The so-called Portage County UFO Chase was an unidentified flying object encounter that began in Portage County, Ohio on the morning of April 17, 1966, when police officers Dale Spaur and Wilbur Neff observed a metallic, disc shaped object flying in the skies.

They pursued the object for about half an hour, ending up in Pennsylvania before losing sight of the UFO. Several other police officers became involved in the chase, and several civilians reported witnessing the same object, or a similar object in about the same area, during this time.

The UFO encounter earned significant mainstream publicity, and probably inspired a scene in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where three Indiana police cruisers are depicted chasing several UFOs into Ohio, eastbound across state lines.

After interviewing one of the police witnesses, Project Blue Book (the official UFO investigative arm of the U.S. Air Force) determined that the witnesses had chased a communications satellite, then the planet Venus. This conclusion was rejected by the officers involved as ridiculously inadequate, and was furthermore subject to some wider criticism, contributing to the opinions of some observers that Blue Book was a failure as an investigative project. The UFO chase was one of the cases that contributed to the creation of the Condon Committee, ostensibly an independent scientific investigation of UFOs.


Civilian Witnesses

Several civilians claimed to have seen the same or a similar object on the day of the UFO chase. Most of these claims were reported in local newspapers. Some of them were interviewed by NICAP members, but none of the witnesses were known to have been interviewed by U.S. Air Force investigators.

* In Benton Harbor in extreme southwestern Michigan, in the early morning hours of April 17, three garbage men making their daily rounds reported seeing an unusual object hovering over a hotel and emitting a light so bright that they insisted they "couldn't look straight at it." (Clark, 457) They notified police, who arrived in time to see the object shortly before it flew away.

* Sometime between 5.00 and 5.30 a.m., two couples together in a car driving near New Castle, Pennsylvania reported seeing a bright light moving in the sky. Initially thinking that it was a reflection from an airplane, they stopped the car to get a better look. The object stopped when their car stopped. They quickly became convinced that it was no normal aircraft, due to its shape, which one witness described as resembling an "ice cream cone" (though another witness thought it looked more like a "hamburger" (Clark, 457). The object began to move again, and the witnesses followed it in their car for a few minutes before the object accelerated out of view. This account received very sketchy reportage, with the witnesses unsure of the precise time they saw the object. Clark noted that some interpreted this encounter as a second UFO in the same area, though he also notes that, without a firmly-established timeline, this interpretation is speculative.

* Thelma James of Newton Falls, Ohio claimed to have seen an unusual aerial object. She had woken at about 3:50 a.m., and unable to sleep, looked out her bedroom window. She saw a bright light slowly ascending in the sky. Clark notes that this was almost certainly the planet Venus, which, from James's perspective, would have risen above the horizon at 3:35 a.m. However, at about 5:15 a.m., Jones noted that a second light, much brighter than the first, had also appeared in the sky, but closer to the horizon, and to the southeast of Venus. This second light seemed to be crescent shaped, and was a very bright yellow color. It continued moving through the sky and was lost to Jones's view at about 5:30 a.m. James's observations match some of the observations made by the police officers in the UFO chase. Clark writes, "...it is unfortunate that none of the investigators interviewed this witness, who saw both Venus and the UFO--in defiance of those who would soon insist that the two were one." (Clark, 458; emphasis his)


Publicity and Investigations

Within hours, the UFO chase had earned attention in the press (several reporters are presumed to have overheard the police radio conversations on scanners), and the chase would later earn widespread mass media attention.

William Weitzel of NICAP began his investigation after hearing an early morning radio report the day of the chase. He began making telephone calls that morning, hoping to track down witnesses. Within a few weeks, he or his NICAP associates had interviewed all the police officers named above, as well as several other police officers who had figured in the UFO chase, either as dispatchers or as those who had overheard the radio communications. NICAP members also interviewed some civilians who had claimed to have seen a UFO at the same time of the chase and/or had monitored police scanners.

Though Neff, Spaur, Huston and Panzanella asserted that they'd heard radio confirmation that the UFO was tracked by radar at the GPA, officials at the airport would deny that such an event had ever occurred, and that such a statement had been made via radio.

William T. Powers of Northwestern University (a peer of J. Allen Hynek, the scientific consultant for Blue Book) telephoned Spaur on the evening of April 17. After their 20 minute conversation, Powers did some research, and thought that Spaur might have misidentified the planet Venus. Though he related this conclusion to Major Quintanilla of Blue Book, Powers would subsequently dismiss this explanation as inadequate; see below.

U.S. Air Force investigators began their work on April 18. Initially they telephoned local news outlets, seeking information. However, local newspapers and radio had only vague outlines of the case. Air Force investigators also interviewed meteorologists and weather agency personnel, hoping to learn that a weather balloon had been launched in the area during the UFO chase. They learned that there had been no weather balloons launched that morning, and also that the wind had been so mild that the police would have had no difficulty catching up with any wind-borne object.

Later that same day, Major Hector Quintanilla (then the head of Blue Book), telephoned Spaur. According to Spaur, after a few preliminary introductions, Quintanilla's first question was "Tell me about this mirage you saw." (Clark, 458) Spaur insisted he had seen no mirage, but a clearly-defined metallic object maneuvering at very low altitudes. When Quintanilla asked if they had seen the object for more than a few minutes, Spaur asserted that he and Neff had chased it for over half an hour, and that Huston had seen the object for much of that period, and that Panzanella too had witnessed the object. Quintanilla then, as Spaur said, "kind of lost interest ... That's all he asked me. Hell, I talked longer with that colonel Sunday morning, and he didn't ask much." (Clark, 458; emphasis as in original) A day or two later, Quintanilla telephoned Spaur again. He asked if Spaur was sure that he had seen the object for more than a few minutes; again, Spaur insisted that he had. That was the extent of their second conversation. Quintanilla interviewed only Spaur; he did not interview any other police officers who claimed to have seen the object, and Quintanilla did not interview any of the civilian witnesses.

On Friday, April 22, Quintanilla announced Blue Book's formal conclusion in a press release. In Blue Book's opinion, The police officers had first chased an Echo communications satellite, then, after it had disappeared in the southeastern sky (at the time the officers briefly lost trail of the UFO near Rochester, Pennsylvania), the police had then chased the planet Venus, believing mistakenly that it was the same object as the satellite. What the officers thought was the object's maneuvers was in fact an optical illusion, according to Quintanilla, caused by their excitement and high speed of travel.

That same day, Quintanilla related this conclusion via telephone to Portage County Sheriff Ross Dustman (Neff and Spaur's superior officer). Dustman said he "laughed out loud" after Quintanilla had finished his statement. (Clark, 459) Dustman was later quoted in a UPI story, stating that he rejected the Air Force assessment: "I go along with my men. It was not a satellite and it was not Venus. I've seen Venus many times, but I never saw Venus 50 feet above a road and moving from side to side..." (Clark, 459) The police officers involved in the chase also rejected the Air Force's conclusion as absurd. Spaur said to Weitzman, "I don't know how much investigation [the air force] made, but evidently it wasn't a lengthy one, or it didn't involve me. First of all, I don't think that we have a satellite that can go this low ... I'm definitely sure I wasn't chasing Venus or observing Venus running wildly over the countryside. I'm not quite that bad off." (Clark, 459)

I was 10 and living in nearby Akron when this event occurred. As I recall, it was front-page news. I find it hard to believe that two grown men would be fooled into chasing Venus for as far and as long as they did. Admittedly, stranger things have happened but it just doesn't seem likely. In all the times I've seen Venus, I have never gotten the impression that it was moving - speeding up, slowing down. Unless these guys were totally tripping, there is no way their descriptions jibe with an observation of a planet.

BTW, 1964-1967 were really some primo years for UFO sightings. Socorro, the Heflin photos, Exeter, the Malmstrom AFB incident, and many other high-profile cases occurred in this period. No fuzzy lights in the night sky back then - people were seeing things up close and personal.

S

Yeah they were i beleive they were chasing a real ufo not venus because if it was venus then they were going nuts and venus doesn't move like what they were chasing.

It hardly moves at all fro mday to day ylet aong mintue by mintue. they could have come up with a not as stupid explanation then that.

Yeah theyt could have but they never do.

Which is why no one belives them.

i like watching Venus going down of a night

yeah it's bright, but no one can mistake Venus for a UFO.

No they can't

I can remember one winter night (in Ravenna, Ohio no less) watching a flashing, twinkling object in the night sky. I was mesmerized for several minutes before I realized it was just a planet (Jupiter, as I recall). There were temperature inversions that night and it really did play tricks with the eye - flashing, color changes, the works. So don't be so sure that you can't be fooled, especially in a moving vehicle. All that being said, I still think that Spaur and Neff should have been able to identify a planet before they chased the darn thing all the way to the Pennsylvania border.

S

Me to who knows what they saw.