PROJECT 1947
UNITED STATES NAVY, MARINE CORPS, COAST GUARD AND OTHER GOVERNMENT SEAGOING SERVICES UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT (UFO) AND UNIDENTIFIED SUBMERGED OBJECT (USO) SIGHTING REPORTS
Compiled and copyright © 2013 by Jan L. Aldrich
INTRODUCTION
When NICAP compiled The UFO Evidence (1964), it included one section on “Air Force Observations” dating back to World War II that included 92 sightings, mostly by pilots and other flight crew members. Another section on “Army, Navy and Marine Corps” included 36 sightings.
— Richard H. Hall,
The UFO Evidence Volume II
As demonstrated in the book
UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry, the history of US Navy involvement in the UFO problem is elusive and incomplete with many serious gaps in the historical record. Most of the documentation of the Navy’s involvement can be traced through records from other agencies, with the main source being the USAF Project Blue Book records.
Over 50 years before World War II, the US Navy Hydrographic Office obtained extracts of merchant ship logs, internal reports concerning matters dealing with navigation, ocean phenomena and occasional unusual celestial phenomena. Of the latter these were either filed away or published in various notices and bulletins. A later publication entitled “Notice to Mariners” contained a number of such sightings of interest to UFO researchers.
Many of the documents concerning the “ghost rocket” phenomena from Naval Attaches and commands in Europe are available at the National Archives.
Captain Bernard Baruch, Jr., son of the financier and advisor to the government, was instrumental in formulating an important World War II reporting system used by both the British and Americans: Communication Instruction for Reporting Enemy Sightings (CIRES). Captain Baruch advocated and guided the effort to convert the system to peacetime uses in what became the Communication Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings (CIRVIS). In 1949, at Baruch’s urging, UFOs were included in the reporting scheme. Baruch continued his efforts to improve and upgrade the system until the 1960s.
For a short time the Navy had its own UFO project in the early 1950. Almost no records exist concerning the scope and content of the investigations.
Sometimes the Navy would release information about UFO sightings to the press. We know of a number of observations by Navy and Marine Corps personnel because of stories in the media. Most of these were from 1947-1970. After that, few stories appear in the media. Reports are now made by Naval personnel to UFO organizations. The service has always been historically reticent to make its UFO records public, but attempting to examine reports of the past few decades has been made difficult by an almost complete absence of accessible documentation.
The Coast Guard has been generally forthcoming in its involvement with UFO reports, which because of its size have not been as extensive in scope and number.
One area which the Navy controls completely concerns reports of objects on and under the water - USOs. Very little information about this aspect is ever reported in the press. The Navy’s anti-submarine patrols and huge underwater detection network seldom make the news with reports of USOs.
In the 1950s and 60s some within the Navy gave encouragement and facilitated, probably unofficially, the efforts of both Major Donald E. Keyhoe and Dr. James E. McDonald. Such support was not extensive, but was occasionally helpful as the Office of Naval Research (ONR) suggested a way for McDonald to get access to the UFO project files at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. After the closure of Project Blue Book, military UFO reports rapidly decreased although countries which continued UFO investigation projects saw no such decrease.
In the current climate of Popular Culture and Internet fringe theories, most new UFO reports come from UFO organizations or Social Media with all that entails.
Although serious discussions of UFOs always suffered from a skewed perception of both the UFO reporter and the investigator, we have still managed to conduct thorough, responsible and serious research. One such investigation was utilized by the late Peter Jennings for his 2005 ABC News program, "UFOs: Seeing Is Believing" report on the B-52 Minot AFB incident of 24 October, 1968:
Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs—Seeing Is Believing: 24 October 1968, Minot AFB Case - YouTube
The extensive collection of carefully researched material available on the Minot AFB incident is available here:
http://minotb52ufo.com/
As one military officer told me, “I am happy to see people coming forward with their stories and getting them on the record.”
Project 1947 compiled this list with three goals in mind:
1. To update the Navy and Marine Corps UFO sightings list in NICAP’s
The UFO Evidence, edited by Richard H.Hall in 1964. NICAP had access to only a few official reports in 1964 as the Project Blue Book files were not public.
2. To initiate the list called for in Task 7c in the of the CFI proposal
Sign Historical Group - Updated CFI Proposal - Jan L. Aldrich
The list includes a number of cases without any official documentation. The hope is for additional information on such cases to be forthcoming.
3. To extend the topic of Navy involvement discussed in the recent historical publication,
"UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry". A large number of the listed reports are from official sources or were acknowledged officially.
With this compilation we are trying to put a few such accounts on the record. This remains a work in progress. It is not complete by any means and we will continue to add material to the
combined US Navy, Marine and Coast Guard UFO and USO reports catalogue as more cases come to light.
— Jan Aldrich
Project 1947
Some Notes on Sources
Since
UFO Evidence was published in 1964, few collections of US Navy UFO reports have been compiled. Notable exceptions on the Internet are:
Water UFO: (Carl Feindt) which covers not just US Navy UFO reports but reports from foreign navies, merchant marine, fishermen, and other vessels on oceans and bodies of water:
Welcome to Water UFO Research Site
Blue Book UFO Report at Sea by Ships by Tony Rullan. This is a compilation of Navy and other reports from ships in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with discussions and analysis:
http://www.waterufo.net/bluebook/bbpdf.pdf
One other large source of Navy reports is contained within a Chronology of general UFO reports. See the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), The UFO Sighting Chronology:
The UFO Chronology
The current preliminary listing covers about 60% of the reports collected. They are from diverse sources: official documents, especially the US Air Force Project Blue Book files, media sources, various UFO books, and collections of reports from various UFO organizations:
Project Blue Book Archives
Official Project Blue Book and other government microfilms converted to PDF files:
Blue Book Archive
National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (
NICAP)
J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (
CUFOS)
Mutual UFO Network (
MUFON)
and other UFO organizations. Authors’ works cited include the following:
Bloecher, Ted
Bloecher,
Report on the UFO Wave of 1947
Chester, Keith
Chester,
Strange Company
Gross, Loren.
UFOs: A History (cited by year of the booklets) later titled
The Fifth Horsemen of the Apocalypse: UFOs: A History.
Greenwood, Barry and Larry Fawcett,
Clear Intent
Haines, Richard, PhD
Haines I
Advanced Aerial Devices Reported During the Korean War
Haines II
Project Delta
Hall, Richard
Hall I
Airships to Arnold
Hall II
UFO Evidence, Volume 1
Hall III
UFO Evidence, Volume 2
Hall IV
Alien Invasion or Human Fantasy? The 1966-67 UFO Wave
Hynek, J. Allen, PhD
Hynek I
The UFO Experience
Hynek II
The Hynek UFO Report
Keyhoe, Donald E. Major, USMC, Retired
Keyhoe I
The Flying Saucers Are Real
Keyhoe II
Flying Saucers from Outer Space
Keyhoe III
Flying Saucer Conspiracy
Keyhoe IV
Flying Saucers Top Secret
Keyhoe V
Aliens from Space
Ruppelt, Edward J.
Ruppelt,
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects
The other main source is the Internet reporting site National UFO Reporting Center (
NUFORC)
Large collections of newspaper clippings from Barry Greenwood, Loren Gross, the late Robert Gribble, Katherine Brisendine, and Project 1947 were used in this compilation. The authors of
UFOs and Government contributed materially to this compilation, especially Professor Michael Swords and Robert Powell.
Other collections consulted were The Keyhoe Archives, Dr. James E. McDonald’s papers, Dr. Willy Smith papers, George Fawcett’s papers at the Roswell Museum and several other sources.
Origin of Reports and the Quality of Sources
The biggest reservoir of official Navy reports is the Project Blue Book files. No complete listing of Navy reports within the Project Blue Book files has been made although Tony Rullan’s paper probably contains the most comprehensive for ships in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
World War II cases in the current list mostly come from personal accounts in various civilian publications and reports to UFO organizations. Few reports have official documents to back them up either as ship logs or official war diaries. However, four decades after Commander Hendershot's 1945 letter voicing concerns about unknown aerial intrusions over the Hanford Nuclear installation, we find official backing in 4th Air Force documents suggesting the Navy uses its Pasco Naval Air Station, Washington, to counter the unknown incursions.
The Navy reports of flying discs sightings during the 1947 UFO wave come mostly from the media. Some are from official documents in the Project Blue Book files. More report went to the press as opposed to those which went through intelligence channels.
After the Air Force established Project SIGN more reports started to go through channels to the Air Force, and sometimes were also reported in the press. Occasionally the accounts only appeared in the local press. A New Zealand woman wrote to Sgt. Harold Fulton who led a UFO organization in New Zealand, Civil Saucer Investigations, New Zealand, that her son-in-law, an officer in the US Navy stationed near San Diego had seen a UFO in 1952. Recently, the
San Diego Union newspaper became available online and Barry Greenwood was able to recover the news report.
Interestingly there was a report mentioned in the CSI-LA newsletter number 2 about an incident at the Naval Air Station at San Diego:
SHG: - CSI Bulletin #2: Winter, 1953
A very well confirmed report from an aerographer of San Diego, California, North Island Navy Station, reports that he saw numerous objects through a theodolite while tracking a weather balloon. The spectacle continued for such a long time that he informed his chief officer. Also the latter saw the objects passing by in large numbers. Other witnesses present were an aerological officer, a group of USAF and Navy pilots, the control tower operator and the commander of the field.
So it appears that rumors of this account were kicking around for years. Although in the CSI-LA newsletter the context implies it happened in 1952. A letter in the Project Blue Book files indicates the date was December 1950.
Beside official records and media reports there is a vast area of personal reports and rumors, some which have fantastical elements as one would expect occasionally from men that go down to the sea in ships. However, we have tried to maintain a serious demeanor here and eliminate the journalistic hoaxes and tall tales while keeping an open mind. Some of these reports have explanations, but are still listed here because they have historical significance.
This is a work in progress with many more accounts to be added in the future. As always, Project 1947 welcomes the addition of new accounts, clarifications, comments, criticisms at:
— Jan L. Aldrich
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