UFOs, USOs and the US Navy

 

Just last Friday, May 14, another video taken by Naval personnel was released into the public arena by filmmaker Jeremy Corbell. It shows an object, a black, somewhat indistinct sphere, as it flies near the USS Omaha. At the end of the video, the object drops into the ocean. The Navy has confirmed the authenticity of the video, meaning that it was recorded by Navy personnel on July 15, 2019 in the Combat Information Center on the ship using FLIR which is Forward Looking Infrared. There is a lot of data available about this sighting, and many others involving Navy ships. George Knapp has been onto of this as well. You can read George Knapp’s interview with Jermey Corbell here:

https://kfor.com/mystery-wire/new-video-from-uss-omaha-shows-unknown-aerial-sphere-vanishing-into-ocean/

George Knapp

What I have been unable to learn is if this sighting, as some of the other, equally interesting sightings, was strictly on the CIC equipment or of there were sailors who saw the object without the aid of a digital display. There have been cockpit photographs taken with cell phones that are not limited to video displays but this isn’t really the same thing as the videos.

This latest video ends with the object dropping into the ocean. At that point, it becomes, what is known around the UFO community as an unidentified submerged object or USO.

This isn’t, of course, the first instance of a UFO dropping into the ocean. One of the best documented cases is that from Shag Harbour, Canada on October 4, 1967. A day later, on October 5, 1967, Jim Lorenzen of APRO, called the Condon Committee to alert them of the events that had taken place in and around Shag Harbour. With that, the committee launched their telephonic investigation and it was Dr. Norman E. Levine who wrote the report on what they labeled as Case No. 34, in the North Atlantic and dated as Fall 1967. Levine wrote:

He [Jim Lorenzen] stated that the original report had come from two teenagers and that the Navy was searching for wreckage. No aircraft were reported missing in the area... A corporal of the RCMP [Victor Werbicki] stated that the first report had come from five young people, 15 - 20 yr. old, who while driving near the shore had seen three or four yellow lights in a horizontal pattern comparable in size to a ‘fair-sized’ aircraft... They observed the light while they drove about .25 mi., then reported the incident to the RCMP detachment.

Chris Styles and Don Ledger, two Canadian researchers who have, between them, decades of experience in UFO investigations, provided me with a thick file on the case. According to them, the events began on the night of October 4, 1967, near the small fishing village of Shag Harbour. Something, estimated to be about sixty feet in diameter, with four bright flashing lights, descended to the surface of the water about a half mile from shore.

Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, Canada

Halifax Herald, reported that Laurie Wickens, with four others, spotted something above and in front of them at about 11:00 p.m. It was a large object that had four flashing amber-colored lights that was descending, as opposed to falling, toward the harbor.

As it struck the water, there seemed to be a bright flash and explosion. Wickens decided to contact the police drove to a nearby town, attempting to keep the object in sight so that he could provide precise information. Eventually parking, all five of the witnesses, Wickens included, ran to the water’s edge when they could see what they would later describe as a dark object floating or hovering just about the water. Now the flashing lights were gone and only a single, pale yellow light that seemed to be on top of the object could be seen.

Wickens then reported the sighting to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He contacted Corporal Victor Werbicki who initially, wasn’t very impressed with the report. Instead of asking him anything about the crash, Werbicki asked him if he had been drinking but then told Wickens to hang up but to wait by the telephone.

Several other witnesses, some of them thinking that some sort of aircraft had crashed, also called that same RCMP detachment at Barrington Passage. Mary Banks, who was on Maggie Garron’s Point, which is near the harbor, told Werbicki that she had seen an airplane crash into the sound. A third call came in from two women who were about thirteen miles away and who had seen the same thing.  A man, in a fourth call said that he had also heard a whistle and a bang. Although they all talked in terms of an aircraft accident and others mentioned only bright flashing lights, no one suggested that this was a UFO, meaning alien craft.

It was now apparent to Werbicki that something had happened out there. He called Wickens back and told him to meet him at the Moss plant. Three of RCMP officers made it to the shoreline and one of them, Constable Ron Pond, said that he had seen the lights from his car and that he’d seen the object, or the lights, or whatever, dive toward the water. He thought he saw a shape behind the lights which certainly changed the dynamic of the sighting. In other words, Pond saw, not only the lights, but believed those lights had been attached to something solid.

Standing on the shore with the Mounties were a number of other witnesses. These included Wickens and his four friends, and the occupants of a pick-up truck that pulled into the lot. Norm and Wilfred Smith had seen the object in the air before stopping for a better look. Although Werbicki didn’t see anything until Wickens pointed it out to him, all could see the pale-yellow light that floated about a half mile from shore. Through binoculars, they could see that whatever floated on the surface was creating a foaming, yellow wake as it moved. Because the object was in the water off shore, the Coast Guard was notified and fishing boats were called in to look around. Although the cause of the yellow foam disappeared before the boats arrived, they could still see some evidence of its passing. The Coast Guard cutter arrived too late to see anything and by three in the morning the search was suspended for the night.

This is the situation as it stood when Jim Lorenzen notified the members of the Condon Committee.  Levine, in his preliminary statement, suggests that the first reports were made by teenagers and he seems to be suggesting that others saw lights on the water, but nothing in the sky. Levine went on to write:

Two officers [RCMP constables Ron O’Brien and Ron Pond] and the corporal [Werbicki] had arrived about 15 min. later, in time to see the light on the water. It persisted about five minutes longer. Ten minutes after it went out the two officers were at the site in a rowboat; a Coast Guard boat and six fishing boats were on the scene. They found only patches of foam 30 - 40 yd. wide that the fishermen though was not normal tide foam...

The site of the presumed impact was in between an island and the mainland, about 200 - 300 yd. off shore. Apparently, no one actually saw anything enter the water [though I must point out that a number of people saw the object descend to the water, which is, essentially, the same thing]. However, two young women driving on the island reported that a horizontal pattern of three yellow lights had tilted and descended, and then a yellow light had appeared... The RCMP corporal stated that the light on the water was not on any boat, that Air Search and Rescue had no reports of missing aircraft in the area, and an RCAF radar station nearby reported no Canadian of U.S. air operations in the area at the time, nor any usual radar object... A search by Navy divers during the days immediately following the sighting disclosed nothing relevant.

Five days later the Naval Maritime Command advised the project [that is, the Condon Committee] that the search had been terminated. The watch officer read a report from the RCMP indicating that at the time in question a 60 ft. object had been seen to explode upon impact with the water... A captain of a fishing boat that had been about 16 mi. from the site of the earlier reports, reported to the project that he and his crew had seen three stationary bright red flashing lights on the water, from sundown until about 11 p.m. The ship’s radar showed four objects forming a six mile square; the three lights were associated with one of these objects [so now we see that Levine is contradicting himself with radar reports and people seeing the object descend]. At about 11:00 p.m., one of the lights went straight up. The captain had judged that the radar objects were naval vessels and the ascending light a helicopter; he had attached no significance to these observations until he had heard on the radio of the sightings; he then reported the foregoing observations... However, since the position he reported for the objects was about 175 n. mi. from the original site, the two situations do not appear related.

No further investigation by the project was considered justifiable particularly in view of the immediate and thorough search [that had failed to find anything which would suggest that the Condon Committee should be interested in the case] that had been carried out by the RCMP and the Maritime Command.

This shows that the on the scene investigation by the Condon Committee was a telephone call and then a dismissal of the case. This was a case of multiple witnesses, certainly more than just the teenagers that Levine mentioned, and there was a possibility of physical evidence, they declined go to Canada. Levine seemed to believe, or at the very least claimed he believed, that the sightings had been thoroughly investigated by others on the scene, that nothing of interest was found, and that the search had been called off.

Years later, an investigation by Canadian researchers Chris Styles and Don Ledger uncovered not only additional witnesses, a photograph of the object in the sky, but also documentation and testimony from high-ranking Canadian officials. Styles, in writing about the case would say that he had met with a former general who had served with the DOPS section of the Canadian Forces Headquarters. The officer was annoyed with Styles for finding him but did supply some interesting information about the case.

According to Styles:

The story told to me in Ottawa by the Brigadier contained all the verifiable bits and earlier partial stories of ships sitting over a submerged U.F.O off C.F.S. Shelburne’s government point. The Brigadier’s source was [sic] men who were loyal to him that were commandeered by NORAD and the navy to play the role of identification team if they found something physical. Apparently, they did and according to the Brigadier the men claim that ‘There was no doubt.’ It was not a conventional aircraft or spacejunk [sic] originating from either 1967 superpower. They told their regular Canadian C.O. that ‘There was activity down there.’ In fact, incredibly they say that there was a second craft. In the Brigadier’s own lingo, “It was standing nines for the damaged saucer.’ The basic outline of the story ends when a russian [sic] sub enters the then 12 mile offshore international limit. The small flotilla sails toward the intruder to offer challenge. This is after a weeks [sic] observation by sonar and T.V. remote over the U.F.O.’s resting place. It is at this point that both U.F.O.’s [sic] begin moving under the water back towards the Shag Harbour area. Once they clear open water in the Gulf of Maine they surface and fly away. The Brigadier closed our meeting by stating that he doubles I will find any paperwork on this operation in Canada.”

That Styles and Ledger were able to uncover the documentation and testimony from the event suggests that this was something that the Condon Committee should have done as well. It happened on their watch, would have provided them with a very interesting case that hinted at the extraterrestrial, and met the criterion for an investigation with the exception of it happening in Canada. Even with that problem, there were American military forces involved, and the scientists could have arrived before the conclusion of the incident, but they were content to ignore it as a prank by teenagers.

Condon had said, in various meetings and to various groups, “I wouldn’t be satisfied with anything other than actually getting a vehicle, with or without occupants, so under my control that I could take it and exhibit it to something like this committee so that all of you saw it, or take you to a place where I had it ‘captured’. Anything less than that I wouldn’t believe.”

This meant, clearly, that the observations, regardless of the training, integrity, expertise or ability of the witnesses wouldn’t be sufficient for him. He wanted a vehicle to study, which brings us back to Shag Harbour. The witnesses said the object fell into the harbor. There are indications that he was maneuvering under water which changed it into a USO. And there are indications, based on the research of Styles and Ledger, that the object eventually maneuvered itself out of the harbor and disappeared

This is a singular, or even rare event. As I say, there is a long history of these USOs, and as just another example, a woman, described as 79-years old, said that her father, a Naval officer based in San Franciso, said these were seen all the time. She said that her father showed her a telegram that reported UFOs had been seen entering and leaving the water and was complete with the geographical coordinates.

On April 19, 1957, the crew of a Japanese fishing boat saw two silver objects, about 30 long without wings, descend. They hit the water, creating an area of turbulence. The objects did not reappear.

Which, I suppose brings us back to 2021. We have another good sighting of something unidentified, disappearing into the ocean. We know that a search for wreckage failed, which suggests the object entered the water intact and did not break up. It suggests a transition from one environment, air, into another, water. That transition is not something easily accomplished and suggests a technology that is superior to ours.

This sighting would be even stronger if there were some sailors who watched the UFO with an unaided eye. It would add another chain of evidence to the sighting but it seems this all took place at night with no sailors seeing the UFO other than those watching in the CIC. There must be more to the story here and I wonder what that is.