IncidentCoyne / Mansfield Army Helicopter Incident (18 October 1973)

aka Coyne / Mansfield Army Helicopter Incident (18 October 1973)

An Army Reserve Bell UH-1H helicopter flown by Capt. Lawrence Coyne and three crew over Mansfield, Ohio reported a near-collision with a cigar-shaped object that, by their account, caused the helicopter's collective to rise independently and the altimeter to climb 1,000 feet without pilot input.

phenomenologically-open A four-man Army Reserve helicopter crew, a near-collision, and an unexplained 1,800-foot altitude gain with the collective down, with ground witnesses corroborating — the corpus's strongest aviator close encounter after Tehran.

status history (1)

2026-06-09 · unannotated → phenomenologically-open — initial annotation sweep (Epic J.F4)

U.S. Army Bell UH-1H Huey in flight, the type Capt. Coyne's reserve crew was flying near Mansfield (DoD photo) Wikipedia Commons · Public domain · TSgt. Hans Deffner, U.S. Department of Defense · 1990

FAA control tower at Mansfield Lahm Airport, Ohio, which the Coyne crew radioed as the object closed in Wikipedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.5 · User:OHWiki · 2008

On the night of 18 October 1973 at approximately 23:05, an Army Reserve Bell UH-1H Iroquois (‘Huey’) helicopter from Cleveland Hopkins Airport was returning to base from Columbus on a routine flight. The crew was Capt. Lawrence J. Coyne (aircraft commander, pilot), 1st Lt. Arrigo Jezzi (copilot), Sgt. John Healey (crew chief), and SSgt. Robert Yanacsek (flight medic). At approximately 11 nautical miles south of Mansfield, Ohio, at 2,500 ft AGL, Yanacsek reported a steady red light off the aircraft’s right side. The light closed rapidly; Coyne initiated a 500 ft/min descent. The light pulled up alongside the helicopter and stopped. The crew reported a cigar-shaped, gray, metallic object with a domed top and a beam of green light that briefly illuminated the cockpit. During the encounter, the radio failed across both VHF and UHF bands. Coyne reported that the collective control was in the descent position but that the altimeter showed the aircraft climbing at 1,000 ft/min through 3,500 ft — a control discrepancy he could not explain. The object then accelerated to the northwest at high speed. Radio function returned. The case was investigated by the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) under J. Allen Hynek and by Jennie Zeidman; ground witnesses near Mansfield independently corroborated the object. The Coyne incident is one of the most-cited helicopter UAP cases in the public record because of the multiple crew witnesses, the corroborating ground witnesses, and the control discrepancy.

Notable & intriguing

All four crew members of the Army Reserve UH-1H — Capt. Lawrence Coyne, 1st Lt. Arrigo Jezzi, Sgt. John Healey, SSgt. Robert Yanacsek — submitted independent written accounts to the Cleveland Hopkins Army Aviation Support Facility within 24 hours; all four reports describe the cigar-shaped metallic object and the radio failure.

U.S. Army Aviation Support Facility, Cleveland Hopkins, incident reports 18-19 October 1973; CUFOS Coyne case file, 1973
Ground witnesses near Mansfield — Erma Cheney, her daughter, and three children riding in a car (the Cheney family) — independently reported observing both the helicopter and a luminous object converging at the time and location matching the crew’s account; the Cheney report was filed with the Mansfield Police Department on the same night.

Mansfield Police Department incident report, 18 October 1973; Jennie Zeidman, A Helicopter-UFO Encounter Over Ohio, CUFOS, 1979
Capt. Coyne reported that during the encounter, the collective lever was in the ‘descent’ position, but the helicopter’s altimeter showed a 1,000-ft/min climb through 3,500 ft; he could not explain the control discrepancy. The flight-data parameter has been cited by aerospace engineers as one of the most specifically anomalous control reports in the modern UAP record.

Capt. Coyne signed statement to U.S. Army, 19 October 1973; Jennie Zeidman, FATE Magazine, August 1976

Public-record items already documented about this subject. Folklore is labelled. Sources cited where the specificity warrants it.

Suggested watching

Sightings — The Coyne Helicopter Incident (1992) episode

dir. various · various · 12m segment

Reconstruction of the October 18 1973 Army Reserve Huey encounter over Mansfield, Ohio, with Capt. Lawrence Coyne's own account on tape.

primary source on Coyne's testimony

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