Saturday, November 30, 2013

The USS New York - Update


Back on July 30, I posted a column dealing with an alleged radar sighting aboard the USS New York. The claim was that the ship had fired on a UFO. The story appeared in a magazine back in 1945, and it was suggested that the solution was Venus. Someone had seen Venus in the daytime, thought it was some sort of a Japanese attack and they opened fire. The ship’s navigator rushed up on deck and made the identification. To me, that ended the story. At best it was an IFO.

But as happens in the world of the UFO someone just didn’t like that solution and without much in the way of information started an argument. I said at the time I would look into it and have attempted to find out more. The National Archives responded with a request for money and suggested it would take three months to get what I needed. I hadn’t counted on the government shut down (what a boondoggle that was, but I digress), but I now have the information based on the deck logs of the ship.

These logs were reviewed from January 1, 1945 through April 30, 1945 and there was nothing to suggest any sort of UFO related event in that time frame. (And so that I don’t have to explain this further, I used the generic UFO as opposed to the more specific Foo Fighter which would be period appropriate.)

Here’s what I know. The USS New York was in dry dock from March 1 to March 19 and left Seeadler Harbor, Manus Island and arrived at Ulithi Harbor on March 22. During the remainder of the month, the ship was moved to Okinawa. The only entries that relate to firing the guns was target practice which happened sometime each month, meaning there was no regular schedule for it. There were notations for warfare engagements at Okinawa in March.

There were no entries referencing any unknown objects or Venus or anything that could have been taken as such. In other words, there is no corroboration for this tale from the official documentation available and even a loose interpretation of what has been written does not allow for this.

This, I believe, should resolve this. We have tales told by sailors which were reported in magazines, but there is nothing from the ship to support this. I suppose someone will say that the captain, embarrassed by his attack on Venus, left it out of the deck logs. But we were searching for anything that would match the facts and could find nothing. The logs should have provided a hint, had there been one. There was nothing.

The ball now resides with those who believe this to be a Foo Fighter or some sort of anomaly. They need to provide some new and better documentation. Unless that happens, I believe the case to be resolved.

12 comments:

Lance said...

Thanks for all the effort you put into this, Kevin.
And Happy Holidays!

Lance

Lance said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
David Rudiak said...

The problem is absence of mention of anything unusual in the ship log does not prove something unusual did not happen. I've run into this before when researching UFO incidents at Muroc/Edwards AFB where NOTHING appears in daily logs or other possible sources of information, like the base newspaper (when I reviewed them), yet we know of these UFO incidents from other official sources, such as Project Blue Book files.

Two such classics were the extended period, multi-witness, multi-UFO sightings there of July 8, 1947:

http://www.nuforc.org/Muroc.html

...and the extended period, multi-witness, multi-UFO, multi-radar contact, jet intercept case of Oct. 7, 1965:

http://www.nicap.org/edwards65dir.htm

Again, nothing appears in base logs indicating anything unusual of any kind happening. Yet clearly something DID happen. In the latter case, there are even audio recordings of communications on the radar tapes that were chopped up into pieces afterward and classified for 30 years. Researcher Sam Sherman spent a lot of time reassembling the audio into a plausible sequence of events. Witness and control tower operator Chuck Sorrels became a Disclosure Project witness. Even astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who was at Edwards at the time, investigated and confirmed it as a true UFO event.

But nothing about it in the base logs.

KRandle said...

David -

You seem to have missed the point. Everything that can be found suggests that no UFO of any kind was involved. Even the original published story suggested a prosaic answer. And all this took place before anyone was talking about alien spacecraft and before there was any attempt to suppress that information.

There is nothing here that belongs in the UFO literature except as a footnote saying that this did not involved a Foo Fighter or UFO.

David Rudiak said...

Kevin--

I'm speaking in more general terms. Absence of something in routine base or ship logs does not prove nothing happened, as evidenced by well-documented UFO incidents at Edwards AFB never appearing in the logs. Your blog suggested that since the USS New York ship log said nothing at all about any incident of any kind (doesn't matter whether they were firing at Venus or a true UFO), that literally nothing of any sort happened, in spite of the testimony to the contrary.

My point is that isn't necessarily the case since it could simply have never been written into the ship log (maybe out of embarrassment if there really was an incident where they fired at Venus).

cda said...

DR is repeating the famous Stanton Friedman 'theorem' that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Make of this what you will.

KRandle said...

David -

No, my blog, with the companion piece posted last summer which provided all the additional information, suggested that this was not a UFO.

I also wrote, in this post, "I suppose someone will say that the captain, embarrassed by his attack on Venus, left it out of the deck logs," so thanks for making the prediction come true.

My point is that without something else, there is no reason for this to remain on a list of UFOs. Sometimes absence of evidence is, in fact, evidence of absence.

Don Maor said...

Cda,
Knowing that theorems are great truths...your comment might be considered to be a compliment to Friedman.
However, judging from the real aim of your comment...it would seem that skeptics prefer using sophisms instead of theorems.

Kurt Peters said...

....bless your heart, David Rudiak!!

Jim Robinson said...

This incident was supposed to have happened in the Admiralties, but apparently the ship's logs are evidence of absence of the ship from that region during the reported time period.

Nitram said...

Well said Don, but please remember that the correct word is "debunkers" not "skeptics"

Best wishes Nitram

John Steiger said...

A point of explanation to Jim Robinson - Seeadler Harbor, Manus Island is in fact in the center of the Admiralty Islands. As I read this, the USS New York was present in the Admiralties to March 19th of 1945 and from the 19th to the 22nd transited to Ulithi in the Caroline Islands. So while the USS New York was in the
location cited by the witness(es), its deck logs do not provide evidence supporting verification of the incident(s) described.