Lockbourne Air Force Base, Columbus, Ohio
Lockbourne Air Force Base (also spelled "Lockborne" in some witness accounts) was a Strategic Air Command (SAC) installation located near Columbus, Ohio, active from 1942 through its later designation as Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base. In UAP research, Lockbourne is primarily significant as an alleged intermediate staging point in the transport chain following the 1965 Kecksburg, Pennsylvania UFO crash retrieval, with at least one Air Force security guard providing eyewitness testimony to having personally guarded the recovered craft at the facility.
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Kecksburg Crash Retrieval
An Air Force security guard stationed at Lockbourne contacted UAP researcher Stan Gordon before the 1990 Unsolved Mysteries broadcast on the Kecksburg incident. The guard stated that on the early morning of December 10, 1965 — within hours of the object's recovery from the woods near Kecksburg — he was assigned to guard an object that had arrived on a military truck from Pennsylvania. The craft was backed into a hangar and security was significantly elevated. According to the guard, the object remained at Lockbourne only briefly before being transferred to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for examination and long-term storage.
This testimony establishes Lockbourne as the first confirmed military facility to receive the Kecksburg object, consistent with its role as a secure SAC base positioned along the Pennsylvania-to-Ohio transport corridor. Researcher Leonard Stringfield documented the account alongside corroborating testimony from trucker "Myron," whose delivery of specialized radiation-shielding bricks to Wright-Patterson days later provides additional context for the final destination of the object.
Strategic Air Command Connection
As a SAC installation, Lockbourne operated under the command of General Curtis LeMay, a figure repeatedly associated in UAP research with UFO secrecy and restriction of access to classified materials. LeMay's SAC created the Strategic Air Command Elite Guard in 1956 — a blue-bereted Air Force police unit whose members were observed at the Kecksburg crash site by multiple witnesses. Whether Lockbourne's role in the Kecksburg transfer was coordinated at the SAC command level or handled by base-level personnel remains unknown.