Leonard Stringfield

Leonard H. Stringfield was a World War II veteran and public relations executive who became the foremost collector of UFO crash and retrieval testimony. During the war, he and his flight crew observed three teardrop-shaped objects pacing their C-46 transport over the Pacific, an encounter that initiated his lifelong interest.

Stringfield's unique contribution was methodical documentation of what he called "Status Reports" on crash/retrieval cases. Beginning in 1978 with his presentation at the MUFON Symposium, he published seven status reports compiling first and secondhand accounts from military personnel, medical examiners, and government officials who claimed knowledge of recovered non-human craft and bodies. He protected the identities of his sources with iron discipline, earning trust that allowed him to accumulate testimony no other researcher could access.

His reports covered alleged retrievals from Roswell to Kingman, Arizona, from the Kecksburg incident to cases in Latin America and Europe. While sceptics pointed out that much of his evidence was anonymous and therefore unverifiable, the sheer volume and internal consistency of his collected testimony made his work a reference point that crash/retrieval researchers continue to build on.

Stringfield served as MUFON's director of public relations and was a regular contributor to the MUFON UFO Journal. He died in 1994.