Watchers UFO Archive

UFO case file · UFO-8892

Kingman UFO crash claim

CE3United States1953-05-21

NEAR KINGMAN, AZ, Arizona, United States

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Kingman — alternate crash-claim record
Kingman — alternate crash-claim record

Case description

The Kingman story alleges that on May 21, 1953, a small unidentified craft crashed or made a forced landing in the Arizona desert near Kingman. Military personnel and technical specialists were supposedly transported to a guarded site to examine and recover it. The best-known testimony surfaced years later through a man presented under the pseudonym Arthur Stansel, later identified in published investigations as an engineer who said he had been assigned to calculate the object's speed and trajectory. He described a compact metallic craft and, in some versions, a small deceased occupant. No contemporary military report, newspaper account or authenticated photograph has established the recovery. Later witnesses and documents have been proposed, but their chains of custody are incomplete and details conflict. The story is therefore a retrospective crash-retrieval claim, not a confirmed 1953 case file. Kingman also became entangled with broader narratives about secret test sites and multiple Southwestern recoveries. Repetition can make those connections appear documentary even when they originate in later testimony. Each claimed witness must be evaluated independently. CE3 is retained because the inherited record includes an alleged occupant, but the evidentiary status is disputed. The portrait shows only a restrained, body-free recovery scene and must not be mistaken for a photograph. It is an illustrative reconstruction.

Recorded details

Named witnesses
Arthur Stansel (reported under the name Fritz Werner)
Local time
16:30 (imported catalogue; not independently confirmed)
Craft description
Craft / Vehicle
Entity description
Other Humanoid
Coordinate precision
SOURCE_APPROXIMATE
Date precision
EXACT_DAY

Case videos and witness interviews

Sources and further reading

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