So,
I’m making a search of the various cable channels looking for something
interesting and stumble onto another of those UFO mockumentaries. This was one
had a segment about a UFO attack on the Royal Australian Navy destroyer, Hobart, during the Vietnam War. The ship
was hit by three missiles killing two, wounding several and scattering debris
throughout the ship. The cleanup uncovered bits of an American made missile
that was traced to a couple of Air Force units flying F-4 Phantoms that for
some unknown reason were referred to as Phantoms, F-4, in the program.
Investigation
of the incident conducted by various levels of command in Vietnam, the United
States and Australia, concluded that this was an incident of “friendly fire,”
and was a horrible mistake made by the American pilots. I mean, they had
fragments of the missiles with serial numbers and markings that led to the
specific Air Force units that were flying that night. No UFOs were involved and
nothing to suggest any hostile intent by the alien beings riding in those
flying saucers, at least on June 17, 1968.
But
wait, there’s more…
Seems
that in the nights preceding the incident, lights of an unknown origin were
seen in the vicinity of Tiger Island that was at the extreme end of northern
South Vietnam. It was suggested in various intelligence documents that these
lights were helicopters operating near the UMZ (ultra-militarized zone), I mean
the DMZ, attempting to resupply elements of the North Vietnamese Army in the
area.
But
unidentified lights in the skies over Vietnam could have been dozens of things
from high flying bombers whose lights could be seen but whose engines were lost
in the altitude, helicopters of unknown origin flying at nearly treetop level
to avoid enemy ground fire, parachute flares, star-clusters, tracers of red,
white or green (almost nothing looks bigger than a tracer coming, more or less,
at you) misidentifications of various natural phenomena, deception by the
enemy, mistakes by the observers, or just flat out delusions. Or, in other
words, there were a lot of lights bouncing around the night skies in Vietnam,
many of which aren’t normally seen in a more peaceful environment.
UFO
proponents including the late Bill Cooper decided that these lights were alien
spacecraft and they were the cause of the missiles that hit the Hobart. Oh, the UFOs didn’t fire them,
they caused the missiles to bend around or interfered with the targeting of the
missiles that forced them to change course. The US missiles then struck the Hobart, and other ships in the area.
Cooper said that he knew the lights were not enemy helicopters because the
enemy would have never. They didn’t fly helicopters into that area.
Except,
of course, the enemy sometimes did fly helicopters into South Vietnam. One of
our gun teams (meaning one of the gun teams assigned to the company I served
with) chased a French made helicopter into Cambodia that was operating on the
South Vietnamese border near an area known as the Angel Wing. At the time that
invisible line of the ground was stronger than any wall ever built and our guys
broke off the chase. The point is that sometimes you saw some strange stuff
that had nothing to do with UFOs.
There
is documentation available on this event, and the Project 1947 web site has a
pdf file containing some of it that can be found here:
For
an Australian Naval Officer’s take on the incident (as well as some fairly
nasty remarks about Americans which given the circumstances is understandable)
see:
For
a look at this from the other side of the coin, see:
