brief replies on that page - made in 2013, by the way, which is 40 years after the event - have managed to work their way into the general UFO believer network, so that now a lot of believer sites quote those few-paragraph posts as if they are established fact and as if they support the original story of an alien craft. The people commenting there have never, as far as I can tell, been formally interviewed by anybody - not by official investigators, not even by self-styled UFO "investigators".

    As we get further and further away from contemporaneous accounts, accounts are likely to become less trustworthy - especially if there is wide publicity in the meantime. This is because some people inevitably want to jump on the bandwagon for their 15 minutes of fame, and if some of them have to tell a few lies to cash in on some notoriety, then they are happy to do so.
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    Where did he say he didn't know what speed he was doing? Quote that part.

    Yeah..that's a slippery slope. Going that way there's also no reason to assume anyone in the account was anywhere and it was all made up. That's what that logic get's you---a paranoid life in a world of lies and hoaxes perpetrated by secret conspiracies.

    Being wrong on some technical data is one thing. Being wrong about what happened right in front of you is entirely different. There is no reason to assume any of the accounts are mistaken because one pilot didn't get the top speed of his helicopter exactly right.

    You aren't questioning everything. You aren't questioning the pilots' claim they encountered some weird lights that night, or that Jez saw a white light, or that the helicopter rose instead of descending, etc. No..you are cherrypicking the things that support a meteor interpretation, and ruling out the things that conflict with it. That's confirmation bias, as I already explained.
     
  8. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    You mean something like this?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Oh really?

    It can only be one white blinding flash?

    You sure about that, MR? Somehow, I don't think you bothered to check first.

    Meteor showers are one of nature’s most brilliant spectacles, each one bringing a unique experience for stargazers, including meteors glowing in a rainbow of colors.

    [...]

    If seen out of the corner of your eye, a meteor may appear to give off a flash of white light, similar to the way stars appear. However, meteors can appear in a variety of colors if viewing conditions are clear or if they are captured in a photograph.

    “The color of light that the meteors produce depends on their chemical composition,” AccuWeather Meteorologist Dave Samuhel said.

    “Different chemicals in the meteors produce different colors as they burn up while entering the Earth’s atmosphere,” Samuhel said.

    For example, meteors made from primarily calcium will give off a purple or violet color, while those made out of magnesium will appear to have a green or teal color.

    What a meteor is made out of is not the only factor that determines the color that it appears. The speed at which the meteor enters the Earth’s atmosphere can also affect the color.

    The faster a meteor moves, the more intense the color may appear, according to the American Meteorological Society (AMS).

    “Among fainter objects, it seems to be reported that slow meteors are red or orange, while fast meteors frequently have a blue color,” the AMS said.

    The Geminid Meteor Shower, one of the best meteor showers of the year, is a shower known for producing intensely colored meteors, Samuhel said. The Geminids peak in December.

    The most common colors for this specific meteor shower are yellow, orange and sometimes green.

    The Perseid Meteor Shower, another popular meteor shower that occurs every August, is also known for producing shooting stars that give off vivid colors.

    Now, the pilots saw this light in October, 1973? The 18th of October, yes?

    What was happening in the sky in the October of 1973?

    Let's see.. (scroll down to the last page of the link)

    On the 12th of October, 1973, saw the beginning of Arietid meteor shower.

    And between the 18th and 23rd of October, 1973, was the Orionid meteor shower.

    That photo I linked above, by the way? Is from the Orionid meteor shower.. See the colours.

    Funny that, huh?
     
  9. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    Let's strip out some of the later elaboration and concentrate on the report signed by all 4 crew members on the helicopter, 1 month after the incident:

    Note that the 2500 feet is the height above sea level, not the height above the ground.

    We have a red light on the east horizon, which could be just about anything.

    Then we have a some kind of red light (?) approaching the helicopter very quickly.

    Cpt Coyne dives the helicopter. It seems that all the crew expects a collision. There is no collision, needless to say.

    This is after the altitude has decreased due to Coyne's "evasive action". And, as later attested by Coyne himself to Klass, the lack of radio communication is easily explained by the low altitude of the helicopter at this time.

    This needs further consideration. But worth thinking about: how long is a "momentary" hesitation of the "object"? This seems to be inconsistent with Coyne's much later account of the helicopter being pulled upwards towards the "object" for some time in a beam of green light.

    Then we have an observation of the object "continuing on a westerly course". Did it actually stop, or was it always moving east to west, the whole time? When, exactly, was it observed to "accelerate", and what was the helicopter doing at that time, exactly? How far away was the object when the "acceleration" and the "turning" was observed by the crew?

    Klass suggests that Coyne was subconsciously aware of how close the ground he was after diving the helicopter, and that Coyne perhaps unconsciously pulled back on the controls, making the helicopter climb to 3500 feet.

    ---
    When we break it down like this, there's not much that needs explaining.
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2017
  10. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    Funny since another investigator at first doubted the ground witness account until they started confirming some things they couldn' have possibly known. See that video again.

    So all these eyewitnesses had an agenda of believing in ufos, and lying to confirm that, while Klass had no agenda at all. No..he only spent years going around trying to debunk every anomaly ever reported in the news. He was a known uberskeptic on a crusade of disproving ufos in any way he could. It was like a religious mission for him. He even dug up dirt on people who believed in ufos and tried to smear their reputations. Why don't you do some research on the kind of man he was? You seem to think he was some scientific genius. He wasn't. He was a fanatic out to prove his anti-ufo worldview, which is reminicent of somebody I know.

    You can observe probably dozens of meteors on Youtube. Almost always they are a streak with a blinding white flash. Not a hovering cigar shape with a white light and a red leading light and a green beam coming out from its underside.

    Where did he get the running speed of his helicopter wrong? As far as I know it was only the top speed that he got wrong.
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2017
  11. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    19,252
    Did you not notice the (multiply-quoted) "twice the speed of his Huey"?
    Can you not parse that 500 knots is twice the (claimed) speed of the UH-1? (For reference that would mean the Huey was doing 250 knots).

    Ah I understand.
    The speed he was doing in the helicopter he was occupying/ flying at the time was "technical data" rather than something "happening right in front of him". Got it.

    If a pilot (presumably trained and privy to the technical and performance details of his aircraft) doesn't know what speed he's doing (especially if that claimed speed is [supposedly] twice the absolute maximum the aircraft is rated for) then how reliable is the rest of his story going to be?

    Oh, wrong.

    Considering that I haven't even used the word "meteor" then I wonder who you think you're replying to?
     
  12. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    Hmmm...good point. Still a bit of a trifle. How fast do you think a meteor moves thru the sky? 300 knots? 500 knots? 1000 knots?

    That's a good question. How does one measure the delibitating effects of getting a speed wrong on one's ability to see lights, discern shapes, ascertain an objects flight directions, and distinguish colors?
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2017
  13. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    It's also worth looking at a near-contemporaneous media report, linked above by Magical Realist. This is from the Nov. 4, 1973, edition of the Mansfield News Journal.

    Notice that it's based entirely on what Coyne had to say - i.e. it's one person's account.

    This is all consistent with the report discussed above. The following part is new:

    Note that this is Coyne's story some time after all four of the crew signed the report I looked at above. In that report, there is no mention of any "big, gray metallic-looking" object "shaped like an airfoil or a streamlined fat cigar", even though such details would have been very relevant to include in the official report. There's also no mention of any light at all from the object in the initial report, other than a red light that approached the helicopter. Yet now, suddenly, we have red, and white and green lights, plus other details of what is now described as a "hull".

    Why is that?

    ---

    Here's a much later account (2003) from Jezzi, another of the helicopter crew. This is much less problematic than Coyne's accounts.

    In other words, Jezzi isn't saying this was an alien spaceship.

    The original report says it was Yanascek who reported the "red light". And note that he said it looked like an aircraft. Note also that Jezzi didn't see it.

    Jezzi doesn't mention a red light, or a green light, or a metal hull, or anything like that. He only mentions a white light moving above the helicopter.

    Jezzi gets the speed of his helicopter wrong, and he is also trying to judge the speed of the object from a brief glance upwards - and he is doing this some time after the event.

    Notice that Jezzi never says he saw a red light himself. He is relying on what his crewmates said about a red light.

    I'd like to see these drawings from "the next morning". I wonder where they are?

    There is evidence that the compass wasn't working right long before this UFO incident.
    ---

    What did Jezzi see? It doesn't actually amount to much, based on his account. All we really have from him is a white light passing overhead.
     
  14. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    Also worth mentioning was what was happening in local society in Ohio in October of 1973. There was actually a UFO craze going on at the time - so much so that somebody declared it "UFO month" or some such.

    Of course, MR will say this is because the aliens decided to visit a lot that month, so obviously there would be a lot of sightings.

    In general, around this time, the US was in the grip of something of a UFO mania.
     
  15. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    The accounts obtained for the local papers. Typically these are taken within days of the event. There's also the accounts collected by Hynek. Do we have access to these?

    Oh that's right. Your the one who's ready to write off the human ability to remember just to keep from believing in ufos. If I remember correctly that is. Maybe it's just a false memory of mine. Shucks.
     
  16. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    19,252
    Exactly. A mere trifle. I mean, how serious is a perception error that makes the helicopter out to be doing twice it's maximum speed?

    Quite.
    He got his own speed impossibly wrong - which means that he wasn't perceiving things correctly. Sort of casts doubt on his entire testimony....
     
  17. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    Wow..he was hallucinating and yet still flying his helicopter thru the night sky. Must be a miracle.
     
  18. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    Right..because who would ever suspect a ufo was actually there during a month long flap of ufo sightings in Ohio in 1973.
     
  19. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    I'm repeating this point because I want an answer to it.

    Klass apparently relies on the old meteor explanation quite regularly. The problem is something like that would be seen for hundreds of miles in cities all across Ohio. Yet no mention is ever made of such an event in any of the papers the next day. Why is that James?
     
  20. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    19,252
    Slight difference between "hallucinating" and "not perceiving things correctly" - but this is usual for you: if it's not 100% one thing then it must be 100% the opposite.
     
  21. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    Wow..That's some fancy sounding psychobabble there. Klass must've had a degree in psychology or something!

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  22. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    Yet here we have a report of three of the pilots agreeing on the shape and structure of the craft:

    "Coyne, Healey, and Yanacsek agree that a cigar-shaped, slightly domed object substended an angle of nearly the width of the front windshield. A featureless, gray, metallic-looking structure was precisely delineated against the background stars. Yanacsek reported “a suggestion of windows” along the top dome section. The red light emanated from the bow, a white light became visible at a slightly indented stern, and then, from aft/below, a green ‘pyramid shaped” beam equated to a directional spotlight became visible. The green beam passed upward over the helicopter nose, swung up through the windshield, continued upward and entered the tinted upper window panels."

    This also fits with the drawing made with the help of Coyne and Yanacsek the next day:

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Right here:


    http://www.thelivingmoon.com/49ufo_files/03files2/1973_Lawrence_Coyne_UFO_Helicopter_Case.html
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2017
  23. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    Magical Realist:

    This is your case. Haven't you investigated it? Why is it that I'm the one digging up all the primary materials?

    I haven't seen anything from Hynek. If you have it, present it.

    Human memory is very fallible. That's a scientifically established fact, whether you like it or not.

    It seems you don't remember previous information presented to you very well. Which kind of proves my point, doesn't it?

    Indeed. Who would suspect that people would see a UFO, when UFOs were in vogue at the time and everybody wanted to see one?

    Please quote a source that supports your claim.

    By the way, please don't get the impression that I'm saying it was a meteor. I'm just reporting on Klass's opinion, there. Klass conducted a thorough investigation at the time. I was not there. And neither were you, of course.

    Perhaps. Have you checked?

    (Edit to add: I checked. Klass had a degree in science. His main qualification was in electrical engineering. However, he was also a journalist and, of course, a noted UFO investigator.)

    This appears nowhere in the link you included in your post. Please post the correct reference.

    When did they all agree on the cigar-shaped, domed object etc., and to whom?

    We have to be careful not to smoosh together different accounts of the incident. To me, it looks like Jezzi's accounts don't support any of this stuff about cigar-shaped objects. And I see very little in the way of direct quotes from Yanascek or Healey. Mostly it's Coyne, and we know that Coyne made money shopping his story around.

    Please quote a source that verifies that Yanascek collaborated in making that drawing.
     

Share This Page