May 21, 1953 (alleged): Engineer Arthur Stansel claims he was bused from the Nevada Test Site to a crash site near Kingman, Arizona and shown a 30-foot oval craft and the body of a 4-foot being in a silvery suit. He signed an affidavit for Raymond Fowler twenty years later. None of the other fifteen alleged specialists have come forward. Unsubstantiated crash-retrieval claim — Insufficient Data.
THINK ABOUTIT CRASH REPORT
1953: Kingman Arizona UFO crash
On May 21, 1953, an engineer named Arthur G. Stansel — working at the Nevada Test Site on Operation Upshot-Knothole, the United States’ nuclear weapons test series — claims he was pulled from his duties at Frenchman Flat, bused with fifteen other specialists in a blacked-out vehicle to a site in the desert near Kingman, Arizona, and shown a crashed oval craft approximately thirty feet across embedded twenty inches into the sand with no structural damage, along with the dead body of a four-foot-tall being in a silvery metallic suit inside a nearby tent. He signed a legal affidavit vouching for this account — twenty years later, in June 1973. The affidavit, obtained by respected UFO researcher Raymond Fowler, remains the single documented evidentiary artifact of the Kingman crash-retrieval claim.
⚠ UNSUBSTANTIATED CRASH-RETRIEVAL CLAIM
This case rests on a single witness affidavit signed twenty years after the alleged event, with no contemporary documentation, no surviving physical evidence, and significant internal contradictions in the witness’s own descriptions of the object. Subsequent layers of claim — multiple alien crew, beam weapons, reverse engineering at Area 51, test-flight crash in 1962 — derive from unverified and in some cases PROBLEMATIC sources (see Researcher’s Notes).
The case is retained in the archive as a documented crash-retrieval claim of historical significance to the field, not as a verified event.
Date: May 20 or 21, 1953 (sources vary; Stansel’s desk calendar shows May 20 at Frenchman Flat with a “strange call” received that evening; the affidavit specifies May 21)
Sighting Time: 21:00 (9:00 PM) per one source; not specified in the affidavit itself
Day/Night: Night
Location: Desert near Kingman, Arizona — reported as approximately 8 miles northwest of Kingman Army Air Field (now Kingman Airport)
Urban or Rural: Rural (desert)
No. of Entity(‘s): 1 observed by Stansel (in a tent near the craft). Subsequent unverified claims assert four crew total.
Entity Type: Small humanoid — deceased
Entity Description: Approximately 4 feet tall. Dark brown skin (Stansel noted this may have been caused by atmospheric exposure). Wearing a silvery metallic one-piece suit and a skullcap of the same material. Small round mouth. No other facial or anatomical details provided by Stansel.
Hynek Classification: None — per locked editorial standards, unsubstantiated crash-retrieval claims do not receive Hynek classifications. The CE-II classification on the original pages is incorrect.
Duration: Not specified — Stansel was at the site for an indeterminate period before being bused back
No. of Object(s): 1
Description of the Object(s): Oval craft described as resembling two deep saucers, one inverted on the other. Approximately 30 feet in overall diameter with convex surfaces approximately 20 feet in diameter. Constructed of a metal resembling brushed aluminum. Had impacted 20 inches into the desert sand without any visible structural damage. An entrance hatch approximately 1.5 feet wide by 3.5 feet high was open. Another team member who looked inside reported two swivel seats, an oval cabin, and numerous instruments and displays. NOTE: Stansel initially described the object to informal acquaintances as teardrop- or cigar-shaped, approximately 20 feet long and 5 feet high — significantly different from the disc-shaped, 30-foot description in his formal Fowler interview. Stansel attributed this discrepancy to casual exaggeration when telling the story informally.
Shape of Object(s): Oval / two inverted saucers (per the affidavit); earlier informal account described it as teardrop or cigar-shaped
Size of Object(s): Approximately 30 feet in diameter (affidavit); approximately 20 feet long (earlier informal account)
Color of Object(s): Brushed aluminum appearance
Distance to Object(s): Stansel was on-site at the alleged crash location — close proximity
Height & Speed: Not applicable — object was on the ground, impacted 20 inches into the sand
Number of Witnesses: 16 specialists (per Stansel — transported to the site together in a blacked-out bus). None of the other fifteen have ever come forward or been identified.
Special Features/Characteristics: Object impacted desert sand without structural damage. Interior included two swivel seats and an oval cabin with instruments. One deceased entity recovered in a tent near the craft. All team members ordered to sign a secrecy oath. Stansel’s desk calendar for May 20, 1953 partially corroborates his story — it documents his presence at Frenchman Flat and notes a “strange call” from a doctor (name not fully legible) that evening. Operation Upshot-Knothole (the nuclear test series Stansel was working on) was historically real and active in spring 1953 at the Nevada Test Site.
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Source: Arthur G. Stansel (pseudonym “Fritz Werner”) via Raymond E. Fowler — signed affidavit dated June 7, 1973; published in UFO Magazine, April 1976; expanded account in Fowler’s “Casebook of a UFO Investigator” (1981). Corroborating claim: Leonard Stringfield (1977) — Naval Intelligence officer at Wright-Patterson AFB, bodies from “Arizona crash.” Earlier reference: Richard Hall (MUFON), told the story in April 1964 by an unnamed future Vietnam commander. ⚠ PROBLEMATIC source material on the existing pages: Anton Anfalov and Bill Uhouse claims (beam weapons, female alien, craft moved to Area 51, test-flight crash 1962) are entirely unverified and derive from sources with no documented credibility chain.
Summary/Description: A mechanical engineer working on nuclear weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site claims he was bused to a crash site near Kingman, Arizona on May 21, 1953 and shown an oval craft 30 feet across embedded in the desert sand and the body of a 4-foot-tall being in a silvery suit. He signed an affidavit for UFO researcher Raymond Fowler twenty years later. Internal contradictions exist in the object description. No other witnesses from the alleged team of sixteen have come forward. No contemporary documentation has surfaced. The case is a significant historical crash-retrieval claim resting on a single documented source.
Related Cases: 1947: Roswell | 1953: Brady, Montana Sighting
Detailed Report
Arthur G. Stansel graduated from Ohio University in 1949 with a degree in engineering. He was employed by Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio as a mechanical engineer specializing in aircraft engine testing and crash-damage assessment, particularly landing gear. His supervisor at Wright-Patterson was Dr. Eric Wang, an Austrian-born engineer who headed the Installations Division within the Office of Special Studies. Wang was a graduate of the Vienna Technical Institute, had taught structural and metallurgical engineering at the University of Cincinnati from 1943 to 1952, and had relocated his research to Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque before his death on December 4, 1960.
In 1953, Stansel was on loan to the Atomic Energy Commission as a project engineer on Operation Upshot-Knothole — a real and documented series of eleven nuclear weapons tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site between March 17 and June 4, 1953, at Frenchman Flat and Yucca Flat. The test director was Dr. Ed Doll. Stansel’s primary job was assessing blast damage to structures — bridges, buildings, and instrumentation — subjected to nuclear detonations.
According to his account, on the evening of May 20, 1953 (his desk calendar confirms his presence at Frenchman Flat that day and notes receiving a “strange call” from a doctor whose name is partially illegible), Stansel was summoned by his supervisor and told to report for a secret two-to-three-day assignment. He was bused with fifteen other specialists in a vehicle with blacked-out windows to a site in the desert near Kingman, Arizona, escorted by military police.
At the site, Stansel says he was shown a crashed craft embedded twenty inches into the desert sand with no visible structural damage. He described it in his affidavit as oval, approximately thirty feet in diameter, constructed of a metal resembling brushed aluminum, with two deep saucer-like halves joined rim-to-rim. A vertically lowered entrance hatch, approximately 1.5 feet wide by 3.5 feet high, was open. Another team member who entered the craft reported seeing two swivel seats, an oval cabin, and numerous instruments and displays.
In a tent pitched near the craft, Stansel says he was shown the dead body of a small creature approximately four feet tall. It wore a silvery metallic one-piece suit and a skullcap of the same material. Its skin was dark brown — Stansel speculated that this coloring may have been caused by exposure to Earth’s atmosphere. It had a small round mouth. No other anatomical details were provided.
Stansel’s assigned task was to assess the craft’s rate of descent and impact dynamics based on the sand displacement — crash-damage assessment consistent with his documented engineering specialty. After completing their assignments, the team members were bused back and ordered to sign a secrecy oath. They were warned not to discuss what they had seen with anyone.
Stansel did not come forward publicly for twenty years. In 1973, Raymond E. Fowler — a respected and meticulous UFO researcher — interviewed Stansel and obtained a signed legal affidavit dated June 7, 1973, in which Stansel (under the pseudonym “Fritz Werner”) swore that the account was truthful. Fowler published the affidavit in UFO Magazine in April 1976 and expanded the account in his 1981 book “Casebook of a UFO Investigator.” Fowler conducted a thorough background check on Stansel and was satisfied as to his integrity, credentials, and technical competence.
However, researchers later discovered that Stansel had previously told the story informally to two young acquaintances (Young and Chetham), in which he described the object not as a disc but as teardrop- or cigar-shaped, approximately 20 feet long and 5 feet high — substantially different from the 30-foot disc described to Fowler. Stansel attributed this discrepancy to casual exaggeration during an informal retelling, stating he had wanted to tell “a good story” without misleading them deliberately.
Independent partial corroboration came from Leonard Stringfield in 1977, who reported testimony from a Naval Intelligence officer at Wright-Patterson AFB who claimed to have witnessed the nighttime delivery by DC-7 of five crates from an “Arizona crash site.” Three crates reportedly contained small humanoid bodies approximately four feet tall with large heads and brownish skin, packed in dry ice. The connection to Kingman specifically is inferred but not confirmed by Stringfield’s source.
Researcher’s Notes
The Kingman Retrieval — Arizona 1953 and the Single-Affidavit Problem
- The Source Chain: The documented evidence base for the Kingman crash consists of exactly one artifact: Arthur Stansel’s signed affidavit of June 7, 1973, obtained by Raymond Fowler. Everything else is secondary, tertiary, or unverifiable. The earliest independent reference — Richard Hall told the story in April 1964 by an unnamed future Vietnam commander — predates Stansel’s public disclosure but provides no details and the source was never identified. Stringfield’s Wright-Patterson testimony is corroborative in theme (Arizona crash, small bodies, WPAFB delivery) but connects to Kingman only by inference. No contemporary documentation from 1953 — military orders, transport records, site photographs, material analysis reports, classified memos — has ever surfaced despite decades of FOIA requests. Of the alleged sixteen specialists on the bus, not one has ever been identified or come forward independently.
- The Shape Discrepancy: The most significant internal problem with Stansel’s account is the change in the object’s description between his informal telling (teardrop/cigar, 20 feet) and his formal affidavit (disc/oval, 30 feet). This is not a minor detail — the shape and size of the alleged craft are the most fundamental physical descriptors of the event. Stansel’s explanation (casual exaggeration) raises the obvious question: if he embellished the shape and size when telling the story casually, what else in the formal account might reflect polished rather than raw memory after twenty years? This does not prove fabrication, but it places a significant credibility caveat on the specific physical details of the affidavit.
- ⚠ PROBLEMATIC Material — Anfalov and Uhouse: The existing pages contain extensive material attributed to Anton Anfalov (and associated with Bill Uhouse) asserting that the craft had a four-person crew, that three surviving aliens used beam weapons against the retrieval team, that a female alien was captured during a subsequent search operation, that the craft was moved to Nellis and then Area 51, and that it crashed again during a human test flight in 1962. None of this material has any documented source chain whatsoever. Anton Anfalov is flagged PROBLEMATIC across the archive for sourcing claims — particularly regarding Soviet/CIS cases — that cannot be verified and frequently contradict documented records. The Uhouse claims are similarly unsourced. This material should be read as unverified folklore layered onto the Stansel core account, not as part of the documented case.
- Assessment: The Kingman crash-retrieval claim is historically significant — it is one of the earliest and most frequently cited alleged recoveries after Roswell, and Stansel’s affidavit via Fowler remains one of very few signed legal documents in the crash-retrieval literature. Fowler is a meticulous researcher whose background check on Stansel was thorough. Operation Upshot-Knothole is historically confirmed and Stansel’s presence at the Nevada Test Site in May 1953 is partially corroborated by his desk calendar. But one affidavit signed twenty years later — with an internal shape discrepancy, zero corroborating witnesses from the alleged sixteen-person team, and no contemporary documentation — cannot sustain a classification above Insufficient Data. The case is preserved in the archive as a documented historical claim, not a verified event. Per locked conventions, no Hynek classification applies to unsubstantiated crash-retrieval claims.
Arthur Stansel carried the Kingman story for twenty years before he put his name on a piece of paper and swore it was true. Raymond Fowler believed him. The affidavit is precise, the witness is credentialed, the nuclear test series is real, and the desk calendar partially corroborates the timeline. But the object changed shape between tellings, fifteen fellow witnesses vanished without a trace, and every subsequent layer of claim — the surviving aliens, the beam weapons, the Area 51 test flight — rests on sources that cannot be verified. What survives is one man’s sworn word and the question of what the Air Force was doing in the desert near Kingman in May 1953 that required a busload of specialists from a nuclear test site to sign a secrecy oath.
