Part 3: Retrievals of the Third Kind – A Case Study of Alleged UFOs and Occupants in Military Custody

“Some of the general information known to my informant concerns Wright-Patterson’s storage of an intact UFO and parts of damaged UFOs and the preservation of dead alien bodies under glass in special refrigerated conditions. The Major also reportedly said, ‘We have the proof that UFOs are extraterrestrial.'”

– Source: Son of USAF Major, Wright-Patterson AFB

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To be more computer-friendly, the reprint has been divided into parts. Here begins Part 3 of Status Report I, written July 29, 1978. The series of status reports, I through VII, were written by Leonard H. Stringfield from 1978 to 1994. Previous Status Report II begins at Earthfiles. Leonard Stringfield died on December 18, 1994. For all the previous status reports, see Earthfiles Archives.


Leonard H. Stringfield:

ABSTRACT 8

With the help of Lou Farish of MUFON, I got the phone number of Cecil Tenney, age 78, in Delta, Colorado, and called him March 7, 1978. I wanted to hear for myself his testimony relative to his alleged observation in 1953 near Dutton, Montana, of a low-level UFO in distress, or a malfunctioning condition. I also wanted to know what he experienced during U. S. Air Force interrogation and what he saw at the Great Falls AFB, which he believed were the recovered dead alien bodies (from the crash).

In the fall of 1953 near dusk, Tenney was driving alone from Great Falls to his home in Conrad in his pick-up. Near Dutton, he watched the troubled performance of a large, cigar-shaped object. Appearing to be about one-third the size of a football field and about 200 feet away, the silvery object pulsated and belched out fire and smoke for about seven or eight minutes.

‘It seemed to be trying to pull itself up, but it couldn’t,’ said Tenney. Then he described an explosion and a swooshing sound that was followed by balls of fire hitting the road and as far as he could see. Two or three cars from the opposite direction on the road, he said, had their exhausts shooting out flames.

Tenney admitted that he was stunned and frightened by the spectacle. ‘I got out of there in a hurry,’ he said,’ and stopped at the nearest place with a toilet, a beer hall, which is about 5 miles beyond Dutton.’

There, Tenney was told by the bartender that he ‘smelled like lightening.’ Later, he learned that a state highway patrolman, who also saw the UFO in distress, stopped in the saloon and was given Tenney’s name as a witness.

That same evening, according to Tenney, he got a phone call from a Colonel at the Great Falls AFB about 30 miles away. In a gruff voice, Tenney was told, not asked, ‘I want to see yuh!’ He was instructed to report to the Air Base at a certain time the next morning.

When Tenney arrived at the base, he was escorted by two men into a jail-like cinder block building and was led to the Colonel’s office. He was grilled with questions for 30 minutes, then he signed a 5 copy statement which was also signed by a notary public.

Following interrogation, Tenney was escorted downstairs. Near the entrance door, he encountered two military men arriving, each carrying a large blue bag over his shoulder. He guessed they were laundry bags, but the bulges in the bag did not, according to Tenney, appear to be laundry. As Tenney moved toward the door, one of the men dropped his bag to the floor and it was then that Tenney could recognize the bulges to be shaped more like the protruding limbs of bodies. At this point, he was rudely pushed out of the door and told, ‘Get the hell out of here!’

Tenney told me he returned to his flower shop in Conrad wondering about the harsh treatment he got at the base and wondering about the contents of the laundry bags. Said Tenney, ‘I can’t swear they were bodies, but the bags contained something they didn’t want me to see.’

Later, Tenney heard of another witness, a brakeman on a passing train, who as knocked to the ground by the UFO’s explosion.

COMMENT:

Tenney is the only known witness to the event with no other names to check for backup. However, by phone, he sounded convincing and made no hard claims to know the answers to the UFO’s erratic or troubled behavior, its noisy disgorging of flame and smoke, why tongues of fire shot out of automobile exhaust pipes, what the highway patrolman reported to the Air Force, or why the Colonel was so demanding and the escorts so rude, and what was inside the laundry bags that was so secret. Tenney’s guess was that the UFO he had seen in distress had crashed and the bags contained its dead occupants.

ABSTRACT 9

Mrs. G. worked in the Foreign Materials Division with a top security clearance rating at Wright-Patterson AFB in the 1940s and 1950s, before her retirement in 1959 for health reasons. Charles Wilhelm, who has provided me with some firsthand reports from people with information about UFO retrieval or related incidents, got this one from Mrs. G. in 1959. She had known Charles very well as a teenager on two counts: he was a good, honest worked in performing yard work for her, and for his intense interest in UFOs. When she developed cancer and knew of her impending death, she decided to relate to him some startling information about her secret duties at Wright-Patterson and what she saw in the performance of these duties.

In 1955, according to Wilhelm, she was assigned to a post to catalog all incoming UFO material, during which time approximately 1,000 items were processed. These included items from the interior of a recovered UFO brought to the Air Base. All items were photographed and tagged.

In her cataloging duties, Mrs. G. also was witness to the conveyance by cart of two dead humanoid bodies from one room to another. The bodies, preserved in chemicals, were four to five feet tall, had generally human features except that the heads were large relative to the bodies, and their eyes were slanted. There was no word as to whether or not the bodies were brought in from a recent crash or had been at the base morgue from an incident occurring in previous years.

After telling Charles Wilhelm some of the barest facts she knew, she commented, ‘Uncle Sam can’t do anything to me once I’m in my grave.’ Six months later, Mrs. G. passed away.

COMMENT:

The brief, but vital facts bared in the testimony of Mrs. G is not to be underestimated. I firmly believe Charles Wilhelm, and prior to Mrs. G’s death, he said he saw Mrs. G.’s Wright-Patterson AFB ID badge.

ABSTRACT 10

The late James Mitchell was formerly a Navy specialist who served at an Air Station in Dallas, Texas, where his duties included the handling of confidential film. After retirement from the Navy in 1966, he became a civil service electrician at Wright-Patterson AFB, holding top secret clearance allowing him to work in high security areas on the base.

In 1977, in association with my regular employment, I met one of the sons of James Mitchell. Knowing of my research, he came to my office to relate an incident involving his father with base security for having possession of a photograph which showed a small alien humanoid allegedly killed following a skirmish with U. S. military forces in Arizona.

According to my informant, he was away from home at college at the time his father brought the photo home from Wright-Patterson in 1966. However, his brother, Mike, who now lives in California, was at home at that time and was shown the photo by his father.

In due course, my business associate reached his brother, Mike, by phone and asked him to describe the photo and also to comment on his father’s actions at that time.

Mike obligingly described the photo as an 8 x 10, black and white glossy, showing two men, one wearing khaki; the other in a lab coat, holding up a dead body about 3.5 feet tall. The photo was taken at a fair distance on a clear day in a panorama of desert showing patchy scrub vegetation. Most of the details were by now hazy to Mike, but he recalls that the alien’s head was pear-shaped and over-sized for its body, with slits for eyes and mouth. He also remembers that the humanoid was wearing a dull, wrinkled, metallic suit.

Mike, in recalling the actions of his father, said that he had come home from work and seemed excited as he flashed the photo at him, made a sly glance, and then put it away under some papers in his dresser drawer. He also recalls that he said, ‘I can’t keep it. I must take it back.’

Later in the evening, according to Mike, his father confided that he knew the story connected with the photo. he said that during early morning military exercises in a desert area of Arizona, a unit encountered a group of aliens near a landed craft. There was probably a skirmish and one alien put up quite a fight. Subdued, the small creature was given a sedative, by injection, which caused its death. The story goes that the other members of the Third Kind escaped into their craft and flew away. The one dead body was supposedly shipped to Wright-Patterson, preserved in dry ice.

The next day, Mike said, his father seemed greatly disturbed. Something had happened at the base concerning the photo. He remembers that he had to return it and from that day on, James Mitchell refused to discuss the photo again with anyone.

COMMENT:

From my sources, I have been unable to establish the vintage of the photo or the story of the skirmish. On the other hand, the photo might be genuine, but the story not. Nonetheless, the borrowed photo, according to Mike’s recollection, had caused some concern at Wright-Patterson and might have resulted in some form of reprimand for his father. Such actions would not have occurred had the misappropriated photo been a fake. Now, we might ask what about the skirmish?

ABSTRACT 11

Robert D. Barry, fellow researcher and lecturer, was contacted early in March 1978, on the basis of his interest in and knowledge of crashed UFOs and the retrievals of craft and their occupants. Barry, a dedicated researcher since 1957, is Director of the 20th Century UFO Bureau. When I informed him that I could use his help in supplying some data for a paper I was preparing for the MUFON Symposium, he asked that I submit a letter to further identify myself and my objectives in this sensitive area. I did so promptly and it produced positive results.

Barry’s first letter, dated March 14, 1978, concerns a UFO crash with occupants which occurred in 1962. I quote from his letter in part, as follows:

March 14, 1978, letter from Robert D. Barry, Director, 20th Century UFO Bureau:

‘…My sources of information on the crashed UFO subject involve quite a few, but my major sources number four, including one within intelligence circles as well as a scientist.

‘As it relates to the crashed UFO of 1962, it occurred in the state of New Mexico. The craft experienced flight difficulty at a time it was being tracked on military radar. It was tracked across two southwestern states before coming in over New Mexico. Military jets were sent up for intercept.

‘As the craft moved in over the state of New Mexico, it lost altitude and continued to experience flight difficulty. It impacted on desert sands at an estimated 90 mph. Its underside hit the sand as a plane coming in for a landing. ‘Its landing gear was not down and its flight pattern at impact gave the indication that the two occupants in the craft were evidently dead at the time of the crash. …hence the flight difficulty experienced by the craft.

‘The craft was 68 feet in diameter and 13 feet in height … typically circular. The two beings discovered inside the craft were 42 inches each in height. Each being was donned in a one-piece suit that contained no buttons or zippers.

‘The occupants were removed the following day after impact to a major medical university hospital in the U. S. where skin tests and other scientific analyses were performed. Skin color was gray-pink. Head slightly larger for the size of the body; eyes somewhat larger than normal, but the nose was small with little protrusions. …no ear lobes, but a hole at each side of the head where we have ears. …then, of course, inside the hole area was the inner ear portion. Mouth very small and thin lips.

‘The circular-shaped space craft was described as exploratory and was removed to a major military base in the southwest where scientists and engineers were assigned to work on the craft in an attempt to discover its power of propulsion.

‘On this particular case, a total of twenty individuals were involved in the investigation and research. Since that time, three of them have died … of natural causes … leaving a total of 17 familiar with the incident and follow-up research.’

COMMENT:

There are more and stronger data concerning the 1962 New Mexico crash which are not publishable at this writing. Barry also had data relative to other UFO crashes in the continental United States from a reliable intelligence source that I have been asked not to divulge.

The 1962 crash site was near Holloman AFB in New Mexico. The incident is known by an astronaut who prefers anonymity.

ABSTRACT 12

My information comes secondhand from a person who requests that his name not be used in any way concerning his knowledge of retrieved UFOs and the preserved alien bodies maintained in secret storage at Wright-Patterson AFB. This person read my book, Situation Red, and is aware of my position in research, but refuses to discuss what he knows with me by phone or in person. My firsthand informant is his son with whom he has shared some general information about UFOs a couple years earlier. To elaborate further, the young man’s father got his UFO input from his cousin, an Air Force Major, who was specifically assigned to a UFO project for about 5 years at Wright-Patterson. The Major was formerly a pilot and had also served at a missile site overseas and presently is assigned to a new technical duty. I do have these latter details, but was asked not to be specific.

So significant was the information received by the father from the Major that he felt compelled to write down some specific details about the retrieved UFOs and the humanoids which he sealed in an envelope and placed in his safety deposit box. His instructions were that the envelope was not to be opened until after his death.

Some of the general information known to my informant concerns Wright-Patterson’s storage of an intact UFO and parts of damaged UFOs and the preservation of dead alien bodies under glass in special refrigerated conditions. The Major also reportedly said, ‘We have the proof that UFOs are extraterrestrial.’

COMMENT:

My informant is not kidding about his father’s UFO notes being stored in a safety deposit box. He also is not kidding about his father’s staunch reluctance to discuss with me the contents of his notes. Personally, I must agree with the father’s position of keeping a trust when it concerns the status and welfare of a close relative.

Continued in Part 4 – Colonel paralyzed at Nellis AFB by non-human entity.


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