Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio, is a United States Air Force installation that has hosted several organisations central to official and unofficial UAP research. It was the site of the United States Air Force (USAF)’s Foreign Technology Division, formally created in 1961.1 The division was where the Air Force centralised its official Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) data.2 Jacques Vallée visited its offices, where a MIG interceptor bearing a hammer and sickle on its tail hung from the ceiling of the building lobby.3 The base historically studied foreign technology, including Russian and Chinese aerospace craft and space debris.4 Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s official UFO investigation project, was based at Wright-Patterson near Dayton, Ohio.5 The National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) is headquartered at the base.6
UAP conspiracy theory has long alleged that Wright Field, the base’s former name, was where wreckage from the 1947 Roswell incident was taken in 1947 for further investigation, according to In Plain Sight.7 The same source states that the corpses of the dead occupants from the 1947 Roswell crash and debris retrieval were allegedly sent to the base.8 Chris Ramsay has said that crashed craft from the Roswell incident (1947) were reportedly dragged to Wright-Patterson,9 which he describes as having a historic reputation for allegedly housing craft retrieved from the Roswell UAP Crash.10 Ross Coulthart has said the Roswell wreckage was allegedly taken to the base, where Arthur Exon later served as a former commanding general.11 Neil McCasland commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson until July 2013,12 the same laboratory where the Roswell wreckage was rumoured to have been taken.13 In a 2016 email, Tom DeLonge wrote that when Roswell crashed the wreckage was shipped to the Wright-Patterson laboratory McCasland had until recently commanded, and that McCasland had helped assemble his advisory team.14
Exon was assigned as commander of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in 1964.15 Whitley Strieber’s uncle had been stationed at the base in the late 1940s,16 and Exon was a friend of his uncle who later became a general and commanding officer there.17 Strieber has said that as late as 1988, Exon told him he was still consulting with groups at Wright-Patterson working on the question of nonhuman bodies,18 and that Exon was still going regularly to the base that year to brief staff on matters from the early classified, off-the-record briefings he recalled.19 In 1975, Senator Barry Goldwater was denied access to secret documents concerning apparent UFO research at the base.20 In 1994, Goldwater told Larry King that if you could get into certain places at Wright-Patterson, you would find out what the Air Force and government know about UFOs.21 He also said a spaceship had reportedly landed and been hushed up, and that he had called General Curtis LeMay to ask about a room at the base where secret material was kept.22 LeMay became very angry at the request and told Goldwater never to ask that question again.23
While employed by NKA Science, Nat Kobitz was invited to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to examine strange pieces of metal held under high security, an episode catalogued as Nat Kobitz’s visit to examine a metal fragment at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.24 Coulthart has said Kobitz was invited to the base after leaving the employment of the United States Navy, and suspects he still held a security clearance at the time.25 According to Coulthart, Kobitz was shown a strange piece of metal at the base26 and was taken deep underground to what was clearly a highly secure installation.27 Kobitz saw a piece of material reported to him as a titanium alloy not known to the United States Air Force, later catalogued as the Wright-Patterson titanium alloy fragment examined by Nat Kobitz.28 Kobitz told Coulthart the item was a piece of broken bulkhead that was incredibly feather-light despite being very large,29 and that he was asked to examine two metals joined within it to determine how they had been joined.30 Those examining the bulkhead thought the join might be electron beam welding, but Kobitz told Coulthart it was not;31 he said the two metals were bonded at the atomic level, a type of almost three-dimensional bonding that defied his understanding as a scientist.32 Kobitz acknowledged to Coulthart that what he was shown was probably pieces of an alien spacecraft,33 and Kobitz’s expert opinion was that there was no known industrial process that could replicate the bond he observed.34 Coulthart has described Wright-Patterson as the most mythologised air force base in United States UFO history.35
Vallée also alerted J. Allen Hynek to the March 1966 Michigan UFO sightings; Hynek in turn called Project Blue Book in Dayton, Ohio, to propose an immediate investigation.36 Vallée said that an officer at Project Blue Book initially told Hynek he was not interested in investigating the sightings because the case had not been reported officially to the Air Force.37 Operation Blue Fly was proposed to deliver recovered objects to the Foreign Technology Division at the base.38 Eric Henry Wang ran special projects at Wright-Patterson.39 According to Luis Elizondo, Eric Davis and other colleagues were familiar with a rumoured crash-retrieval programme run by TRW Inc. out of the base.40 The Wright-Patterson laboratory used to be known as the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Foreign Technology Division.41 According to In Plain Sight, numerous purported whistleblowers and insiders have claimed the laboratory is a secure installation housing recovered alien craft and technology, a claim the US military adamantly denies.42 A character-reference check on a GTE Sylvania manager, conducted by researcher Raymond E. Fowler, traced back to the base, then still known as Wright Field, where highly placed personnel gave the individual a clean bill of health.43 According to In Plain Sight, the base was also the reported recipient of 1956 cables concerning the Takala UAP landing.44 In June 2023, according to Chris Ramsay, Google Trends data showed the search term “Immaculate Constellation” had been searched only a few times before, near the base.45