UFO Crash/Retrievals: Status Reports I–VII

The UFO Crash/Retrieval status reports are the seven papers and booklets in which the Cincinnati researcher Leonard Stringfield gathered, from 1978 until his death in 1994, the accounts of people who said they had seen or handled crashed UFOs and their occupants: soldiers at crash sites, pilots, medical staff who described autopsies, and others, almost all identified only by initials to protect them. The first, Retrievals of the Third Kind, was presented at the 1978 MUFON symposium; later ones include The UFO Crash/Retrieval Syndrome (1980) and UFO Crash/Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum (1991). They were collected in one volume in 2019.

These reports are where much of today's crash-retrieval narrative begins, decades before the 2023 congressional testimony, and they are cited in material submitted to Congress. Stringfield was frank about their limits: his informants were mostly anonymous, often relayed second-hand, and he said he had never seen a craft or body himself and held no affidavits. AARO's 2024 historical review found no evidence that any such recoveries took place.

Sources: Open Library · Leonard Stringfield's file · AARO Historical Record Report, Vol. 1 (2024)