Forty years ago today, a four-man crew of an Army Reserve helicopter was flying over Mansfield, Ohio, around 11:00 p.m. when they "encountered a near midair collision with an unidentified flying object," according to the official report, signed and submitted by the crew after the incident.

A full explanation for this terrifying UFO close encounter has never been offered, and to this day, the helicopter-UFO incident remains one of the most credible -- and terrifying -- in the history of the subject.

The commander of the helicopter, Maj. Larry Coyne, and his crew, thought at first that the light on the horizon was a radio tower beacon.

"We were flying along at about 2,500 feet when the crew chief on the helicopter observed a red light on the east horizon. He then informed me that the light was closing on the helicopter -- that it was coming at us on a collision course," Coyne told this reporter in 1975.

"I looked to the right and observed that the object became bigger and the light became brighter, and I began to descend the helicopter toward the ground, to get out of the collision course path. We were descending and this object was like a missile locked onto the helicopter, only it came at us on a perpendicular angle, to hit us almost broadside.

"It looked like we were going to collide with it and we braced for impact, and then I heard the crewmen in the back say, 'Look up!' and I observed this craft stopped directly in front of us -- stopped -- it was hovering, right over the helicopter!" (See main story illustration above)

Watch this video excerpt of the Coyne account from a documentary report. The story continues after the video.

With the unknown object hovering in the air above the helicopter, Coyne and his crew suddenly noticed a light coming out of the aft end of it -- a light that swung 90 degrees and came into their cabin.

"It was a bright green light. And all of the red night lights that we utilize for night navigation were dissolved in this green light -- the whole cabin turned green. It hit all of us directly in the face."

Coyne and his crew knew they were encountering something extraordinary.

"We assumed it was a high-performance fighter, but when it stopped directly in front of us, then all four of us realized that was no high-performance aircraft. This craft, from the angle that we saw it, was cigar-shaped. It had no wings, no vertical or horizontal stabilizer, was approximately 60 feet long, 15-20 feet in height."

What occurred next was like something out of science fiction.

"We were at 1,700 feet," Coyne recalled. "Then this craft began to move slowly to the west away from us. At this time, I was worried we were going to hit the ground, and I looked at my altimeter and our helicopter was at 3,500 feet, climbing 1,000 feet a minute with no changes in the control. We went from 1,700 feet to 3,500 feet in a matter of seconds and never knew it!"

The helicopter topped out at 3,800 feet and the four men felt a bump, "like turbulence, at which time we had control of the aircraft again. I had control and we went back down to 2,500 feet and then continued on to Cleveland," Coyne said.

"As far as the vehicle itself, there's no doubt in our minds what it looked like. A craft that can move at terrific speeds in excess of 1,000 knots, and then stop on a dime, maintains altitude, can change altitude, climb, descend. To encounter a UFO when it approaches your aircraft, you have no idea what it is. I think if it wanted to collide with us, it could have. You can't get away from it -- you don't have that much time to respond!"

Lending credibility to this case were eyewitnesses on the ground who observed the UFO-helicopter encounter. The Army didn't prevent Coyne and his crew from speaking out about their experience. In fact, Coyne was allowed to recount the UFO incident to the United Nations in 1978, as seen below, under the sponsorship of Grenada.

This 1973 UFO incident, while certainly dramatic and terrifying for the helicopter crew involved, is not the only time that conventional aircraft have had encounters with unknown objects.

Many crew members of major airlines have witnessed unusual objects near their aircraft but have been reluctant to tell their stories publicly.

In 1999, Richard Haines, a retired senior research scientist for the NASA-Ames Research Center in California, created the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, or NARCAP, to give pilots and air traffic controllers a confidential place to report their own unusual sightings of what Haines refers to as unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP.

"We have two objectives: To make flying safer with regard to unidentified and poorly understood phenomena in the atmosphere. And the second objective is to collect, analyze and then report high quality data from the aerospace world on the phenomena, to help us understand them better," Haines, 76, told The Huffington Post.

According to Haines, on an average daily basis, since the creation of NARCAP, he's received six to 12 reports a year. He absolutely believes there are real dangerous or safety issues that come up between pilots and some UAP.

"Based upon analysis of past cases, a potential for a very serious event does exist," Haines said. "We have reviewed a great many encounters in flight where several things can happen. One of them is an electromagnetic effect in close proximity to the phenomenon, where cockpit instrumentation are affected -- it might be a magnetic field, radio interference or even an inertial effect, and that's obviously unsafe. Pilots don't want to be flying airplanes where they can't trust their instruments."

Another area of concern that Haines and his colleagues have found is similar to what Coyne and his helicopter crew experienced in 1973.

"It's where a UAP is near the airplane, perhaps ahead of the plane, and the pilot makes a rapid emergency dive to avoid a perceived collision. That's not very common, but it would have to be reported. It has happened in the past and there are still near-misses that occur which sometimes are associated with a nearby UAP."

Haines has always been impressed with the Coyne helicopter incident.

"It qualifies as a genuine UAP encounter. Multiple witness cases are very important and should command the attention of aviation officials. In the Coyne case, its color, speed and apparent shape -- those are all important physical characteristics that can be related to other pilot sightings.

"I think the Coyne case ranks very, very high in credibility. One reason is Coyne's reputation as a good pilot before this happened. And his courage -- the fact that he was willing to come forward with this very bizarre story and to stand by it says an awful lot. And he would give encouragement to other pilots to do the same.

"If everybody remains silent, we're never going to get to the bottom of this."

Also on HuffPost:

Dr. James E. McDonald's Complete Audio Tape Archives/Recordings

Audio Recordings by:
Dr. James E. McDonald
Senior Physicist, Institute of Atmospheric Physics
University of Arizona – Tucson

Selections from MS 328 Dr. James E. McDonald Papers, University of Arizona Library, Tucson Arizona.
All contents copyright 2005. Arizona Board of Regents.
All rights reserved.

Recorded from the period of 1967 through 1968

110 disc CD-R archive (CDDA files)
18 disc DVD-R data archive of digitized .wav files (Edited Master from Original Recordings)

Recorded, Edited and Transferred by:
Ralph McCarron
March 2002 - February 2006

Wolf Video
email: support@wolfvideo.net
web: www.wolfvideo.net

Coordinated by Ann Druffel and Vince Uhlenkott from a grant provided by the "Fund for UFO Research"

Note: This project took 4 years to complete. I’m self-employed and run my own business from my home. My main business is video editing, video production, CD/DVD-Rom authoring and web design. The project turned out to be a huge undertaking, encompassing many more hours than I initially thought, however I'm happy to have been given the opportunity to have cataloged the amazing life's work (in audio form) of Dr. James E. McDonald's UFO research.

Once finished, the project ended up being archived on 110 CD-R’s for playback in a car radio, portable CD player or boom box. The original uncompressed (WAV) files were backed up on 18 data DVD-R’s. After this was done I also processed the files to Windows Media Audio (WMA) files and MP3 (MP3) files. The WMA or MP3 files could be used for streaming off a web server for internet playback. Also WMA and MP3 files can be played on most new media players like the iPod or any other current DVD/CD players. The beauty of the WMA and MP3 files is that I was able to compress roughly 81 gigabytes of Dr. James McDonald’s complete archive to fit on one (1) DVD, just being under 4.5 gigabytes.

Where do I start…

In March of 2002, Ann Druffel and Vince Uhlenkott asked me for their help in converting all of Dr. James McDonald’s reel to reel tapes to digital format. At that time my business was a little slow so I said I would help them out. Ann and Vince then supplied me with the whole archive of Dr. McDonald’s reel to reel tapes. They consisted of:

* Eighty Three (83), 1 7/8 ips (inches per second), 3 inch reel to reel tapes, record time 1 hour per side, 2 hours of record time per reel = 166 hours of record time.

* Ten (10) , 3 ¾ ips, 5 inch reel to reel tapes, record time 1 hour per side, 2 hours of record time per reel = 20 hours of record time.

* Twenty (20), 3 ¾ ips, 7 inch reel to reel tapes, record time 2 hours per side, 4 hours of record time per reel = 80 hours of record time. (See Fig. 1).

(Fig. 1)
Collage of Dr. James McDonald’s original audio tapes and notes.

Total record time = 266 hours, just to record the audio into the computer.

The editing time probably quadrupled that.

The recording and editing process consisted of these five steps:

1. Recording all of Dr. James McDonald’s reel to reel archive into the computer as uncompressed (WAV) files.

2. Editing of each reel. (Each reel could contain either 4 to 5 telephone interviews, recordings of symposiums or recordings of television/radio shows). The WAV files would have to be split up into each of their own segments.

3. Processing of limiter and noise/hum reduction to each file depending on how bad the file was recorded. Almost all of his recordings needed this process done to every file.

4. Cataloging and naming of each computer file. (I would have to listen to every file after the recording process and use Ann Druffel’s original notes to make sure names, spellings and dates were correct). I had to figure out an easy way to name the files so they could be organized easily. I wanted each file to correspond with the existing reel to reel tape for a reference. That way, if I looked back to my original WAV files I could tell exactly what reel they came from and what side the recording was from. So a 3 inch reel, tape #27, Side 2 would be named: 3T27S2 and then what the filename was.

Example: 3T27S2 James McDonald Interviews Dr Allen Hynek.wav

This stands for 3 (being a 3 inch reel), T means tape, so 3T means 3 inch tape. 27 means reel #27, S2 means Side 2. If there were four interviews or segments on one side I would split up the files each into their own file and name the file:

Example (segment one would be called): 3T36S101 James McDonald Interviews Paul Hill.wav
Example (segment two would be called): 3T36S102 James McDonald Interviews Lt Col Chase.wav

In these two examples this stands for 3 (being a 3 inch reel), T means tape, so 3T means 3 inch tape. 36 means reel #36, S2 means Side 2. 01 means segment #1. In the second example it would be the same except that 02 would stand for segment #2. So I could tell by looking quickly at this that: 3T36S102 James McDonald Interviews Lt Col Chase.wav was an interview that came from Dr. McDonalds 3 inch reel, tape #36, Side 1, Segment 2.

5. CD burning and labeling of each CD and/or DVD. I had to create a separate label, corresponding to Dr. McDonald’s original reels. (See Fig. 2)

(Fig. 2)
Image of CD-R Tape 7, Side 1 & 2, 7 inch reel, Disc 9.

The files would have to be recorded first. Then audio noise reduction software tools were used to remove hum, crackle, hiss, etc. Some one hour files would take four hours to edit. I would have to do one to four passes on the file just to remove hum and background noise. Since Dr. McDonald wasn’t a recording engineer or an audio expert, the recordings weren’t always recorded in a noise free environment. A couple of times he did interviews in the witness’s car on the way to the location, which is very noisy. I had to deal with removing engine, traffic and wind noises.

This doesn’t include the time it took me to edit the actual files and listen to them to figure out names, dates etc. so I could name each file correctly. Ann Druffel’s original notes on the cataloging of Dr. McDonald’s files helped a lot for referencing names, dates etc. I would also call Rob Swiatek or email Richard Hall from the Fund for UFO Research to help me with names and dates to make sure they were correct. Dr. McDonald would record his voice before most interviews and say the date, time, and location and spell out the name of each witness. And other times there would be nothing recorded before the interview. Sometimes I would have to look up witness’s names and dates of UFO events on the internet. This way I could double check if the dates were correct and the names of the witnesses were spelled correctly. And sometimes, unless it was a famous UFO case, I wouldn’t be able to find anything on the internet about it. So some spellings of people’s names maybe spelled incorrectly. If I wasn’t sure of a name or date I added a question mark next to the name or date. Some witnesses were also unknowns so I would list the person in my notes as, “Dr. James McDonald Interviews Unknown Man”, or “Dr. James McDonald Interviews Frank (Last Name Unknown?)”. If there are words misspelled or incorrect dates, please forgive me. Recording and editing the data was a big enough job in itself.

The first problem in recording the files was that Dr. McDonald’s original 3 inch, 1 7/8 speed reel to reel tape recorder was of no use being an old belt driven unit. Sometimes the audio would play at a correct speed and then slow down, so recording was useless. The audio would sound like Dr. McDonald was talking underwater. So the next thing I did was search on eBay for another recorder. Since the older recorders are pretty cheap ($20 to $50 dollars), I figured I would buy one to see if it would solve my problem. I found a Sony TC-123 reel to reel tape recorder that would play at 1 7/8 ips on eBay for $23.17 with shipping and handling. (See Fig. 3).

(Fig. 3)
Vintage Sony TC-123 reel-to-reel tape recorder.

I tried to use this recorder to record the 3 inch, 1 7/8 ips reel to reel tapes into my computer, but again this machine was old, belt driven and also had playback speed problems. It also had problems with major hum once it was connected to my computer for recording, due to the fact of grounding problems.

I called Vince Uhlenkott and he told me he had a reel to reel tape recorder that could play 3 ¾ ips. So we suggested to use this recorder to start the job and would try to find another player that was able to play 1 7/8 ips and 3 ¾ ips. The problem with this would mean that the job was basically started and recorded in reverse order. This being that Dr. McDonald originally, (at that time) recorded on 3 inch reels. Then when the technology got better he recorded on 5 inch reels and then 7 inch reels. Since we didn’t want to waste any time we started recording the 7 inch reels right away.

After I had recorded 10 or more files I would edit out long pauses, coughs or spaces between the interviews. This way the listener didn’t have to wait for long breaks while listening to the audio. Then limiting and noise/hum removal would be applied so the files would sound clean and wouldn’t have any background noise. I would then take notes on each file, name them, burn a CD and label them. This is a very tedious process as you can see and could only be done, as I mentioned earlier, on my time off.

After some time it got to the point that Vince Uhlenkott’s tape player/recorder started also having playback problems. Since we both knew that we would eventually need another playback machine that could playback 1 7/8 ips speed, Vince told me to go ahead and look on eBay for another one. I was able to eventually find a really clean vintage reel to reel Sony TC-155 player.
(See Fig. 4).

(Fig. 4)
Vintage Sony TC-155 reel to reel tape player.

This one was recently serviced by an audio specialist so I knew it would not have any playback problems for awhile. Over the next few years I recorded the rest of the 7 inch, 5 inch then 3 inch reels. I found that it was easier just to record the whole archive first and then concentrate on editing, noise reduction, cataloging, burning and finally labeling. For anyone technically interested I used Sony’s Sound Forge software to record the WAV files to my hard drive on the PC. Originally I used Sony’s Noise Reduction software to remove noise and hum but as the technology got better I used Bias’s SoundSoap Pro. I found this to be a lot better at removing noise and hum than Sony’s Noise Reduction software. (See Fig. 5)

(Fig. 5)
The editing and noise/hum removal process of Dr. James McDonald’s
audio recordings with Sound Forge and SoundSoap Pro software.

At the end of February of 2006 I finally had the whole project completed, burned and labeled. (See Figures 6 & 7).

(Fig. 6)
The 3-ring binder of the complete 110 CD-R archive of Dr. James McDonald’s audio recordings.

(Fig. 7)
A peek inside the 3-ring binder housing Dr. James McDonald’s audio recordings.

I’m glad that this could finally be completed and I’m sure it will become a huge research tool for the whole UFO community. There a probably references, or info in these interviews that could have been missed by other researchers in the past. Also new info could be gleaned from any of these past UFO cases. I hope eventually that these files will be streamed on the University of Tucson’s website for all UFO researchers to be able to have access to them.