What happened
Driving home to Dayton, the three saw a light they first took for a plane heading to Houston's airport. Around a bend it was hovering over the road at treetop height, bright, dull silver, about the size of the Dayton water tower, with small blue lights around its middle. Flames shot from its base in a cone. Each time they stopped, it sank a few feet; each time they fired, it rose. The heat made the car too hot to touch, and Landrum said her hand pressed into the softened dashboard. The object rose, and the witnesses counted 23 helicopters closing around it, some of them tandem-rotor Chinooks. The encounter lasted about 20 minutes. All three reported nausea, burning eyes and sunburn-like symptoms. Cash was hospitalized from January 2, 1981. A Dayton police officer and his wife later said they saw about a dozen Chinook-type helicopters in the area that night, but no object. Their $20 million suit against the U.S. government was dismissed on August 21, 1986, after officials testified that no agency owned such an object or flew those helicopters.