Decade
UAP history in the 1970s: 12 entries in date order, each with public sources. By track: Military (5), Experiencers (3), Sightings (2), Government (1), Media (1).
Northwestern astronomer J. Allen Hynek, long a scientific consultant to the Air Force's UFO projects, published The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. It sorted reports into close encounters of the first, second and third kind, a scheme later echoed in Spielberg's 1977 film.
Shipyard workers Charles Hickson, 42, and Calvin Parker, 19, told the Jackson County sheriff that creatures took them aboard a glowing craft while they fished on the Pascagoula River. Deputies found them genuinely frightened; many people doubted the story.
A four-man Army Reserve UH-1H crew led by Capt. Lawrence Coyne reported that a gray, cigar-shaped object approached their helicopter near Mansfield, Ohio, bathed the cockpit in green light, and that the helicopter rose sharply during the encounter. Ground witnesses reported a red light.
Air Force and NORAD records released under FOIA describe unidentified, low-flying objects, often likened to helicopters, over Loring, Wurtsmith and Malmstrom bases in late October and November 1975. Pursuit efforts failed; the Washington Post reported the files in 1979.
Logger Travis Walton went missing after his crewmates said a glowing object struck him in a clearing in Arizona's Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. He reappeared days later saying he had been taken aboard a craft; many have questioned the story, which he still defends.
Iranian Air Force F-4 jets were sent after a bright light over Tehran overnight, and crews reported losing instruments and communications as they closed in. A U.S. Defense Attache report on the incident, circulated by the DIA, was later released under FOIA.
France's space agency CNES set up GEPAN, a unit in Toulouse to collect and analyze reports of unidentified aerospace phenomena, with engineer Claude Poher as its first head. It became SEPRA in 1988 and GEIPAN in 2005, and still operates.
After residents of Colares and nearby Para coastal towns reported lights in the sky, a Brazilian Air Force team from Belem logged sightings and took photographs into 1978. The Air Force says the files went to the National Archives; no explanation covers every report.
Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind had its premiere in New York. Its title uses a term coined by Northwestern University astronomer J. Allen Hynek, who was credited as a technical adviser. The Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry in 2007.
Pilot Frederick Valentich, 20, radioed Melbourne Flight Service that a large unidentified object was hovering over his Cessna 182 above Bass Strait, then the transmission ended. Neither he nor the plane was found; the Department of Transport report said the cause was not determined.
A TV crew aboard a Safe Air Argosy cargo flight filmed lights off the Kaikoura coast, with returns reported on Wellington radar and the plane's own radar. An Air Force inquiry concluded natural but unusual phenomena; UN-post files released in 2021 show DSIR scientists left them unidentified.
A TAE Super Caravelle bound for the Canary Islands diverted to Valencia-Manises after its crew reported red lights closing on the aircraft. A Spanish Air Force Mirage F1 later chased lights without success; the declassified file records no radar contact. A deputy raised it in parliament.
