Just days before the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, one of its crew members shared an extraordinary secret with a NASA colleague.
According to Clark C. McClelland, a former spacecraft operator who worked on the Space Shuttle program, astronaut Lt. Col. Ellison Onizuka revealed that he had once been shown classified military footage depicting what appeared to be alien corpses from the infamous 1947 Roswell incident.
The conversation allegedly took place in January 1986 at Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building, during pre-mission preparations for what would become one of NASA’s most tragic disasters.
The Fateful Conversation
McClelland recounts that he encountered Onizuka while accessing drawing files at the Launch Control Center. The two men, who had developed a professional friendship, began discussing their thoughts on extraterrestrial life.
“I told him my belief that life does exist among the stars and that it has visited earth throughout human history,” McClelland wrote in an article titled “Alien Disclosure From an Astronaut.” “He smiled in agreement.”
What happened next caught McClelland completely off guard.
Onizuka asked if McClelland’s surname had any connection to McClellan Air Force Base in California. When McClelland said he wasn’t aware of any, the astronaut explained why he was curious.
The Screening Room
Onizuka described an incident that occurred approximately eight to nine years before his astronaut training, placing it around 1969 or 1970 when he was serving as an aerospace flight test engineer at McClellan Air Force Base.
“He and this group were at this base for specialized training when they were directed to report to a viewing room,” McClelland recalled. “As they were seated, the room darkened and a movie began without the usual official introduction by a USAF officer.”
According to McClelland’s account, Onizuka and the other Air Force officers were shocked when the film began showing what appeared to be a medical examination room with small bodies lying on tables or slabs.
“The small, strange looking creatures were humanoid in shape and appeared similar to those described by alleged witnesses at the well-known Roswell site in the Southwest USA in 1947,” McClelland wrote, describing what Onizuka had told him.
The bodies reportedly had large heads, large eyes, slight torsos, arms and legs. “They did not appear to be of earthly origin,” Onizuka allegedly stated.
A Psychological Test?
Onizuka himself seemed uncertain about the purpose of the screening. According to McClelland, the astronaut speculated that it might have been “a test of our psyche to determine our overall reaction.”
“Perhaps it was evaluated in my selection as an astronaut in 1978,” Onizuka reportedly mused. “You know, what would my reaction be if I actually saw an alien being?”
The group of highly trained officers received no explanation for what they had witnessed and were given no orders regarding secrecy. They simply viewed the film and departed, leaving them to process the experience on their own.
The Last Meeting
McClelland and Onizuka agreed to discuss the topic again in more detail. Unknown to both men, this would be their final conversation.
On January 28, 1986, just days after their exchange, Challenger mission 51-L launched from Kennedy Space Center. Seventy-three seconds into the flight, the shuttle broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven crew members including Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Christa McAuliffe, Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, and Gregory Jarvis.
“I was at the Kennedy Space Center and watched in disbelief as they and space shuttle Challenger fell into the Atlantic Ocean,” McClelland wrote, describing one of NASA’s darkest days.
Onizuka’s Background
Lt. Col. Ellison Onizuka was a distinguished aerospace engineer and the first Asian American to reach space. Born in Hawaii in 1946, he joined the Air Force in 1970 after graduating from the University of Colorado with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace engineering.
His initial assignment was indeed at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento, California, where official records confirm he served as a flight test engineer with the Sacramento Air Logistics Center from 1970 to 1974. His duties included participating in flight test programs and systems safety engineering for various aircraft including the F-84, F-100, F-105, and F-111.
The timeline McClelland described for the alleged alien film screening aligns with Onizuka’s documented service at McClellan during the early 1970s.
McClelland’s NASA Career
Clark McClelland claims to have worked for NASA from 1958 to 1992, participating in over 800 missions including Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle programs. He has published numerous accounts of his experiences on his website, including other claims about UFO encounters during space missions.
While McClelland did work for NASA contractors, the full extent of his roles and clearances has been a subject of some debate among researchers.
Similar Stories From the Era
Interestingly, McClelland’s account of Onizuka’s experience fits a pattern of similar reports from the 1970s. UFO researcher Leonard Stringfield documented approximately five accounts from servicemen who claimed to have been shown films of alien bodies or crashed craft during that period.
One such account involved a radar specialist at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, who in 1953 reportedly viewed a film showing a crashed UFO in a desert, the craft’s interior, and dead alien bodies inside a tent. Like Onizuka’s alleged experience, the viewing concluded with minimal explanation and instructions to “forget the movie.”
The Roswell Connection
The 1947 Roswell incident remains the most famous alleged UFO crash in history. In July of that year, the U.S. military initially announced it had recovered remains of a “flying disc” from a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. The next day, the statement was retracted, with officials claiming the debris came from a weather balloon.
Decades of witness testimony, deathbed confessions, and leaked documents have fueled persistent claims that alien bodies were indeed recovered and that the government engaged in an extensive cover-up. Area 51, the highly classified Air Force facility in Nevada, has long been rumored to house both crash debris and preserved alien remains.
Questions Without Answers
Why would the Air Force show such explosive footage to a group of engineers and pilots without context or security protocols? Was it, as Onizuka speculated, a psychological evaluation to gauge reactions? Or was it something else entirely?
The timing also raises intriguing questions. If the screening occurred during Onizuka’s time at McClellan in the early 1970s, it would have been during a period of renewed government interest in UFOs and just a few years before NASA began selecting astronauts for the Space Shuttle program.
McClelland himself noted the peculiarity: “These highly trained officers and I were shocked by what we saw. We were not made privy to what we would see until it happened. We were all caught off guard.”
An Enduring Mystery
With Onizuka’s death in the Challenger disaster, the story remains impossible to fully verify. No other witnesses to the alleged screening have come forward publicly, and no documentary evidence of such a film has surfaced.
Yet the account persists, passed down through McClelland’s writings and kept alive by those fascinated by the possibility that one of America’s pioneering astronauts carried knowledge of extraterrestrial contact to his grave.
Whether Onizuka truly witnessed evidence of alien visitation or whether the story represents something else entirely—perhaps a classified psychological test, a misremembered training film, or even a practical joke among colleagues—may never be known with certainty.
What remains undeniable is that Ellison Onizuka was a genuine American hero whose contributions to space exploration transcended any claims about what he may or may not have seen on a classified Air Force base decades ago. His legacy lives on through the many space features, buildings, and scholarships named in his honor.
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