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In March of 1951, one year into the Korean War, Private First Class Francis P.

Wall and his regiment found themselves stationed near Chorwan in what is now North Korea, about 60 miles north of Seoul.

The capital city had recently been recaptured, and UN forces were now pushing the Chinese army back north.

After evacuating Korean locals from a nearby village, Francis' unit began bombarding the area with artillery.

All of a sudden, the soldiers' attention was drawn to their right-hand side, off to the east.

A large, round object, surrounded by orange light, was now floating down the side of the nearest mountain, heading toward the village.

Baffled and unsure of what this thing was, when it later redirected itself back up the mountain towards their position, Francis quickly turned to his lieutenant and requested permission to fire on the object with his rifle.

When he did,

the object began firing back,

but it wasn't firing bullets.

I'm Luke Lamana,

and this is Wartime Stories.

My name is Francis P.

Wall.

This event that I am about to relate to you is the truth.

So help me, God.

It happened in the early spring of 1951 in the country of Korea.

We were in the Army Infantry.

I was in the 25th Division, 27th Regiment, 2nd Battalion, Easy Company.

We were in what is known on the military maps as the Iron Triangle near near Chorwan.

We were to the left of Chorwan just across the mountain ridge from this city or town or whatever you want to call it.

It is night.

We are located on the slopes of a mountain between the fingers of a mountain as they run down toward the valley below where there is a Korean village to our north.

Previously we had sent men into this village to warn the locals to evacuate because we were going to bombard it with artillery.

On this night that I'm talking about we had started doing just that.

We had aerial artillery bursts coming in and exploding over this village.

As the shells are bursting over this town with the mountains to our backs, we suddenly noticed on our right-hand side

what appeared to be a jack-o'-lantern come wafting down across the mountain.

What the hell was that?

And at first no one thought anything about it.

This thing just continued on down to the village where the aerial artillery bursts were exploding.

And this thing, thing, it was that quick that it could get right into the center of an airburst of artillery, just

from one airburst to another, as if it could predict where the artillery shells were going to be, then move to that spot right when the artillery shell explodes, which should be impossible.

And yet despite moving into the center of these airbursts of artillery, whatever this object was,

it remained completely unharmed.

The time element on this, I can't recall exactly.

I would say we watched this thing for 45 minutes to an hour, all told, that this object hovered over the town in and out of these artillery bursts.

But then this object started heading in our direction.

It's hard to distinguish the size of it.

There's just no way to compare it.

But it pulsated.

The light, that is, was pulsating.

And it turned from an orange to a blue-green brilliant light as it approached us.

Came to hover right over top of us, maybe 30 or so feet right above our heads.

But as it approached, I asked for and received permission from Lieutenant Evans, our company commander at that time, to fire on this object, which I then did with an M1 rifle with armor-piercing bullets or rounds in it.

And I did hit it.

It must have been metallic because you could hear when the projectile slammed into it.

Now, why would that bullet damage this craft if the artillery rounds didn't?

I don't know, unless they had dropped their protective field around them or whatever.

After my first shot, everyone else opened up with everything we had.

But after that first shot, nothing would affect it.

That one shot got it.

That was it.

Because evidently their defenses were lowered briefly, and when I connected with it with my round, their defenses were thrown back up.

And after that, nothing could hit it.

Because even with everything we threw at it, there wasn't another sound like that first shot.

Like our bullets just couldn't make contact with the surface anymore.

So now, right when my round hit it, the object started going wild.

And the light was going on and off, and it went off completely once, briefly.

And it was moving erratically from side to side as though it might crash into the ground.

And then we heard a sound, which we had heard no sound previous to this.

The sound of

like of diesel locomotives revving up.

It was a deep sound, like it was

winding up, like it was trying to recover from the bullet impact.

And then we were attacked.

I guess you would call it that.

In any event, we were swept by some form of ray that was emitted in pulses, in waves that you could visually see only when it was aiming directly at you.

That is to say, like a searchlight sweeps around and the segments of light, you would see it coming at you.

And when this thing hit you, you would feel a burning, tingling sensation all over your body as though you were being, as though something were penetrating through you.

And so the company commander, Lieutenant Evans, hauled us immediately into our bunkers.

We didn't know what was going to happen, we were scared.

Anyway, these are underground dugouts where you have peepholes to look out to fire at the enemy.

So I'm in my bunker with another man.

We're peeping out at this thing.

It hovered over us for a while, lit up the whole area with its light that I'm telling you about.

And then I saw it

shoot off at a 45-degree angle.

Just that quick.

It was there and

it was gone.

That quick.

and it was as though that was the end of it but three days later the entire company of men had to be evacuated by ambulance they had to cut roads in there and haul them out they were too weak to walk and they had dysentery and that subsequently

when the doctors did see them they had an extremely high white blood cell count which the doctors could not account for In the military, especially the Army, each day you file a report, a company report.

Now, we had a confab about that.

What do we do about this?

Do we file it in the report or not?

And the consensus was no,

because they'd lock every one of us up and think we were crazy.

At that time, no such thing as a UFO had ever been heard of,

and we didn't know what it was.

And

I still don't know what it was.

Immediately following their close encounter, Francis and dozens of other men in his unit were reportedly suffering severe headaches, nausea, and dysentery.

Vomiting continued for several days.

Francis stated that for weeks he experienced a decreased appetite, but with an increased thirst for fluids.

These symptoms, he describes, have been noted as being similar to those seen in victims of radiation poisoning.

After recovering from the incident, Francis would ultimately survive the war and return home to North Carolina.

He was honorably discharged from the Army the following year in June of 1952.

He explained how he dropped from 180 pounds to 138 pounds after returning home and stated he had extreme difficulty keeping his weight up after that point.

He went on to say even after returning home, throughout his life, he would continue to experience severe and recurring headaches, bad enough to have him sent home from work or to the hospital, but no doctor could evidently explain why.

Since the time of the event, he reported experiencing periods of disorientation and memory loss.

There was even a period of an entire three days that he says he couldn't remember, all of which was said to be noted in his medical records.

These additional symptoms are similar to those described by others who have come forward about their own close encounters with these strange objects.

In 1987, Francis conducted the interview in which he shared this story with a Mr.

John Timmerman, who was project manager for the photo exhibit of the J.

Allen Hyneck Center for UFO Studies.

When asked if he told the story to anyone else before the interview, Francis laughed and said, Yes, I've told my wife and children.

I have related this story to them many times over since coming back from Korea, but you know how it is with things like that.

They said, uh-huh, and they'd go on, and that's the end of it.

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Francis was later contacted by a notable ufologist, Richard F.

Haynes, for a follow-up interview that took place on May 10th, 1989.

All of this information gathered from Francis would then be published several years later in 1990 in Richard Haynes' book, Advanced Aerial Devices Reported During the Korean War.

Francis was a veteran of not only the Korean conflict, but also a veteran of World War II, having reached the draft age of 18 in December of 1944 and then serving in the Merchant Marines until the war's end in 1945.

Then transitioning to the Army and being sent to fight in Korea only five years later, Francis' name, rank, serial number, and other information was confirmed by Richard Haynes to be on the official Army roster for his unit, the 27th Infantry Regiment Wolfhounds.

The second lieutenant he mentioned, Del G.

Evans, his name and other information was likewise confirmed on the official Army roster for Echo Company.

Lieutenant Evans was a notable officer, receiving multiple service medals for valor and heroism and in recognition of his combat and leadership qualities.

After the war, Dell remained in the military and worked with U.S.

Army Intelligence.

Among other things, he planned, organized, and wrote emergency defense plans for the Army.

He retired as Lieutenant Colonel in 1970 following 23 years of exemplary service.

However, no source I found appears to indicate that Dell ever made any mention of the strange encounter that Francis describes.

Dell Evans passed away in 2004, five years after Francis.

I did attempt to contact Dell's family to ask whether he might have ever mentioned anything about this encounter, but I was unable to reach them for comment.

By the time this interview took place in the fall of 1987, after 36 years, Francis understandably couldn't recall any of the names of the men in his unit that might still be alive to verify his account with their own, other than 2nd Lieutenant Evans.

Francis had moved back to North Carolina after the war, and while many of the men in his unit had died during subsequent battles in Korea, he recalled that many of them were originally from states on the West Coast.

He expressed regret about not being able to call up their names, but as with many soldiers, despite making fast friends in the military, over time they had simply fallen out of touch.

Whatever the case, following an extensive dive into the styles and capabilities of both American and Russian aircraft in the early 1950s, Richard Haynes stated that no craft like the one described by Francis is known to have existed.

When asked what he thought the object was, Francis answered quite plainly, an alien spacecraft.

Nothing like I had ever seen.

I do believe that these things are real, Francis had stated previous to this, and I think that there is a cover-up, and we were ordered to say nothing about this.

That shows you they are covering it up.

It's foolish to believe that we have the only technology anywhere, you know.

While there may no longer be any direct witnesses to verify his personal account, Dr.

Haynes noted that this close encounter of the first and second kind contains interesting corroborative data to another UFO sighting that is listed in his book.

This separate sighting took place on the night of March 10th, 1951.

What the hell is that?

Oh, everybody saw that, right?

Yeah, I saw that.

Anybody got eyes on?

What was that flash of light?

Uh,

couldn't tell you, sir.

I mean, it looks like a flare, but we're how high are we right now, sir?

17,000 feet.

What the hell is that, Eddie?

It's like a ball of light, sir.

And, sir.

What's that, Eddie?

Uh,

never mind, sir.

It's, uh,

I think it's gone.

The chief eyewitness in this case was the left scanner on a B-29 flying at almost 17,000 feet of altitude on a heading of 32 degrees northeast, 42 miles southwest of Chinampo, Korea.

Eight of the other crewmen also saw very brief glimpses of this same bright light.

The night was described as being clear and moonless.

The main witness saw a flash of brilliant light at his 9 o'clock position that moved slightly downward and to the rear of the airplane.

Not knowing what it was, the scanner reported it as a flare.

The phenomenon appeared as a reddish-yellow glow that dropped slightly to the same elevation of the aircraft, then burst with bluish-white brilliance.

It was estimated to be as large as a basketball and did not deviate from its straight course.

However, none of the crew could confidently estimate the actual distance on anything except by sheer guess, so the object might have been larger and further away.

The tailgunner and bombardier both reported seeing the blue-green or blue-white flash of light off the right wing of the aircraft, but were not at a vantage point to see the object.

The pilot witnessed the object at three o'clock from the corner of his eye as a flash of blue-white or blue-green.

None of the men saw any shape or shadows or anything resembling exhaust traces or anything that would identify this object as an aircraft.

This was all according to a United States Air Force Staff Message Division Report number Alpha 5394 dated 26 March 1951.

The Air Force listed this case as unidentified in its Blue Book files, with the possibility of it being flak, a flare, or a meteor.

Whether the object seen by the B-29 crew on March 10th is the same object that attacked the 27th Regiment at Chorwan is left to our own speculation.

But consider that the port city of Chinampo sits about 90 miles west-northwest of Chorwan.

Francis reported that when the UFO departed his location, it shot off in an upward direction, heading west.

The B-29's location was reported as flying 42 miles southwest of Chinampo.

This would mean they were 17,000 feet in the air air due west of Chorwan and flying in a direction 30 degrees to the northeast, meaning France's position on the ground would have been about 120 miles to the east off of their right wing.

This would reasonably place their aircraft in the western flight path of the rapidly departing UFO.

That, and seeing as the object was spotted off the right wing of the plane, and that its size and distance was indeterminable in the dark sky, this would also fit, since they said that the sky was clear and that the object would have to approach their position from the east, from their right side.

And while many accounts of Francis' story incorrectly state that the event took place in May of 1951, the unedited version of Francis' 1987 interview in Richard Haynes' book, it says nothing about the event taking place in the month of May.

Francis seems unable to recall the exact date and merely stated that the UFO encounter occurred in the early spring.

However, a quick dive into the chronology of the 25th Infantry Division's movements during the war offers us a better estimate of the date his unit would have been in the vicinity of Chorwan,

and it was in fact in March.

And I quote, on March 7th, the 25th attacked across the Han and headed north, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy.

By the end of March, the 25th Division held a line above the Hantan River south of Chorwan, about 35 miles northeast of Seoul.

The unit could not have been in that position in May, because on April 22nd, the Chinese launched another offensive, again pushing the UN forces back south.

The 25th Division fell back through successive blocking positions to a line about five miles north of Seoul, where it remained through the month of May.

So providing that Echo Company's individual movements placed them further to the north during this offensive, the date of March 10, 1951 would be an acceptable date for Francis to be in the vicinity of Chorwan, the same night that the B-29 crew witnessed the object.

To recap, this information does allow for these two individual sightings to take place in conjunction with one another, possibly within the same short period of time, with the B-29 crew witnessing the object as it rocketed westward into the sky, away from its attack on Francis' infantry company.

The object first presenting with an orange light or reddish-yellow and then changing to bluish-white light, this also matches in both cases.

This of course is only speculation based on the available information, but whatever these objects were, if they were not the same object seen on the same night or even on different nights, then that would mean that there were two separate but identical objects being reported.

And these two sightings are not alone.

Indeed, the sheer number of documented UFO sightings during the Korean War is remarkable.

Between September of 1950 till the winter of 1954, more than 63 military pilots, soldiers, ground radar operators, naval personnel, and others reported sighting more than 40 UFOs in the skies over Korea.

With the war lasting just over three years, that amounts to at least one UFO sighting every month.

And how many soldiers saw something similar, but never bothered reporting it.

Along with events back home in the States, such as the Mantel UFO incident and other UFO sightings over American military bases around the time of World War II, it does seem the number of UFO reports by the U.S.

military during the war in Korea are possibly what prompted the U.S.

government to seriously investigate these sorts of incidents in an effort to evaluate what might amount to a potential military threat.

The U.S.

Air Force established the highly classified Project Blue Book in March of 1952.

Francis is certainly not alone in his belief that the large majority of these reported events have long been concealed from the public.

His comments about this were made in 1987, and 30 years later, recent disclosures of military secrets about UFOs certainly do nothing to disprove his and others' long-held suspicions.

A BBC article written in January 2023 pointed out that newly declassified U.S.

government documents are revealing that sightings and reports of UFOs, or UAPs, by hundreds of U.S.

service members means that these are hardly an unusual occurrence.

Although some among the more than 40 reported UFO sightings over Korea are as remarkable as private walls, and these will have to be covered in future episodes, none of them appear to have been nearly as close in kind, nor do they offer the unique details that his close encounter does.

However, and for me, this is where the story gets creepy, a practically identical object was seen again 30 years later by multiple police officers on the Columbia River, just north of Portland, Oregon.

Hey, it's Luke, the host of Wartime Stories.

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In the early hours of a cold, misty morning on March 17th, 1981, St.

Helens Police Department Sergeant Russell Yoakum reported a close encounter of the first kind.

At 4.03 a.m., Yoakum was patrolling Highway 30 west of the Columbia River when he spotted a bright light moving in an easterly direction toward the Portland airport upriver.

While aircraft were known to regularly pass over the area on the way to the airport, he noted that the light was unusually bright, so much that it lit up the river like the sun was just coming up, like the whole area around the object was in broad daylight.

I thought it was an aircraft landing light, light, but it was brighter than a normal landing light would be, Yoakum told the National Enquirer in 1981.

Convinced that the light was not an aircraft, Yoakum radioed headquarters and then headed to the county courthouse to view the unidentified flying object from the banks of the Columbia River.

A few local citizens and two Oregon State Police officers, Ricky Cade and Tom McCartney, joined him there, and Yoakum got in contact with a man named Donald Askins via CB Radio.

Askins lived in a home across the river in Ridgeland, Washington and went by the handle Lucky 13.

He could not only see the light but hear it too.

Askins reported an eerie and extremely loud noise that sounded like a power plant diesel motor and a screeching noise in between.

Baffled, the officers set up a portable tape recorder 18 inches from their police radio to record their conversation with Askins and to catch the sound if it happened again.

Askins offered offered to dangle his CB microphone out of the window of his home so he could transmit the sound, and the police drove to a nearby bluff that gave them a better view.

And here is that tape recording.

We got a tape recorder sitting there by our radio whenever you're ready.

We'll keep it around and it's not sure if you can see up when we corner one.

Just didn't want you to think we all had a screw, though.

All going to bed.

Hey, uh, TS, all it is now is just an orange glow.

That's all I can see.

Okay, uh, you that's all you can see from there?

You guys still watching on the other side of the river there?

Yeah,

it's just an orange song.

Where are they at Dorkill up there on the river or what?

The sun is coming up.

Better not be.

Don't forget.

I don't think the sun would just be in that one spot.

I think it's more without you guys.

At approximately 4:29 a.m., the light, this object, then began emitting the strange sound again.

Somebody is revving up its engines.

Can you hear it?

I hope it's taping this, you guys.

Yes, we are.

Sounds like to me a power plant diesel motor and a screeching noise in between it there with it.

Okay, yeah, we're listening.

4:29 a.m.

just for the record.

At 4.43 a.m., having now been surrounded by a thick fog that had rolled in over the river, the bright orange light suddenly went out.

One officer said that the light made a funny whistling sound before it went out.

Then it sounded as if it went up and away, McCartney recalled to the inquirer, and within 30 seconds the fog separated and there was now a blue sky shining through.

It was eerie.

During the event, the Coast Guard was contacted by the state police and confirmed they did have the object on their radar.

Sergeant Yoakum's department had likewise contacted the Portland Airport, who first confirmed seeing the object on their radar.

But within five minutes, the airport mysteriously called the police station back and denied it.

Dr.

J.

Allen Hynek later had the tape recording analyzed at his Center for UFO Studies in Chicago, Illinois, and stated that the acoustical experts reported it was unlike any sound they had ever heard like that in nature, and that it was certainly not a helicopter.

Whatever the noise was, is it not eerily familiar to the description of a diesel locomotive revving up offered by Francis from his close encounter in Korea?

An encounter that took place 30 years earlier, and strangely, on nearly the exact same date in March.

Sounds like to me a blue-player seesaw motor and a screech and noise in between it terror with it.

Francis Wall retired in 1969 at the relatively young age of just 42.

His daughter, Renee Denny, stated that he spent the next 30 years out of work, struggling with the after effects of the war, what was overlooked overlooked then, but would likely be diagnosed now as a form of PTSD.

He was especially affected by the sounds of airplanes and once knocked his own mother and sister to the ground after mistaking them for enemy troops.

I guess he would have flashbacks, his daughter said.

Recounting one of his other stories from the war, she explained that one night he managed to make his way through a pitch-dark minefield, praying for his life as he went.

Some among his fellow soldiers were were not as fortunate.

A sudden explosion.

The sound of screaming.

When he went into the army, his daughter said, he was happy-go-lucky, just a totally different person to when he came out.

Over the years, his daughter continued, he would tell and retell the tale of his strange UFO sighting.

The story was always the same.

It never changed through the years.

Perhaps not unlike his other traumatic experiences, Francis' recollections of the UFO sighting remained very consistent and acute.

The summation of these vivid memories from Korea were nonetheless a tragic burden on Francis' mind until his passing in 1999.

If his story is true, skeptics can only reason that what Francis witnessed might have been a severe hallucination brought on by the fog of war, the mental stress that occurs when soldiers are engaged in violent combat and experience an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty, like a fog.

That seems a paltry explanation for such a vivid experience that Francis describes, but that is why these kinds of stories were selected to fall under the heading of the fog of war, being reminiscent of a Twilight Zone level of paranormal encounters.

And even many among those Twilight Zone stories written by Rod Serling were inspired by his own combat experience and the terrible things he witnessed as an American paratrooper fighting in the Philippines during World War II.

But unlike Rod Serling's cleverly written dramas, these fog of war stories are not intended to be considered works of fiction, whether we find them believable or not.

Those who have had their stories shared on this channel, like Francis, have insisted that they are true encounters.

With UFOs, many sightings do often appear to amount to cases of mistaken identity, even under the calmest of circumstances, far removed from the psychological stresses of combat, perhaps a balloon, an insect, a cloud, a drone, or passing aircraft.

But whatever Francis saw that night, at such close range, as well as the dozens of other military personnel during the war in Korea who reported similar objects, can we so easily dismiss them all as liars or delusional men suffering from the same identical hallucinations?

As Francis indicated, reporting these sorts of strange and unbelievable encounters has long done more harm than good and can certainly ruin both a man's reputation and his career in the military.

How many more men and women have subsequently remained silent about what they saw?

But even with verified military sightings and other such reports of these truly bizarre objects dating back decades or perhaps hundreds or even thousands of years depending on our historical interpretations, most unfortunately, the true nature of these objects and their exact origin only continues to elude us.

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive produced by Mr.

Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

Written by Jake Howard and myself.

Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Acasio, and Whitlacascio.

Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stidham.

Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone.

Production coordination by Avery Siegel.

Additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden.

Artwork by Jessica Cloxon-Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picada.

If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartime stories.com.

Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.

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