Cape Girardeau and Charlette Mann's 1991 Letter About Her Grandfather's Experience
© 2003 by Linda M Howe
Reprinted with permission from Linda Moulton Howe
UFO Crash/Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum,
Status Report VI © by Leonard H. Stringfield, July 1991, Cincinnati, Ohio.
January 14, 2003 - Leonard H. Stringfield, now deceased, became interested in the truth behind government knowledge and cover-up of unidentified flying objects during his work for the Intelligence Service of the 5th Air Force in the Southwest Pacific Theater during World War II. On August 28, 1945, he was one of twelve men flying a C-46 to Tokyo. Near Iwo Jima, three glowing objects somewhat tear-shaped approached and flew parallel with the C-46. Suddenly, the airplane's left engine stalled and the pilot warned the crew to get ready to bail out. But the unidentified aerial objects retreated into a cloud bank and disappeared. Immediately, the engine came back to life and the aircraft continued on course. No one understood what had happened or what the glowing objects were. But Len Stringfield became determined to find out more.
By 1953, Stringfield was Director of Civilian Research for Interplanetary Flying Objects (CRIFO.) He was also employed as Director of Public Relations and Marketing Services of DuBoise Chemicals, a Division of Chemed Corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. By the late 1970s, Stringfield wrote about his investigations, including a series of "UFO Crash/Retrieval" status reports. By July 1991 in his "Status Report VI," Stringfield reprinted a letter passed on to him for consideration from another UFO and human abduction investigator, Raymond Fowler, author of The Andreasson Affair and The Watchers. The letter was from Charlette Mann.
Charlette continued in her May 6, 1991 letter:
"It happened in the Spring of 1941. About 9 to 9:30 one evening, granddad got a telephone call from the police department, saying they had received reports that a plane had crashed outside of town and would he go in case someone needed him. Of course he said yes. A car was sent to get him, but grandmother said it wasn't a police car.
"After grandfather returned that night, he explained what he had seen to grandmother, my father, Guy and Uncle Wayne, but that they were never to speak of it again as he had given his word. Grandmother said he never did talk about it after that.
He said they drove out of town 13-15 miles or so, then parked the cars on the side of the road and had to walk 1/4 of a mile or so into a field where he could see fire burning.
Grandfather said it wasn't an airplane or like any craft he'd ever seen. It was broken and scattered all around, but one large piece was still together and it appeared to have a rounded shape with no edges or seams. It had a very shiny metallic finish. You could see inside one section and see what looked like a metal chair with a panel with many dials and gauges - no one familiar looking to him. He said that when he got there, men were already sifting through things. There were some police officers, plain clothes people and military men.
"There were three bodies, not human, that had been taken from the wreckage and laid on the ground. Grandfather said prayers over them so he got a close look but didn't touch them. He didn't know what had killed them because they didn't appear to have any injuries and they weren't burnt. It was hard for him to tell if they had on suits or if it was their skin, but they were covered head to foot in what looked like wrinkled aluminum foil. He could see no hair on the bodies and they had no ears. They were small framed like a child about 4 feet tall, but had larger heads and longer arms. They had very large oval shaped eyes, no noses - just holes - and no lips, just small slits for mouths. There were several people with cameras taking pictures of everything. Two of the plain clothes men picked up one of the little men, held it under its arms. A picture was taken. That was the picture I later saw. Then, one of the military officers talked to granddad and told him he was not to talk about or repeat anything that had taken place for security reasons and so as not to alarm the people. Granddad returned home, told his family. That was it. About two weeks after it happened, he came home with a picture of the two men holding the little man.
After my grandfather died, my Dad kept the picture and was very interested in UFO info. Then when I was 10 or 11, a close friend of my Dad's asked if he could borrow it to show to his folks, so Dad let him have it and never got it back.
"My recollection from what I saw in the picture was a small man about 4 feet tall with a large head and long arms. He was thin and no bone structure was apparent; kind of soft looking. He had no hair on his head or body with large, oval, slightly slanted eyes, but not like an oriental from left to right, more up and down. He had no ears at all and no nose like ours. There appeared to be only a couple of small holes where his nose should have been. His mouth was as if you had just cut a small straight line where it should have been. His skin or suit looked like crinkled-up tin foil and it covered all of him. I can't remember much about how his feet were for some reason. I guess my attention was focused more on his face. I believe he had three fingers, all quite long, but I can't be sure on this. I've tried to draw a picture for you, but I am not good at it. I hope it will give you some idea of how it looked to me." Charlette Mann
Stringfield: With a crash case of this vintage, 1941, the testimony of the one and only source available, is crucial. Its ultimate believability is up to Charlette Mann and the information she relates. In the main, the whole case depends on her memory and the discussions she had with older members of the family who were in a position to relate directly with the firsthand source, the minister.
After discussing the incident several times with Charlette by phone, I felt increasingly comfortable with her manner of response to my questions, mostly about her family and her own background. To me, she sounded sincere and everything she said about her immediate family, including an up-coming graduation of her daughter, were all normal.
Then in her second letter, she described in more detail the photo showing the "alien" with its arms outstretched, propped up by two men. The red flag went up. Instantly coming to mind was another old photo that made the rounds in the early days of my research which also showed an alien with arms outstretched also being held up by two men who were wearing trench coats and wide-brimmed hats. Although there were differences in respect to the description of the apparel worn by the men in her photo, I was still concerned about the parallels; i.e., outstretched arms and two men wearing wide-brimmed hats. If both photos, I reasoned, were identical or even similar, then something was wrong about the whole Cape Girardeau story - if the photo I had seen before was a hoax.
I called Charlette the same day I got her letter and, without telling her about the allegedly hoaxed photo, I asked her to describe in more detail the one she had seen, especially the alien and the clothing of the two men. Her response was one of certainty: the alien she remembered was about 4 feet tall with a very large head by human proportions for the body size. From what I could recall from the hoaxed photo, hers was distinctly different. Of the two men, she said one was wearing a jacket and slacks; the other was in a white shirt. Then I explained my reason for calling and went on to relate that the two men in the photo I had seen were wearing trench coats. On this point, Charlette was positive - no trench coats!
To satisfy my own curiosity about my old photo, which got lost in my files, I asked my cooperative German research friend, Michael Hesemann, who had called me on another matter, if he still had a copy of the photo that he had declared to b an "April Fool's Day Hoax," published in a Cologne, Germany newspaper in 1950. See Status Report III. He sent me a copy of it by fax the next day. But I must admit that I forgot that two women also appeared in the posed shot. I sent a copy to Charlette for her comment to which she responded on June 6, 1991, as follows:
Charlette Mann: 'Thank you for sending me the copy of the picture of the alien you got from Germany. it is nothing like what I saw. Your picture showed men in overcoats while in my picture, the man had no coats. It was warm weather when the crash occurred and the two men were dressed in slacks. One had a white dress shirt with sleeves rolled up; the other had on a short-waisted jacket with a dress shirt.
Your picture shows two women; mine, none. The alien in yours looks like a tiny doll, much smaller and shorter than mine. The alien in my picture was about 4 feet tall when being held between the two men about up to their waists. They were holding him under the armpits with the arms outstretched across in front of them. Mine had no clothing or boots as your picture shows. The arms of mine were much longer than yours and its head larger. The only thing similar was the wide-brimmed hats that the two men wore."
