In this episode I tell you about three different UFO sightings from aboard US Navy Ships.
In this episode I tell you about three different UFO sightings from aboard US Navy Ships.
Ep 37 Sightings from Navy Ships
Hello and welcome back to the UFO and Alien Podcast. I’m your host Rick Black. I’m still thinking about last week and revealing the lies from Ancient Aliens. I was walking Charlie this morning and I was thinking. Why would someone lie about something like that when the truth would be fine. To me it seems that they are so anxious to get their idea across that they think they need to exaggerate or bend the truth to make their theory more palatable. It reminds me of a used car salesman trying everything he can think of to make you buy that car. I’m out here looking for the truth and the hoaxes and the lies are just making it so hard.
Alright, enough about that. I must move forward and find some interesting cases to share with you. You have been an awesome audience. I really appreciate you tuning in. This week I am going to look at three separate incidents where UFOs were witnessed by sailors on U.S. Navy ships. The first one is an account of a sailor on the USS Memphis out of Cape Canaveral Florida. This is taken directly from the report which does not name the sailor involved. This event occurred on October 24th, 1989.
A sailor reports about the UFO sighting he had while in the Navy. "I was assigned to USS Memphis (SSN-698), homeport Titusville, FL. (Cape Canaveral.) Our mission was Special Assignments which meant we protected the Space Program. We would go to sea and patrol while the shuttle was on the pad. Nine years ago, on October 24 and 25, my ship was on patrol about 150 miles off the Florida coast. We were cruising at about 500 feet when the submarine started experiencing electronics problems. The ship was malfunctioning, our tanks were blowing out of control, we were losing navigation ability and the communications area was totally lost. We went to all stop and tried to assess what was happening. The controls in the reactor area started to malfunction. This presented a serious danger to our safety, so the captain ordered us to shut down the reactor, surface and go to diesel motors. When the ship surfaced, I went to my watch station. The ship was still experiencing electronic difficulties but the mechanical devices such as diesel engines, cook stoves, and turbines were fine. It was raining and the entire sky was red like a red neon sign. I saw a large, inverted V-shaped UFO off the port side. The executive officer told me to stand fast and he would speak to the captain. In a minute, the captain appeared on the tower and asked me for a distance to the craft. The laser range finder determined the closest point was 200 meters and the farthest point was 1,000 meters off the port. The UFO was not perpendicular to our ship but at about a 45' angle. This huge vessel was over a half mile across. The UFO made a half circle around our ship then passed across the stern causing our electronics systems to go crazy. We had permanent damage in communications and the sonar room. As the craft flew over the stern, I could see the rain stop under its red glow. The water seemed to rise almost a foot as the UFO passed over silently. When the UFO finished its swing across the stern it paused - the sky got brighter red and it simply moved off at tremendous speed inside 15 seconds. When the UFO left our boat returned to normal with the exception of the radio and sonar. We did a quick system check and the captain ordered us to return to reactor power and get underway.
The captain took two petty officers, the executive officer, and myself into the wardroom. He told us to not spread any rumors until we had a chance to talk to Commander Submarine Fleet - Atlantic. We reached port in about 7 hours where I was taken into "protective custody." Two enlisted men and myself agreed we had witnessed a real UFO. I was the one who shot it with a laser range finder so I was the only one that had its exact sizes. I shot that vessel as it hovered and I got solid readings not spotty like I would on debris. We were in holding for about three hours when an officer from the Air Force arrived and gave us a line of bull about an exploding weather satellite. The Navy then transferred virtually everyone on the crew to new assignments. This included the captain, the executive officer and the entire crew. They were split up which almost never happens unless one of them gets a promotion or a new command, neither of which happened. The military just split up a 4 year team. I was watching a program tonight that gave me the courage to share it.
Next we go to the USS Edenton off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina in 1986. Again the witness is unidentified. I think this one was investigated by MUFON and possibly the USS Memphis was also, but don’t quote me on that. This is directly quoted from the witness.
“While in the US Navy in the summer of 1986, I was standing lookout aboard the USS Edenton ATS 1 (currently decommissioned). The lookout watch, stood outside on top the bridge of the ship, and was responsible for reporting all contacts seen both in the water and sky. It was around eleven p.m. one clear night at sea, located about fifty miles off the coast of Cape Hatteras, NC.
During one of my scans of the night sky, out of know where, four red circular lights appeared. The lights were hundreds of yards apart from each other and formed a square. At first, I thought it was four separate air craft, such as, military helicopters because the lights were stationary; however, due to the distance from the ship, the lights where too large to be aircraft running lights.
There were also no other normal running lights like green and white, which make-up the normal outline of an aircraft seen at night. The lights were located about twenty degrees above the horizon and about a mile away from the ship. Again, these four red lights were each about the size of a small plane, which were very bright and visible in the night sky. The night sky was also clear, moon lit, and a moderate amount of stars were visible, which also aided in calculating the distance and size of these lights.
As stated, when I first saw these lights they were all stationary in the sky and appeared out of know where. Once I noticed that these were not normal lights, grouped in a square and not moving, I called down to the bridge over a salt and pepper line informing the conning officer of a possible UFO sighting. This brought laughter across the wire at first, but I relayed the contact again in a stern but excited voice, which succeeded in getting the bridge officer’s attention. After relaying the contact information a second time, the four lights, in a flash, darted towards the horizon amazingly fast. The lower two lights in the square went first, with the top two lights following directly behind them in a curved swooshing motion and there was no sound.
Then all four shot straight up into outer-space and out of sight, all within a split second. At this point, I felt very excited and shocked, and was personally praying someone on the bridge had seen what I just saw. Having been an avid watcher of the night sky, seen shooting stars and a believer in that life has to exist somewhere out there, I become even more excited because I knew, I just saw my first unidentified flying object(s).
To my amazement, when I returned to the bridge after my watch, I was very pleased to learn that the conning officer and everyone else on the bridge had seen this sighting and logged it into the ship’s log as a UFO sighting.
Next, after a half hour had passed since the sighting, the radiation detection system (gamma roentgen meter) on the bridge started making a loud clicking sound. At first, no one seemed to know what was making this sound then a very loud bell went off notifying us as to what was going on, we were being radiated.
When the instrument stopped clicking, it indicated we had taken a hit of 385 roentgens in the period of about one minute. At this point, the captain of the ship was awoken and called to the bridge, as well as the chief in charge of the radiation metering equipment onboard ship.
The captain was not impressed with an entry of a UFO sighting being placed in the ship’s log, and at first, took the roentgen meter as being defective. However, the chief informed the captain that the meter had been serviced and calibrated the day before and that other like meters throughout the ship had just gone off indicating the same amount of roentgens received as the bridge.
The captain stated not to log the instance concerning the radiation exposure and left the bridge. During the rest of my watch duty that night, no officer or enlisted person spoke of what happened, and also acted liked nothing happened. This experience, however, was etched into my memory as if it happened yesterday and I have told this story to only a few people, people who I thought would believe me. This is also the first time I have documented the events of this night.
In conclusion, as an indication of the strength of gamma radiation, I and others received that night; all the personnel during the Project Trinity experiments conducted in 1945 at ground zero, only received between 1 and 6 total roentgens of gamma radiation. This leads me to believe, we traveled through the wake of radiation produced by the UFOs seen thirty minutes earlier.”
The third incident was on the aircraft carrier, USS John F. Kennedy in the Bermuda Triangle. This isn’t the only carrier to witness UFOs. I remember my father telling me about a UFO sighting on the USS Roosevelt that sailors were talking about. I don’t think he was on the ship at that time, but he still heard about it.
This encounter occurred in 1971, while aboard the aircraft carrier, USS John F. Kennedy CVA-67 (now CV-67) in the Bermuda Triangle. I was assigned to the communications department of the Kennedy and had been in this section about a year. The ship was returning to Norfolk, VA after completing a two week operational readiness exercise (ORE) in the Caribbean. We were to stand down for 30 days, after arriving in Norfolk, Virginia, to allow the crew to take leave and visit family before deploying to the Mediterranean for six months.
I was on duty in the communications center. My task was to monitor eight teletypes printing the "Fleet Broadcasts". On the top row were four teletypes each printing messages from four different channels. On the bottom row were four more doing the exact same thing except the signal was carried on different frequencies. If one of the primary receivers started taking "hits" I would be able to retrieve the message from the bottom one. I also notified Facilities Control of any hits so they could tune the receivers. On the other side of the compartment(room) was the NAVCOMMOPNET (Naval Communications Operations Network). This was the Ship to Shore circuit with the top teletype being the receive and the bottom as the send (known as a duplex circuit). Next to this was the Task Group Circuit for ship to ship communications (task group operations or TGO).
It was in the evening, about 20:30 (8:30 PM) and the ship had just completed an eighteen hour "Flight Ops". I had just taken a message off one of the broadcasts and turned around to file it on a clip board. When I turned back to the teletypes the primaries were typing garbage. I looked down to the alternates which were doing the same. I walked a few feet to the intercom between us and the Facilities Control. I called them and informed them of the broadcasts being out. A voice replied that all communications were out. I then turned and looked in the direction of the NAVCOMMOPNET and saw that the operator was having a problem. I then heard the Task Group operator tell the watch officer that his circuit was out also. In the far corner of the compartment was the pneumatic tubes going to the Signal bridge (where the flashing light and signal flag messages are sent/receive). There is an intercom there to communicate with the Signal Bridge and over this intercom we heard someone yelling "There is something hovering over the ship!" A moment later we heard another voice yelling. "IT IS GOD! IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!".
We all looked at each other, there were six of us in the Comm Center, and someone said, "Lets go have a look!". The Comm Center is amidships, just under the flight deck, almost in the center of the ship. We went out the door, through Facilities Control and out that door, down the passageway (corridor) about 55 feet to the hatch that goes out to the catwalk on the edge of the flight deck (opposite from the "Island" or that part of the ship where the bridge is). If you have ever been to sea, there is a time called the time of no horizon. This happens in the morning and evening just as the sun comes up or goes down over the horizon.
During this time you cannot tell where the sea and sky meet. This is the time of evening it was. As we looked up, we saw a large, glowing sphere. Well it seemed large, however, there was no point of reference. That is to say, if the sphere were low; say 100 feet above the ship, then it would have been about two to three hundred feet in diameter. If it were say 500 feet about the ship then it would have been larger. It made no sound that I could hear. The light coming from it wasn't too bright, about half of what the sun would be. It sort of pulsated a little and was yellow to orange.
We didn't get to looked at it for more than about 20 seconds because General Quarters (Battle stations) was sounding and the Communication Officer was in the passageway telling us to get back into the Comm Center. We returned and stayed there (that was out battle station). We didn't have much to do because all the communication was still out. After about 20 minutes, the teletypes started printing correctly again. We stayed at General Quarters for about another hour, then secured. I didn't see or hear of any messages going out about the incident.
Over the next few hours, I talked to a good friend that was in CIC (combat information center) who was a radar operator. He told me that all the radar screens were just glowing during the time of the incident. I also talked to a guy I knew that worked on the Navigational Bridge. He told me that none of the compasses were working and that the medics had to sedate a boatswains mate that was a lookout on the signal bridge. I figured this was the one yelling it was God. It was ironic that of the 5,000 men on a carrier, that only a handful actually saw this phenomenon. This was due to the fact that flight Ops had just been completed a short time before this all started and all the flight deck personnel were below resting. It should be noted that there are very few places where you can go to be out in the open air aboard a carrier. From what I could learn, virtually all electronic components stopped functioning during the 20 minutes or so that what ever it was hovered over the ship. The two Ready CAPs (Combat Air Patrol), which were two F-4 Phantoms that are always ready to be launched, would not start.
I heard from the scuttlebut (slang - rumor mill) that three or four "men in trenchcoats" had landed, and were interviewing the personnel that had seen this phenomena. I was never interviewed, maybe because no one knew that I had seen it.
A few days latter, as we were approaching Norfolk, the Commanding and Executive Officers came on the closed circuit TV system that we had. They did this regularly to address the crew and pass on information. During this particular session the Captain told us how well we did on the ORE and about our upcoming deployment to the Mediterranean. At the very end of his spiel, he said "I would like to remind the crew, that certain events that take place aboard a Naval Combatant Ship, are classified and are not to be discussed with anyone without a need to know". This was all the official word I ever received or heard of the incident.
Being young and excited about my visit home and going to the Med, I completely forgot about it until years later when my wife and I went to see "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" at the movies when it first came out. In fact the friend that had been the radar operator was with his wife and went with us. As we walked across the parking lot to my car, I ask him if he remembered what We had experienced years earlier on the ship. He looked at me and said he never wanted to talk about it again. As he said it he turned a little pale. I never talked about the incident again. When I discovered "Aliens and Strange Phenomenon" on MSN and started reading the posts I started thinking about it again. Now I seem obsessed in finding out all I can about this phenomena.
Jim Kopf
Mt. Airy, Maryland
I like these kinds of reports because the witnesses have nothing to gain by coming forward. They aren’t trying to sell books or push an idea. In fact, they get more grief by coming forward than is they just kept it to themselves. There is no incentive for them to lie, so I find them more believable.
You don’t have to believe, you can believe what you want. Look at all the facts. I don’t see anything here that is outrageously unbelievable. It all seems plausible. While I was poking around trying to find some cases for this week, I ran across some that looked really intriguing that don’t recall ever hearing about. I am going to look close at it this week and possibly make it my case for next week. I am reluctant to tell you what it is in case I decide to do something different. At any rate, I am excited about next weeks episode.
Remember, Believe none of what you hear and half of what you read.
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