List of UFO recoveries
UFO crash recoveries, also called crash retrievals, are incidents in which a craft of unidentified origin was brought down, forced down or otherwise recovered by terrestrial authorities and material or biological evidence was retrieved. The thirteen incidents below run from the 1945 Trinity crash to the 1997 Peru recovery; a recovery may follow a UFO crash, a controlled landing, or the discovery of a craft apparently abandoned. Recovery teams are attributed to the Department of Energy's Nuclear Emergency Support Team and to a rapid-response Air Force unit, and the CIA's Global Access Office, which Richard Dolan identifies with the ZODIAC program, is described as arranging special-operations access to retrieval sites abroad. The rows rest on different footing: two rest on Clifford Stone's accounts as relayed by Paola Harris, one on the Project Aquarius briefing document, one on an informant of the investigator Tony Dodd who has never been named, one on documents Dodd received that were partly forged, and the recovery-team detail given for the Kingman, Kecksburg, Coyame and Varginha rows traces to a single 2025 video by UAP Gerb on the Peru case, in which the Coyame case is itself described as having "very little in the form of evidence-based paper trails." The list is not exhaustive, and its inclusion of an incident is not a judgment of its validity.
| Year | Country | Location | Incident type | Craft | Recovering organization | Key witnesses / sources | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1945 | United States | desert near San Antonio, New Mexico (Trinity) | crash; radio-tower strike; occupants reportedly self-retrieved | small craft | none; beings reportedly gone the next day | Remigio Baca and Jose Padilla (child witnesses); Jacques Vallée, Paola Harris | beings reportedly gone the next day[6][7] |
| 1947 | United States | Roswell, New Mexico (Roswell) | crash; two impact sites | disc-shaped | — | Jesse Marcel, Mac Brazel, Philip Corso | Ron Garner, introducing Dan Burisch's interviews, says live aliens were recovered[8]; the Air Force's 1994 report attributed the debris to Project Mogul[9] |
| 1948 | United States | Hart Canyon, near Aztec, New Mexico (Aztec) | crash; mesa | disc, about 100 ft | — | Frank Scully, Silas Newton; Scott Ramsey | 14–16 bodies reported; long disputed[10][1] |
| 1953 | United States | desert near Kingman, Arizona (Kingman) | acute recovery of a crash | disc, intact; small disc | NEST and USAF units described as first on site | Arthur Stansel (Fritz Werner); USAF personnel | craft reportedly moved to a classified facility[3][11] |
| 1958 | United States | Utah desert (Utah) | abandoned craft recovered | "third Alien aircraft," flyable | — | Project Aquarius briefing document | no occupants found[2] |
| 1965 | United States | Kecksburg, Pennsylvania (Kecksburg) | crash | bell-shaped, markings on flange | military personnel in pressure suits (per witnesses) | civilian witnesses; Stan Gordon | craft removed by flatbed truck[12] |
| 1960s–1970s | Vietnam | — | three of twelve recoveries (Stone) | unspecified | U.S. Army recovery teams | Clifford Stone, via Paola Harris | beings described as amphibian-like, with gills[13][14] |
| 1974 | Mexico | Coyame, Chihuahua | acute recovery of a crash tracked by CIA satellite | tracked on jagged trajectories before impact | CIA recovery team from Fort Bliss, Texas | CIA satellite data; Deneb Report (alleged) | toxic containment breach reported[5] |
| 1974 | United Kingdom | Cadair Berwyn, Wales (Berwyn Mountains) | crash; officially an earthquake and meteor | — | British troops; sealed boxes to Porton Down | Tony Dodd; a soldier | the "Welsh Roswell"[15] |
| 1989 | South Africa | Kalahari Desert, near the Botswana border (Kalahari UFO incident) | crash following a shootdown by South African Air Force Mirages | unidentified craft, forced down | South African Air Force; wreckage reportedly transferred to U.S. custody | Tony Dodd, James van Greunen | 7 May 1989; documents received by Dodd partly forged[16] |
| 1996 | Brazil | Varginha, Minas Gerais (Varginha) | crash; entities captured | — | Brazilian Army | civilian and military witnesses | extensive local witness testimony[17] |
| 1997 | Peru | jungle near Bupa, Iquitos (Peru) | acute recovery of a crash after a missile strike | egg-shaped, gill-like vents | DOE NEST team in Hazmat suits, on site within 8–9 hours | Jonathan Weygandt (USMC), MACG-28; Operation Laser Strike | Weygandt detained and threatened for hours[3][18][19] |
| — | United States | Georgia | recovery | unspecified | U.S. Army recovery team | Clifford Stone, via Paola Harris | the last U.S. recovery Stone worked; he "didn't know what he was doing"[13] |
Open questions
References
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