Leonard H. Stringfield served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II and spent 31 years as an executive at DuBois Chemicals in Cincinnati. He held public relations roles in major civilian UFO groups including CRIFO, NICAP, and MUFON.
Beginning in 1978 Stringfield issued a series of self-published Status Reports that assembled anonymous accounts from military and medical sources describing recovered non-human craft and bodies held at Wright-Patterson AFB and other sites.
- Enlisted U.S. Army Air Corps July 9, 1942; served as sergeant in Fifth Air Force Pacific Theater until 1945.
- Founded CRIFO in 1954 and published ORBIT newsletter; cooperated with Air Defense Command under code 3-0 Blue.
- Retired 1981 from DuBois Chemicals after 31 years as Director of Public Relations and Marketing Services.
- Delivered 1978 MUFON lecture Retrievals of the Third Kind and issued seven Status Reports through 1994.
- Died December 18, 1994, in Cincinnati of lung cancer; papers donated to MUFON in 2012.
- United StatesBorn and lifelong resident of Cincinnati, Ohio
- U.S. Army Air CorpsSergeant, Fifth Air Force, 1942–1945
- DuBois ChemicalsDirector of Public Relations and Marketing Services, 31 years
- CRIFOFounder and director, 1954–1957
- NICAPPublic relations adviser, 1957–1970
- MUFONPublic relations and board member
- Condon CommitteeEarly Warning Coordinator, 1967–1969
Background
Leonard Harry Stringfield was born December 17, 1920, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He completed high school in 1939 and enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps on July 9, 1942, at Patterson Field, Ohio, receiving serial number 15300961. He attained the rank of sergeant and served in the Fifth Air Force in the Southwest Pacific Theater, assigned to intelligence and counterintelligence duties.
Stringfield returned to Cincinnati after the war and began a civilian career in public relations and marketing. In 1950 he joined DuBois Chemicals, an international manufacturer, where he remained for 31 years, retiring in 1981 as Director of Public Relations and Marketing Services. During this period he also pursued UFO research on his own time.
In 1954 Stringfield founded Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects (CRIFO) in Cincinnati and published the monthly newsletter ORBIT. From 1953 to 1957 CRIFO cooperated with the U.S. Air Force, forwarding sighting reports under the special code designation 3-0 Blue to the Air Defense Command Filter Center in Columbus, Ohio. One sample submitted for analysis was identified as terrestrial material.
From 1957 to 1970 Stringfield served as public relations adviser to the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) under Donald Keyhoe. He later held public relations and board positions with the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and acted as a regional investigator for the Center for UFO Studies directed by J. Allen Hynek.
Between 1967 and 1969 Stringfield worked as Early Warning Coordinator for the University of Colorado UFO Project, known as the Condon Committee, screening civilian reports for possible scientific study. In 1978 he advised Grenada Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy on efforts to establish a United Nations UFO research agency.
Stringfield’s focus on crash retrievals began publicly with his July 29, 1978, presentation Retrievals of the Third Kind at the MUFON Symposium in Dayton, Ohio. He followed with seven self-published Status Reports issued between 1978 and 1994 that collected dozens of second-hand accounts from pilots, radar operators, and medical personnel describing disc-shaped craft and small humanoid bodies recovered after incidents in New Mexico, Arizona, and elsewhere.
The reports repeatedly named Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as a primary storage and examination site for recovered materials and remains under strict compartmentalization. Stringfield also authored the 1977 book Situation Red: The UFO Siege and other works on the same theme. His sources remained anonymous and no physical evidence was produced.
Stringfield died of lung cancer on December 18, 1994, in Cincinnati at age 74. In 2012 his sixty-volume collection of papers, newsletters, and interviews was donated to MUFON for preservation and digitization.
Legacy
Stringfield died December 18, 1994, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His Status Reports remain reference works in UFO crash-retrieval literature and his archive is held by MUFON.
Last updated 25 October 2026