Evening. I'm calling from Cleveland, and I was an Army Reserve helicopter pilot. What happened to me and my crew on October 18th, 1973 changed everything I thought I knew about what's possible. I'd been flying for nineteen years at that point, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. I was also a Cleveland police officer, so I'm used to writing reports, sticking to facts. But that night, the facts don't fit anything I was trained to explain. We'd flown down to Port Columbus that afternoon, myself and three other reservists. We had our annual flight physicals scheduled, routine stuff. The exams wrapped up around ten, and we headed straight to the airport. The flight plan was simple, ninety-six nautical miles north-northeast back to Cleveland Hopkins. I was commanding from the right front seat. My copilot Daniel was at the controls in the left seat, he was twenty-six, chemical engineer. Behind him sat Thomas, our flight medic, thirty-five, also a Cleveland cop. And our crew chief Richard was in the right rear, twenty-three, worked with computers.
We took off around ten thirty in a Bell UH-1H Super Huey. Beautiful night for flying, I remember thinking that. Clear, starry, no moon yet. Visibility was fifteen miles or more, not a cloud anywhere. We were cruising at twenty-five hundred feet above sea level, airspeed ninety knots. Below us was farmland, rolling hills, patches of forest. Standard flight, nothing unusual. It was just past eleven when we were flying over Charles Mill Lake, maybe ten miles south of Mansfield. Thomas called out from behind me, said he saw a red light off to the west, looked like it was heading south. I glanced over, saw it too. Figured it was another aircraft, maybe a civilian plane. Didn't think much of it. Few minutes later, Richard reported another red light, this one on the eastern horizon. Said it looked steady, could be a radio tower beacon or maybe a port wing light on an aircraft.
Then Richard's voice changed. He said the light was moving toward us. I looked and sure enough, that red light was converging on our position, and it was coming fast. Real fast. I took the controls from Daniel immediately, started a powered descent, five hundred feet per minute. At the same time I radioed Mansfield approach control. 'Mansfield Tower, this is Army helicopter one-five-four-four-four, do you have any high performance aircraft in this area at twenty-five hundred feet?' Tower came back, 'This is Mansfield Tower, go ahead Army one-five-four-four-four.' And then nothing. Radio went dead. Both UHF and VHF frequencies, completely silent. I tried again, no response. That red light kept coming, and I could tell we were looking at a collision course. I pushed us into a steeper descent, two thousand feet per minute, airspeed one hundred knots. We dropped down to seventeen hundred feet, maybe six hundred feet above the treetops.
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