The Cash-Landrum UFO Prime Suspect: The CH-47, Army Chinook

 “They were far away but yet they were low enough and we set there and watched them 'till they got over the car because I wanted to make sure if it was airplanes or if it was helicopters, which it was helicopters. I counted 23 of them. I don't know what color they were, I can't say. But I do know that they had a double deal on the top, propeller-like thing. And I could hear 'em just as plain as if they were right ready to land…"

Betty Cash, from a taped statement made at Parkway Hospital, Feb. 1981

Witnesses, Betty Cash, Vickie and Colby Landrum described large helicopters with two rotors on top, which they assumed to be military. Later they were shown photos by investigators and identified the CH-47 as a match. Identifying the type of helicopters seemed to be a big break, since the CH-47 was primarily used by the US Army. Here's a look at some CH-47 data from helis.com (helicopter history site) https://www.helis.com/60s/CH-47-Chinook.php.

CH-47 specs.

The Boeing Chinook is a tandem rotor, heavy-lift helicopter that meets tactical and combat support mission requirements for military forces around the world. The Chinook is one of the world’s most reliable and efficient transport helicopter, capable of handling loads up to 28,000 lbs with a maximum gross weight of 54,000 lbs. (24,494 kg), greater than its own empty weight. Its tandem rotor configuration also provides exceptional handling qualities that enable the CH-47 to operate in climatic, altitude and crosswind conditions that typically keep other helicopters from flying. 

The first fully equipped U.S. Army Chinook designated the CH-47A first flight Sep 21th 1961 and entered service in August 1962 with a gross weight of 33,000 lbs. (14,969 kg). 

Specifications

First flight:	Sept. 21, 1961
Model number:	Vertol 114
Classification:	Military helicopter
Length:	51 feet
Gross weight:	33,000 pounds
Top speed:	150 mph
Range:	200 miles
Maximum payload:	More than 7 tons
Power:	2,220-shaft-horsepower Twin Lycoming T55-L-5 turboshaft engines, two 3-bladed rotors
Accommodation:	3 crew, 33 troops or 24 litter patients and attendants

The article at Global Security discusses  the modifications made in 1980:

“Prior to the introduction of the MH-47D and MH-47E, US Army special operations aviation units had used 12 CH-47Cs modified to allow for the use of night vision goggles (NVGs). These aircraft, assigned to Task Force 158, the predecessor to the 160th Aviation Battalion (which subsequently evolved into the 160th Aviation Regiment), came from the 101st Airborne Division in 1980 and entered active service in 1981. Their primary mission was to provide forward-area refueling operations in austere environments. Upon assignment to TF 158, the 12 aircraft received modifications that included radar altimeters (specifically added for safety during night-vision-goggle flights); long-range navigation and communication equipment; and 4 metal internal auxiliary fuel tanks (taken from M49C 2 1/2-ton fuel trucks).” http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/mh-47.htm 

With the extra fuel tanks, CH-47s could fly 330 miles without refueling. But the problem was always: Where did they come from, and where did they go? Part of the popularity of the C-L case in the 1980s was the mystery of the helicopters, since choppers were part of the emerging cattle mutilation lore, overlapping with "black helicopters" in sinister Government conspiracy theories of all persuasions.

The Choppers - and the Choppers: Mystery Helicopters and Animal Mutilations by Tom Adams

An Expert Opinion on the Cash-Landrum Copters

In 2014, I interviewed a veteran helicopter pilot, Russ Hunter, who was a Senior Instructor pilot, in Task Force 160 at Fort Campbell Kentucky. He joined a few years after the Cash-Landrum incident, but served alongside original members of the team and flew the same helicopters said to be involved in the UFO story. Russ assumed the witness testimony was genuine, but found many problems accepting the details of the story. The reported helicopter activity didn't match with the way the actual equipment used even in emergency situations. He tried to make the details fit by assuming the number of 23 helicopters was exaggerated, but even twelve CH-47s would have been detectable on radar and produced enough noise to have disturbed people for many miles around the Huffman area.

Report on the Cash/Landrum New Caney CEII Case by Allan Hendry

Part of the problem was the incident took place during the period between Christmas and New Year's Day, which would leave any military base understaffed for a massive helicopter operation. In early 1981, the Fund for UFO Research contracted Allan Hendry of the Center for UFO Studies to conduct an investigation into the origin of the helicopters in the Cash-Landrum case. His report was completed in April 1981 and delivered to FUFOR. Hendry’s turned up a lot of valuable information on the case, but he found no evidence to support the helicopters reported in the case:

"In closing,  the claim made by all three witnesses in the Cash/Landrum group implicitly implicates a large number of helicopters. This claim cannot be 'objectified' independently." At the time of Hendry's report, there were no additional witnesses to the helicopters, but following media attention, others were produced.

A link to a file containing Hendry's FUFOR report can be found at this link:

Report on the Cash/Landrum New Caney CEII Case by Allan Hendry

The DAIG Investigation of the Cash-Landrum UFO Incident

Due to the publicity from television coverage  of the case, (That’s Incredible!), Oregon Representative Ron Wyden launched an inquiry as to whether U.S. helicopters were involved in the incident. This resulted in the investigation by the Department of the Army's Inspector General’s office, conducted by Lt. Col. George C. Sarran. Concluding his report, Sarran stated, 

"Through the course of inquiry the DAIG investigating officer tried to concentrate on any reason or anyone in or organization which might have been flying helicopters that particular evening in the general area. There was no evidence presented that would indicate that Army, National Guard, or Army Reserve helicopters were involved."

Sarran stated in an interview with Florida Today reporter, Billy Cox that he also had investigated possible classified operations, but found negative results. Col. John B. Alexander participated in the DAIG investigation in an advisory role and confirmed that no Government helicopters were involved.

USS New Orleans

MUFON's John Schuessler held on to the secret helicopter hypothesis, suggesting that they were temporarily based on an aircraft carrier, the USS New Orleans. An imaginative solution, but once again investigation proved it implausible.

If Not Helicopters?

Despite many efforts from UFO investigator, journalists law enforcement and the US government, there was nothing tangible to support the presence of helicopters of any kind. UFO researchers found the witnesses credible, but faced with the evidence, some of them turned to some unconventional ideas. Dr. J. Allen Hynek was interviewed in the February 1985 OMNI magazine, and he considered some paranormal possibilities:

"Let us suppose that a very, very advanced civilization has, as a part of its everyday technology, the ability to project a thought form that, like a holographic image, temporarily assumes three-dimensional reality." 

 Referring to the Cash-Landrum case in particular he said,

"Where would twenty-three helicopters come from? First of all, it was Christmas week, and people at the bases said they would never conduct military exercises at a time like that... But perhaps Cash and the Landrums saw a holographic image of the helicopters. I could buy that more than I buy twenty-three solid, physical helicopters from some unknown base, when no baseman will admit seeing so many helicopters of that particular kind."

An alien projection? It's unlikely, but Hynek conceded that the helicopters were not real. Since the helicopters were reported initially only by the witnesses, and did not interact with the environment, Hynek's notion of a projected holographic image becoming three-dimensional reality is not necessary. It could be more like mental projection, with the advanced civilization transmitting the images telepathically. The helicopters may have been in the witnesses' minds.

The helicopter trial goes nowhere, but the UFO case remains. John B. Alexander states, "I am 100 percent sure it happened. However, it defies explanation..."

Dr. J. Allen Hynek: Ufology is a Mess

“Ufology today is in the state I would say chemistry was when chemistry was alchemy,  a mixture of superstition, wild ideas, unproved claims, and yet out of that whole mess, finally the very first class science of chemistry evolved. And I think the same thing is going to happen eventually with Ufology, but right now, it is a mess. 

There’s a fantastic amount of wishful thinking, of desire, of pseudoscience, of pseudo-religion, of cultism, but eventually, I think that will all finally sink to the bottom, and we’ll have out of the whole thing a clear liquid of something we that can really see, and I hope, understand.” 

- Dr. J. Allen Hynek in The UFO Experience (documentary, 1983)

The Close Encounters Man

Hynek is back in the news, due to the biography by Mark O'Connell, The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs.  O'Connell interviewed people who knew and worked with Hynek, and was given unprecedented access to Hynek’s professional files as an astronomer, and the UFO documents and correspondence at the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). 

It's not exactly a UFO book, but it touches on a lot of the topic's history in telling the story of the man, Josef Allen Hynek. So in that sense, it's a book that' is accessible to non-saucer buffs, and also provides an interesting look UFOs as part a cultural phenomenon, and Hynek's evolving role in making it happen.

More details about the book and the author can be found at this page at The Book Cellar.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek on the Cash-Landrum UFO case

Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Speaking on the Cash-Landrum UFO Close Encounter of the Second Kind

“Something sure as hell happened..."

Dr. Hynek, as seen in Spielberg's CE3K

Dr. J. Allen Hynek was only indirectly involved with the Cash-Landrum case, but he knew it well. From the beginning, John F. Schuessler was sending copies of his Project VISIT reports to Hynek’s Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). In April 1981, Dr. Hynek’s protege, Allan Hendry, (CUFOS’ chief investigator) was contracted by the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR) to investigate the incident. Further, Schuessler made his first lecture on the case at Hynek’s CUFOS symposium in September 1981. While Hynek himself did not investigate the case, he was very familiar with it. 

In 1981, just as the news of the Cash-Landrum story was spreading through mainstream media, Dr. Hynek was contacted by a Texas newspaper, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times for his comments on the case.

Corpus Christi Caller-Times September 13, 1981 p. 1A

Dr. J. Allen Hynek, founder of the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Ill., and the country's premier UFO investigator, termed the Dayton incident a “really crucial case,” because of the “absolutely unequivocal physical effects.”

“Something sure as hell happened: Those women didn’t pull out their hair and blind themselves," said Hynek. "The connection with the event is clear-cut. It's one-to-one. We have other cases, but rarely as clear-cut as this.”

“We are dealing with a real event , but we’re not sure if it’s a government exercise or a UFO sighting," said Hynek, who headed Project Blue Book, a U.S. Air Force study of UFOs from about 1948 to 1969. "There’s a lot of secret stuff going on that most people don’t know about.”

Hynek believes the women should file a lawsuit to compel disclosure.

Corpus Christi Caller-Times September 13, 1981 p. 1A

Texans Tell of Strange Encounter by Pamela Lyon

OMNI Magazine Interview with Dr. J. Allen Hynek

The year before he died, Dr. Hynek was interviewed at length by Pamela Weintraub of OMNI magazine, it appeared in the February 1985 issue. A number of UFO cases were discussed, and in a rather surprising way, the conversation turned to the Cash-Landrum case.

Dr. Hynek. Portrait from OMNI magazine

Omni: ... close encounters of the third kind might be anybody's fantasy.

Hynek: I can't disagree. That's why I'd like to focus most of my new research on close encounters of the second kind, where there are actual physical marks. -Perhaps a foreign consciousness is creating not just illusions but the real ship and the-real creatures as well. If they weren't physical creations, they couldn't leave traces. That's the importance of the close encounter of the second kind. Let us suppose that a very, very advanced civilization has, as a part of its everyday technology, the ability to project a thought form that, like a holographic image, temporarily assumes three-dimensional reality. This is just speculation of the wildest sort, but if the UFO phenomenon is doing anything, it's causing us to expand our imagination, to make us aware that this nice, cozy world we live in is only the world we see around us, not the sum total of our environment. 

Omni: Are there any close encounters of the second kind that you feel would particularly help to reveal this broader reality? 

Hynek: I'd like to get to the bottom of the Cash/Landrum affair. The story there concerns Betty Cash, Vicki Landrum. and Vicki's grandson Colby The three were coming back from a Bingo game when they saw a glowing triangle spewing flames above them in the sky. They stopped the car to watch the thing, and as it moved off, they reportedly saw about twenty-three helicopters escorting it out. After they got home there were all sorts of physiological effects: Their eyes swelled, their hair fell out, they developed blisters, they were nauseated and weak. The event completely altered their lives. 

Omni: What do you think was at the root? 

Hynek: My best guess is that they were exposed to some kind of microwave radiation. 

Space-shuttle engineer John Schuessler, who's investigating the case, is veering toward the idea that the three were exposed to a government device escorted by twenty-three helicopters, He's even helped Betty, Vicki, and Colby to institute a lawsuit against the government. But there's another side of all this: Where would twenty-three helicopters come from? First of all, it was Christmas week, and people at the bases said they would never conduct military exercises at a time like that. 

Omni: Certainly you can't be suggesting the possibility of twenty-three extraterrestrial helicopters? 

Hynek: No, that's preposterous. But perhaps Cash and the Landrums saw a holographic image of the helicopters. I could buy that more than I buy twenty-three solid, physical helicopters from some unknown base, when no baseman will admit seeing so many helicopters of that particular kind. 

Omni: Yet I really think that we're obliged to  consider the fact that some of these sightings are due to government craft. Recently, James E. Oberg traced many reports to secret Soviet satellite launchings. 

Hynek: Today, of course, such technology may account for many reports. From 1947 through 1955, however, almost none of the maneuvers ascribed to UFOs could have been duplicated with human technology. And even today, our technology can duplicate only part of the phenomenon. We still don't have craft that can hover and then take off at fantastic speed. 

Omni: As far as you know. But the government has been implicated in other ways as well. A group known as CAUS [Citizens Against UFO Secrecy] claims that the government has been orchestrating a massive cover-up of UFO information. They've recently invoked the Freedom of Information Act to obtain classified information. Have they found anything, and do you believe there's a government cover-up? 

Hynek: What can be covered up? You can cover up ignorance, embarrassment, sinister political acts. I myself don't see real evidence for a diabolical, Machiavellian cover-up. I do perceive a strong reluctance to share information with the public.

The conversation turns to other UFO topics. See this link for a PDF of the entire article:

Omni Magazine February 1985 interviewed by Pamela Weintraub.

Report on the Cash/Landrum New Caney CEII Case by Allan Hendry

Possibly the Most Important Cash-Landrum Case Report

Allan Hendry had a brief tenure with CUFOS working with Dr. Hynek, and also wrote The UFO Handbook. FUFOR, the Fund For UFO Research contracted Hendry to investigate the source of the  helicopters in the Cash-Landrum case. In John F. Schuessler’s paper at the Sept. 1981 CUFOS lecture, he downplayed Hendry’s investigation, stating that it was a brief inquiry conducted by telephone.  He went on to say that Hendry was unable to find a source for the helicopters, but believed the incident was a military exercise involving helicopters and a Harrier jet testing electronic countermeasures, which Schuessler disagreed with. If there was anything else to Hendry’s report, Schuessler never mentioned it.

Allan Hendry of CUFOS

Hendry played another unacknowledged role in the case, According to Betty Cash’s statement in the Bergstrom interview, Hendry called the victims and advised them to contact their senators, which eventually led to the legal action.

Hendry dropped out of UFO research about the time of this case. Interesting fellow and a great investigator, apparently now largely forgotten.

I recently dumped more files than the average reader can digest, one of the most important ones was Allan Hendry’s April 1981 FUFOR report on the Cash-Landrum case. Hendry’s charter was just the helicopters but in order to conduct a thorough investigation, he interviewed both Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum by telephone. This report is possibly the best document written on the case, objective, free of agenda or bias.

He provides a narrative of the case based on Schuessler’s original VISIT report and eyewitness statements. 

The single most startling item is that he reports:

Flames intermittently “whooshed” down towards the road; later examination showed no marks on the pavement.

This single remark seems to throw all Schuessler’s later claims of physical damage to the sighting location into the waste basket. 

The EM controversy: the Auto Engine

The report also includes a new claim of the UFO killing the car engine.

Hendry asks Betty about the motor stalling, and she replies:

BC: “It just quit on its own...”

Hendry mentions discussing discrepancy with Schuessler who admits it is troubling as his reports states the car stopped when Betty turned the engine off. Schuessler’s response to this major case detail about possible electromagnetic UFO effects was not to mention it. It remains under cover for seventeen years. There is no reference by Schuessler in the case literature until the publication of his book in 1998, where it is mentioned in quotes from Cash and also discussed in the narrative.

The Facts in Black & White

There’s also another matter that Hendry touches on that Schuessler doesn’t cover. In his conversation with Vickie Landrum she mentions having health insurance, but can’t explain why has not used it seek treatment of her (and Colby’s) injuries. 

The Helicopter Pilot

The report goes on to document Hendry’s contact with military bases plausibly in range that could have launched the helicopters reported by the witnesses. In one of the interviews, the base representative volunteers that one of their men was involved in a flight to investigate a 1977 UFO by the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department. It names, pilot but slightly misspells his last name. Later, due to a misunderstanding, Vickie Landrum came to believe the same man was a pilot in her encounter. Had Schuessler been paying attention, or remembered Hendry’s report, he could have cleared the man’s name, rather than erroneously accusing the pilot and naming him as a participant in a military cover-up. (See Exonerating the Helicopter Pilot for full details.)

Burn After Reading

The Hendry report is one of the most valuable pieces of evidence in the case, an extremely rare early interview with the witnesses before the case became subject to pollution by manipulation and  rumors. It also gives us a glimpse of what kind of information was edited out of the  version of the story presented by chief investigator Schuessler in his promotion of this case as a UFO milestone.

The Hendy Report is marked "Fund use only." This document was not made public until 2013 and published here.  
There’s other great stuff on the case in this report that I’m forgetting. Read it yourself! 

A Preliminary Report on the Cash/Landrum New Caney CEII Case by Allan Hendry for the Fund for UFO Research undated (April 1981.11 pages w/cover) beginning on page 8 of linked PDF:

Allan Hendry illustration from the UFO Handbook, describing investigator pitfalls.