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.
[Coyne] said a check turned up that none of the unit's F-100 Super Saber Jets were in the air when the UFO appeared. Coyne said when he first encountered the UFO, his helicopter was cruising at 2,500 feet. He had the controls set for a 20-degree dive, but the craft climbed to 3,500 feet with no power.
I had made no attempt to pull up," he said. "There was no noise or turbulence, either."
Coyne said a red light appeared on the eastern horizon, and was first spotted by his crew chief, Sgt. Robert Yanacsek.
"The light was traveling in excess of 600 knots," Coyne said. "It came from the horizon to our aircraft in about 10 seconds. We were on a collision course."
The pilot said he put his helicopter into a dive.
"At 1,700 feet I braced myself for the impact with the other craft," he said. "It was coming from our right side. I was scared. There had been so little time to respond. The thing was terrifically fast."
There was no crash.
This is all consistent with the report discussed above. The following part is new:
"We looked up and saw it stopped right over us," Coyne said. "It had a big, gray metallic-looking hull about 60 feet long." "It was shaped like an airfoil or a streamlined fat cigar. There was a red light on the front. The leading edge glowed red a short distance back from the nose. There was a center dome. A green light at the rear reflected on the hull."
Coyne said the green light swiveled like a spotlight and beamed through the canopy of his craft, bathing the cabin in green light. He said as he and members of the crew stared at the craft his helicopter began to climb without his guidance.
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?
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Here's a much later account (2003) from Jezzi, another of the helicopter crew. This is much less problematic than Coyne's accounts.
It was about 11 p.m. on Oct. 18, 1973, when an Army Reserve helicopter came perilously close to colliding with an unidentified flying object. Arrigo "Rick" Jezzi, 56, who now lives in Cincinnati, was flying the Huey helicopter that night. Three decades later, he is still not sure what happened. ....
In other words, Jezzi isn't saying this was an alien spaceship.
"Capt. Larry Coyne was the pilot," Jezzi said. "I was in the left seat, actually flying the Huey at the time. We were near Mansfield flying at 2,500 to 3,000 feet."
John Healey and Robert Yanacsek were in the back of the Huey, near a cargo door with a Plexiglas window.
"One of the guys in the back reported a red light. He said it looked like an aircraft light on the right horizon," Jezzi said. "I couldn't see it."
Jezzi was flying from the left seat. On the other side of the Huey there was a 12-foot section of fuselage between the side window and the cargo doors. He figures the red light was in his blind spot.
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.
"Then I heard 'I think its coming toward us'," Jezzi said. "The next thing I knew Larry took control of the throttle. We went into a maneuver, a controlled free fall. We dropped about 2,000 feet."
Jezzi said if Coyne had not made the drastic maneuver there would have been a collision
"It took just a couple of seconds," Jezzi said. "I remember looking up through the ceiling and I saw a white light moving over top of us. I followed it to the left horizon where it disappeared.
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 isn't sure what he saw. It was like no aircraft he'd ever seen. He guessed it was traveling at least 500 knots, twice the speed of his Huey
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.
"Red navigational lights aren't located in the front of an aircraft," he said. "That's what was moving toward us. I don't know what it was."
Notice that Jezzi never says he saw a red light himself. He is relying on what his crewmates said about a red light.
"It caused a lot of hullabaloo," Jezzi said. "The first thing I thought was those Commie bastards. What are they up to."
The next morning two of the other crew members, while being questioned about the incident, sketched drawings of the cigar-shaped craft they observed.
"They both came up with similar drawings," Jezzi said.
I'd like to see these drawings from "the next morning". I wonder where they are?
The magnetic compass in the Huey never worked right after the incident and had to be replaced.
There is evidence that the compass wasn't working right long before this UFO incident.
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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.
