The Real CE3

T H E--R E A L--C L O S E-- E N C O U N T E R S--
O F--T H E--T H I R D--K I N D

by Paul Althouse

Thanks to NICAP - Pennsylvania Unit #1,
Pittsburgh Investigative Subcommittee,
William Weitzel, Lead Investigator

(Reprinted from the MUFON Ohio Newsletter September, 2022)

(Links to the original NICAP and Bluebook reports available at the end of this article.)

If you are reading this you have probably seen the blockbuster movie, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. Released in 1977, it demonstrates in Steven Speilberg’s skillful way, the “what if” of an alien civilization making first contact through the experiences of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. In his quest to create a realistic image of the events, Speilberg borrowed from the real events of the time, and presented them as part of the film experience.

The scenes of police cars chasing UFOs in the hills are exciting and memorable and are based on a true story that occurred 11 years before in Ohio known as the “Portage County UFO Chase”. What Speilberg didn’t depict in the movie were the contentious interactions that took place between the witnesses of the chase, NICAP, Project Bluebook, and the Congress of The United States. This article describes a portion of the controversy that was a largely untold part of the events that occurred on and about April 18th, 1966.

A number of police officers were involved and provided NICAP (the most active private UFO investigating body at the time) with detailed descriptions of what they saw. These accounts came from those interviews.

THE REPORTS

The chase began near Ravenna, Ohio when two police officers investigating an abandoned car saw lights behind nearby trees.

Officer Dale F. Spaur

This is from the Portage County Investigative Report submitted by officer Dale F. Spaur on April 17, 1966.

“While on patrol of State Route 224, Deputy B. F. Spaur and Mounted Deputy Neff spotted a UFO at about 5:00 am, 50 feet off the ground over a heavily wooded area. The object could and did move in any direction. I advised my sergeant (H. Shoenfelt) by radio of what I had observed, having no camera with which to document the event. The sergeant advised that I keep this (? = unidentified object) under observation and pursue same until we could contact a unit with a camera. The (?) was about 35 to 45 feet across the bottom and about 24 feet high. The (?) was very bright. The (?) seemed suspended on a beam of light. The only sound that could be heard was a faint humming. This might have come from a power line. I was shook up at this time.”

“We observed the vehicle or (?) go straight up to about 200 feet and start moving east. We followed the craft or (?). It moved upward about 500 feet and increased its speed to about 80 mph (ground speed). We followed the object. The sergeant advised us, if possible, to stay with the (?). There was not much traffic, so I stayed with the (?). It increased its speed to 103 mph ground speed. The vehicle never made any attempt to lose us or to make a change of direction. At times it appeared to slow down as if waiting for us to catch up. We followed the (?) to just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.”

While the straight-line distance between Ravenna, Ohio and Conway, Pennsylvania was approximately 60 miles, Spaur and Neff traveled over 85 miles on winding roads and crossed state lines in pursuit of the unknown object.

Chief of Police Gerald Buchert

When the pursuit first began, Mantua Chief of Police Gerald Buchert, on patrol on Route 44, had been hearing the chatter on the police radio as the chase began for Spaur and Neff and saw a bright light in the sky to the southwest. At first, he thought it was a star, but it was much brighter than the other stars in the sky and it did not twinkle. It was to the right of the moon and somewhat above it. He observed it for a minute of two, but the object did not go anywhere. Thinking it might be the reported UFO, he drove to his home and awakened his wife to observe it with him. While he watched, the object moved in all directions above and below nearby phone wires. When it moved left or right, it appeared like two saucers facing each other, and the forward moving edge tilted, in attitude, upward. When it was stopped, or moving up and down, it appeared to be spherical. His wife described it as a sphere with a ring around it, like Saturn, when it moved left or right. Buchert had with him a Brownie Starmite camera used in his police work and took three pictures of the object. All were exposed on partially fogged film, with faint images appearing on them. One of the photos from the Bluebook investigation is shown.

Meanwhile during Spaur and Neff’s pursuit, they were joined by several other officers who either observed the object or joined in the pursuit. For brevity, I will only include their eyewitness descriptions of what they observed. It is these descriptions that brought on much of the ensuing controversy.

Object description by patrolman Wayne Huston of the East Palestine Police Force:
"Officer Huston had been following the chase on his radio since it began near Ravenna. When Spaur and Neff got close to my area, I talked with Spaur on the radio. I saw the thing when Dale (Spaur) was about 5 miles away from me. “Wayne, can’t you see it?” he said, and I did. It was running down Route 14, about 800-900 ft up when it came by. As it flew by, I was standing by my cruiser. I watched it go right overhead. It was shaped like an ice cream cone with sort of a crushed down top. I don’t know whether the bottom was solid or not; it might have been like a searchlight beam, coming to a point; but it was so bright; brighter than the sun when it came up. The point part of the cone was underneath; the top was sort of like a dome."

Here is officer Frank Panzanella’s account as described in the NICAP report:
“Conway policeman Frank Panzanella had been heading home, off duty at about 5:40 am, when he saw what he thought was a burning airplane heading toward him atop a hill next to Route 65. He drove downhill to escape a collision. The object was coming in his direction from the southwest. As he reached the bottom of the hill and turned left, he saw from his left window, a large glowing object move across his field of view from the west, away from him, but headed south. It appeared to be about 35 feet across, looked something like a bisected football, and near the rim of the oval bottom, had several dark circled light areas. A projection went off the object, away from him, at its rear. It might have been tilted, with a bottom view toward him, but it didn’t make much sense to him. He drove to an Atlantic service station next to Route 65 and parked his car. When he got out, he saw the object move out over the Northern Lights Shopping Center, east of him.”

The NICAP report goes on:
After Panzarella joined the chase, he heard a fading voice on his radio, It was Henry Kwaitanowski, an Economy Borough patrolman. “Hey Frank, I saw two jets.” Kwaitanowski was standing by his cruiser, about three miles from Conway, roughly southeast. He had been looking for jets and trying to raise Panzanella on the radio. Kwaitanowski saw two fighter jets flying toward the sunrise, away from him, and behind them, a shiny, football shaped object, keeping its distance, about the same size as the jets. He observed this for two of three minutes, then called Panzarella. The beginning of Kwaitanowski’s observation seems close to the end of Panzarella.

Two officers in nearby Salem, hearing the radio transmission from Kwaitanoski, went outside to see of they could see the object. Patrolmen Lonnie Johnson and Ray Esterly, expected to see the object come in from the northwest, but while they were looking, they saw a jet plane in the distance, at a small angle from the horizon, and they noticed an object in front of the aircraft. They watched the jet pursue the object, which looked like a bright ball, five times the size of the jet behind it, in level flight. Two more jets arced in from behind the first one. This sighting lasted a little over a minute, as they remembered, they radioed in what they were observing.

Just after getting this report, the radio operator, Jack Cramer, and police lieutenant Richard Whinnery heard an unidentified voice break in on the regular radio traffic. (the voice was louder than normal, and unrecognized). They heard the voice say…”I’m going down to take a look at it…I’m right above it….Its about 45 feet across, and its trailing something."

THE INVESTIGATION

Before noon on the day of the event, more than nine witnesses had made detailed observations of the unidentified object from different vantage points on an 86-mile path crossing 2 states.

By April 28th, NICAP issued a 138 page summary report of the events of April 18th and the days following. More than a third of the report focused on how the Air Force had botched their investigation of the incident.

After NICAP’s report was issued, the following people all became involved in the spiraling uproar about how the U S Air Force mis-managed the investigation, ending up with the Secretary of Defense.

Project Bluebook Head -
Major Hector Quintanilla

NICAP Chief Investigator -
William Weitzel

Portage County Common Pleas Court Judge -
The Honorable Robert E Cook

Ohio 14th District -
Congressman William Ayers

Ohio 11th District -
Congressman William Stanton

House Minority Leader -
Congressman Gerald R Ford,

Secretary of Defense –
Robert McNamara

The “official” Bluebook investigation began with Major Hector Quintanilla conducting a phone interview with officer Dale Spaur. This phone interview lasts approximately 2 ½ minutes. Quintanilla calls from his office at Project Bluebook at Wright-Patt in Dayton, Ohio, not bothering to visit Portage County even though it was in the same state and roughly 225 miles away. (a relatively moderate distance by car.)

The Beaver County Times reported that:
"Officer Dale Spaur was surprised that Major Quintanilla didn’t get into much detail of the sighting in his interview. Although members of several private UFO investigation groups interviewed the Ohio men personally, no government officials had been to Ravenna."

After two ‘two minute’ interviews with Spaur and a cursory examination of the photos that Chief Buchert sent to Bluebook, Major Quintanilla issues an official statement on behalf of Project Bluebook and The US Air Force stating:

“The probable cause of the sighting by Sheriff Dale F Spaur, of Ravenna, Ohio, was the passage of a satellite. As it approached the southeast portion of the sky, it disappeared, and Sheriff Spaur focused his eyes on the planet Venus. Venus was rising in the southeast and was brighter than any star in the sky. It is believed that Sheriff Spaur saw the planet Venus.”

In a reply to Project Bluebook and cc’ed to Congressman William Stanton;
NICAP investigator William Weitzel rebutted Bluebook’s findings with an
outlined number of points as described in the NICAP summary report.
Portions of those points are reproduced here.
Item One: There is no mention of the fact that several other officers participated in the observation of the UFO, at times, independently, and at times, together. NICAP documented at least 10 eyewitnesses. This lack of mention puts the responsibility on the shoulders of Spaur, Neff, and Buchert, and the wording of the report implies that Spaur alone was responsible for the mistaken observation which resulted in the chase. (Editors Note: By being singled out by Bluebook, Spaur endured many years of hardship and ridicule).

Item Two: Regarding the satellite explanation; this is impossible. When Spaur and Neff first observed the object, it was moving towards them over some trees, near the road where they had left their patrol car. Officer Spaur offered a detailed description of what he observed including a described size and shape.

Item Three: Regarding the reference to Spaur’s eyes focusing on Venus in an attempt by Quintanilla to explain the latter part of the sighting, the following detailed observations were later largely corroborated by officers Huston and Panzanella (and amounted to more than just a bright light in the sky).

A projection from the trailing edge of the object

A “dome” shaped top

An intensely bright forward portion

A bright cone shaped bottom portion

A bright trailing edge

A satiny (not shiny) metallic appearance on the rear third of the object

A drop- off at the rear of the dome

A brilliant, rounded undercarriage

A boundary between self- and externally- illuminated portions of the object.

Item six: Neither officers Neff, Huston, nor Panzanella were interviewed. When Spaur was interviewed, he had the distinct impression that when he began relating interesting details, Quintanilla backed off. The investigator, Spaur said, brought up the possibility that Spaur had only observed the object for a few moments, and did not pursue the fact that Spaur had pursued the object for 86 miles with several interruptions during the sighting.

After an initial round of complaints about Quintanilla from his superiors, Quintanilla did personally visit Ravenna and conduct a cursory investigation including interviews with officer Spaur and chief Buchert. No other witnesses were questioned about the events of that April morning. After his brief visit, Quintanilla returned to the Bluebook office at Wright-Patt and again issued the same summary of his investigation which maintained the same conclusions as his first report. They had misidentified Venus and subsequently chased it for 86 miles.

Portage County Common Pleas Court Judge (also a former congressman himself) William Cook was outraged at Quintanilla’s efforts to discount the integrity of officers Spaur, Neff, and the others involved. Armed with the scathing, well written analysis of the Air Force’s investigation provided by NICAP, Cook proceeded to contact then Congressman William Stanton.

The chain of complaints against Quintanilla and the Air Force grew longer and longer and climbed up through the ranks via Congressman Stanton, Ohio 14th District Congressman William Ayers, House Minority Leader Gerald R Ford, and right into the office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. (Editor’s note; The details of this correspondence can be read in NICAP’s summary report, available online at MUFON of Ohio’s web site.)

All the back biting resulted in a field day for the newspapers across Ohio and western Pennsylvania as shown with these headlines.

Amazingly, by May 25th, a little over 1 month after the events that started this all, the Air Force started singing this old tune with the press delivering the bad news.

Unphased by all the negative publicity generated by their handling of the “Portage County UFO Chase”, The U S Air Force continued discounting the events and managed to explain away these UFO sightings, at least to their own satisfaction. No one else was buying it, but it allowed Bluebook to continue in its nefarious ways.

Officer Spaur was encouraged by NICAP to speak about the case, and he did so as other witnesses went silent. He was hounded by the press and rediculed. The pressure took its toll, and Spaur ended up losing his wife, and his chuldren. He ended up working in a coal mine in West Virginia.

...and you thought it was just a cool UFO chase

View the original
NICAP Summary Report
on The Portage County UFO Chase

(Starting with a letter from William Weitzel, NICAP to
Lt Col. George Freeman, Community Relations Div. USAF
re: reports that college students were flying a balloon
on the night of the sightings.)

View the original Bluebook report
on The Portage County UFO Chase

Thanks to The Black Vault for the original Bluebook report on this event and
NICAP for its excellent documentation of the event and its aftermath,
without which, this article could not have been written.

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