Originally posted by karl 12 ATS Thread ID 671774

There's some very interesting reading in the article below about the role of the Office of Naval Intelligence in the UFO subject - it also makes mention of Donald Menzel's association with the organization, speculates about UFO origin and states that the U.S. Government was aware of the 'marine aspect' of the phenomenon all along.

Air Intelligence Division Study No. 203 with the help of the Office of Naval Intelligence presents the first important clue that the Pentagon was well aware of the phenomenon's marine nature. This document is one of the rarest documents in the national archives linking the Office of Naval Intelligence to any association with the investigation of the phenomenon and offers an early clue that the study of the UFO phenomenon did not fall totally within the realm of the Air Force. Could the naval UFO experience be more involved than the air force..?

Recent reports by UFO researchers suggest there is an on going Navy effort to destroy any evidence linking the navy to the UFO phenomenon. The reports of UFO sightings being edited out of ship's logs, by UFO researchers, confirms a considerable naval sensitivity to the phenomenon. Researchers have also reported the naval archives in Seacaus, New Jersey appear to have been purposely sabotaged. Documents are missing and files have purposely been mixed chronologically thwarting researchers attempts to do meaningful research at this facility relating to the UFO phenomenon.

Article Source

Brand New Log Books / Do not Discuss:

Feb 1963 Royal Navy North Atlantic Fleet:

After Tom witnessed the senior officer enter the UFO observations in the radar log book, their shift ended. Radar room personnel on the early morning watch ate breakfast and then turned in. Probably sometime between 1200 and 1300, Tom said he was awakened and ordered to report to the ward room, along with the five radar and sonar operators on his shift that morning.

The senior officer proceeded to go over the events of that morning, asking questions about the radar-sonar observations. He told the six men that their conversations were being taped and explained that until more was known about the unknown target, they were to remain silent about what they had seen. "Gentlemen," the officer said, "we will remember that we have all signed the Official Secrets Act (or words to that effect)." Although there were no threats, the implication was clear that to divulge anything to anyone concerning the tracking of the UFO would be considered a breach of security.

I asked Tom if the meeting might have been part of a general order carried out on other ships in the fleet as well in connection with the UFO incident. He responded that he didn't know if it was or not. 

The witness recollected that he was in the ward room about 10 minutes. He said he never heard anything further about the unknown target.

When Preston came on duty once again at 2400 hours, he said he was surprised to discover that a "spanking new book" had replaced the radar log used the previous morning

USS Reeves:

All of a sudden I lost Sonar Contact like it was never there, but CIC still had it at last bearing with an abrupt positive altitude change. The chatter was look at the size of that thing. I went outside through the sonar door on the Port Side and visually saw a large moonlike shape that flew upward over the ship at a 60 degree angle and disappeared into the sky in seconds. I heard no noise from the object when it went over us. I saw a full moon that night on the other side of the ship, but it remained fairly constant give or take a few ship rolls.

When we pulled into port a few weeks later, all records in the Bridge, CIC, and Sonar logs about that time were torn out. Whoever tore them out made one error, the pen imprint on the next page was still there. No one spoke of the incident again

USS Reclaimer:

The F-14 went to full afterburner right off the deck, pulling a rooster-tail7 behind it. It rattled the ship severely as it went by. This USO thing pulled easily ahead of the jet, crossed the horizon in seconds while underwater... no visible wake. It just... I mean this thing was FAST. Well, we just stood there. Wow, you know... what do ya say. We speculated about what it was. Guam told us it was a classified matter not to be reported or discussed.

Carrier USS Kearsarge:

The cameraman was able to get some photos, not sure how many, before they all took off almost straight up and out of sight.

The cameraman turned the film into to his superior officer and was told to not ever mention it. My dad said he and his friend were asked about the incident by their NCO and also told not to ever talk about it.

Sonar operator Account -British Destroyer Warship:

One of Sanderson's sources stated that no less than 13 craft recorded in their logs that their sonars had tracked this object. Allegedly, the unknown target continued to be tracked for four days as it maneuvered down to depths of 27,000 feet! (This must have been in the vicinity of the Atlantic's deepest point -- 28,374 feet below sea level -- in the Puerto Rico Trench.)

If the above story is true, nothing of known earthly origin can travel underwater at such speeds or maneuver at such depths. The fastest nuclear subs can attain 45 knots (52 miles per hour) and dive to around 3,000 feet. The bathyscaphe Trieste, with a specially constructed pressure-resistant hull, descended to a record 35,820 feet in 1960. However, it was incapable of maneuvering about.

It is unfortunate that more than 21 years elapsed before the Preston case reached the attention of a UFO investigator. We have here yet another example of government UFO secrecy at work--this time a foreign nation, Great Britain. Largely due to his apprehension over potential repercussions if he revealed his experience, Tom felt compelled to keep his knowledge of the event to himself. Since it hadn't occurred to him at the time that the radar log notes would be removed, he had only his memory to rely upon during our interviews.

USS John F. Kennedy:

So we exited the Communications Center and went to the catwalk on the port side of the ship on the edge of the flight deck and we observed a large glowing sphere over the ship. It was hard to decide what size this thing was because there was no perspective. It was late in the evening. The sun had gone down, it was twilight, but it looked huge.

After that, I talked to a few shipmate friends that I had on the ship. One in particular worked in the radar department and he was on watch during the incident. He told me that all the radar screens were glowing- and then nothing. They couldn't detect anything on radar. We stayed up most of the night talking about it.

We heard that the compasses were not working on the bridge and that the radar navigational system had gone offline.

A few days later the Commanding Officer and the Executive Officer came on the closed circuit television system that we had on board. It was the only way that they could address the crew of 5,000. He [the Commanding Officer] looked at the camera - and I will never forget this - and he said, "I would like to remind the crew that certain events that take place on board a major naval combative vessel are considered classified and should not be discussed with anyone without a need to know." And that was all he said.

USS Edenton:

During one of my scans of the night sky, out of know where, four red circular lights appeared. The lights where hundreds of yards apart from each other and formed a square.

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.

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.

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.

Submarine repair ship 'The Volga' ,October 7, 1977:

"Were such reports made public?"

Azhazha shook his head no. "At the time, naturally, they were classified top secret. Now we have a more open attitude in this country. We are able to talk about such things. On a few rare occasions I did publish some UFO information, but I paid for it under Leonid Brezhnev.The official reaction was very harsh, very negative. My career suffered as a result, and the directorship of a scientific group was taken away from me."

Captain of Navy R5D aircraft, February 8, 1951:

Crew members and passengers witnessed UFO emerging from the Atlantic ocean:

When we landed at Argentia (Newfoundland), we were met by intelligence officers. The types of questions they asked us were like Henry Ford asking about the Model T.

You got the feeling that they were putting words in your mouth. It was obvious that there had been many sightings in the same area, and most of the observers did not let the cat out of the bag openly. When we arrived in the United States, we had to make a full report to Navy Intelligence.

I found out a few months later that Gander radar did track the object in excess of 1800 mph".

USS Waldron,1968-Near Puerto Rico:

They were tracking two bright lights, that didn't answer up to IFF, they weren't enemy, friend, foe or commercial aircraft. And were flying at speeds in excess of 400 knots and making turns at right angles. Nothing we knew of could do this but they did.

We were on an operation called Racer Run near Puerto Rico. Ship officials supposedly logged a report to Washington but we never heard anymore about it.

I've told several people about this and many acted as if I had 3 heads, but I have witnesses and evidence: there were about 20 in the 2 bridge watch sections, the combat watch sections (CIC), the ships log and the report sent to Washington.

• The Office of Naval Intelligence and UFOs - ATS Thread
• The Missing UFO Evidence Thread - ATS Thread (Support documentation)
• USO Research - ATS Thread - Skyfloating
• Water related UFO/USO phenomenon: Suboceanic Intelligence? - ATS Thread - Redwoodjedi
• Forgotten UFO Researcher Ivan T. Sanderson - ATS Thread - Karl 12
• Operation Mainbrace ~ UFOs and USOs - ATS Thread - Karl 12 - 20-11-2009
• UFO Government Documentary Evidence ~ John Greenewald Junior - 24-10-2009
• Why Did The Air Force Promote The Extraterrestrial UFO Viewpoint? - July 4, 2004 - [Html][Archived]
• UFOs & The Enigma of the United States Navy - The Big Study Blog - [Html][Archived]

Originally posted by karl 12 ATS Post ID 10744314

Some reading about 'Naval Intelligence' taken from Timothy Good's book 'Need to Know: UFOs, the Military and Intelligence':

Originally posted by karl 12 ATS Post ID 10745420

Hey Arken, thanks for the post - considering the sheer number of Naval reports in the USO thread, it looks like official Naval UFO/USO documents are a bit thin on the ground - the only one I could find was this one from the archives of the Naval Security Group Command (COMNAVSECGRU) which describes a strange object emitting a bluish green beam of light:

COMNAVSECGRU
APRIL 30, 1979

AT 220032 AUG 15 OBSVD BRIGHT WHITE LIGHT APPEARING AT BEARING 02E (TRUE NORTH), ELEVATION APPROX 15 DEGREES POSIT 6F MULLER 23 17 82 19[?]. DURING THE FIRST MIN OF OBSERVATION THE LIGHT WAS PULSATING OR FLUCTUATING IN BRIGHTNESS AT APPROX ONE SECOND INTERVALS. FOR THE NEXT TWO MINS OF OBSERVATION THE LIGHT BEGAN PULSATING CONCENTRIC RINGS OF LIGHT WHICH FLOWED FROM THE CENTRAL (S) SOURCE IN A RIPPLING, SHIMMERING FASHION DIMINISHING IN BRIGHTNESS AS THEY DREW FURTHER AND FURTHER AWAY FROM THE ORIGINATING SOURCE.

DURING THE FOURTH MINS OF OBSERVATION A BLUISH GREEN BEAM OF LIGHT APPEARED FROM THE CENTRAL CORE OF THE CONFIGURATION, EXTENDING OUTWARD AND DOWNWARD TO THE LEFT AT AN ANGLE OF APPROX 45 DEGREES, AND REACHING TO THE FADE OUT POINT OF THE RADIATING RINGS OF LIGHT. APPROX FIVE MINUTES AFTER THE APPEARANCE OF THE BLUISH-GREEN BEAM (SIMILAR IN APPEARANCE TO A SEARCHLIGHT BEAM), THE RADIATIVE CIRCLES OF LIGHT DISAPPEARED, LEAVING ONLY THE CORE OF LIGHT AND THE COLORED BEAM. FOLLOWING THE DISAPEARANCE OF THE CIRCLES, THE BEAM SEEMED TO RETRACT TOWARDS THE CENTRAL CORE, GROWING BROADER AND STOUTER AS IT RETRACTED.

FINALLY, THE BEAM AND CORE SEEMED TO FORM INTO A NEBULOUS CLOUD-SHAPED MASS, WHICH DRIFTED SOUTH ON THE WIND, FADING FROM VIEW AFTER APPROX 14 MINS. DURING THE EVENT, THE FOLLOWING ATMOSPHERIC DATA WAS ACCUMULATED: BAROMETER 29.95, TEMPERATURE - 83 DEGREES DRY 178 DEGREES WET. VISIBILITY EXCELLENT, FOUR TENTHS CLOUD COVER (STRATUS AND CUMULUS) WIND E X N.S. AT 12 KTS, ELECTRICAL STORM FORMING OVER IMMEDIATE AREA OF CITY OF HAVA

UFOs & The Enigma of the United States Navy
Saturday, April 24, 2010
The Big Study

We know a great deal about the USAF's involvement in UFOs. We know a fair amount about the CIA's and the FBI's. There is not much indication that the Army had a lot to do with them, but there are many hints that the Navy had interests. But it is the Navy which stands as the one service or agency which we know had interest and yet remains almost completely silent [i.e. uncooperative to FOIAs] as to their history. That gap in our knowledge won't be filled by this post, but a small bit of information is available, so here goes;

The fellows pictured here are General Walter B. Smith [left] and Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter [right]. It is a picture to symbolize the handing off of the leadership of the CIA from the Admiral to the General. Hillenkoetter had been chief during an interesting time, vis-a-vis UFOs. There was Roswell, of course, but there was also SIGN and the Estimate of the Situation. That Estimate, as we have seen earlier in this blog, created a situation wherein all USAF UFO reports were sent in duplicate to the Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence, where a file was kept. Also, as we have seen earlier, the Office of Naval Research [in the person of Urner Liddel] used the files for an idiosyncratic study of UFOs and Balloon sightings and if one ONR person was reading the files doubtless others were. How active the Navy's Intel operations were about keeping tabs on the subject, we don't know; and perhaps never will unless they make some effort to be more cooperative about searching their records and releasing them.

Another thing that we absolutely know about the Navy, though, is that many highly placed officers were interested in the phenomenon. Roscoe Hillenkoetter himself joined NICAP and was willing to speak very publicly [and to congress] about the goodness of what NICAP was doing and that UFOs seemed to be a real but non-terrestrial mystery. He was far from alone.

Admiral Delmar Fahrney, the former chief of guided missiles research for the Navy, became NICAP's chairman of the board, following the abortive few months of the T.Townsend Brown era. Fahrney was very outspoken about the same two things which would be the NICAP mantra over the years: The UFOs were extraterrestrial, and the policy of secrecy was a big mistake. Office of Naval Research chief Admiral Calvin Bolster apparently believed the same, although Keyhoe and Fahrney were never able to get him to come out publicly with a statement. Several other Navy officers were NICAP members and Keyhoe occasionally got "leaks" from Navy people who obviously disliked USAF policy. A great deal of conversation had to be going on within that service [whether formally or not] which was sympathetic to research on the phenomenon and impatient with their rival service. One of these "conversations" which resulted in a massive "leak" was reported by Keyhoe in his 1960 book, as written about in the blog the other day.

In FLYING SAUCERS: Top Secret, Keyhoe described a meeting with two Naval officers which had been arranged "by an old classmate [from the Naval Academy] of mine". I'll speculate a little and guess that this was Bolster as Keyhoe mentions Fahrney in the text in a way that seems to eliminate him. Whoever it was he was a big wheel.

The meeting was in 1958, just after Dick Hall arrived at NICAP, and Keyhoe discussed the content of it with Dick. Using aliases, he described a meeting with a Captain [a Navy-style "Captain"] and a Commander in their office and quite "private". The officers danced about to begin with asking Keyhoe all manner of probing questions--as it turned out they were trying to get him to betray confidential sources of information to see if he could be trusted not to breach such confidentialities. Keyhoe passed the test, though not until wondering for a moment if these guys were setting him up for something. [because of his good friend who had arranged this, he didn't think that it could possibly be such a set-up and was patient].

Ultimately the officers were convinced and began telling him of "hidden" cases from naval personnel. Keyhoe was told that they had been keeping a "log" of these things. They were keeping it [on naval sightings only] "with the Admiral's consent". So who was the "Admiral"? Normally that would mean THE Admiral, Chief of Naval Operations, Arleigh A. Burke. Could that even be possible? Could the Chief of Staff of the Navy be interested in someone keeping track of UFOs? As we can read shortly, this is far from impossible, as something very similar had happened just before. But WHY were they keeping track? "Just so we'll know how many important Navy sightings go into the 'sink' ". They sarcastically said that this was their nick-name for Project Blue Book. Everything goes in, and nothing [as to information] comes out. The officers were irritated by the policy which kept information on sightings even from the relevant service, and actual lies occasionally told back to them. The officers then pulled several NICAP bulletins out of a drawer and told Keyhoe that they agreed with the stance that he was taking on all this. Keyhoe was not shown the full log at that time but was told of cases. That log probably still exists somewhere in Navy records and they will not do what is necessary to find and release it to us.

And we know absolutely that another one existed and that it was ordered at the highest levels. This was the study ordered by Secretary of the Navy Dan Kimball, and soon-to-be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Of Staff, Admiral Arthur Radford, that was precipitated by the close passage of their planes by a UFO in mid-Pacific, and the subsequent blunt uncooperative treatment of the Secretary's aides when they later inquired about the incident from the Air Force. Kimball ordered, through Radford, that a separate Navy file be maintained, particularly of Navy cases, since the Air Force could not be trusted to act in a responsible and civil manner as to openly sharing information as to what was going on [This fiasco happened just before Ruppelt got on the scene and began to recreate the Project in a more orderly and sensible mode. Naval distrust caused him some early problems of information transfer which he had to try to repair, and one spectacular Balloon-Research-Team case was garbled enough that his report on it was a full year off in date---something that didn't get corrected for a few months].

The Kimball/Radford study was headed by a commander, Frank Lowell Thomas, out of the Office of Naval Intelligence [I think that this is correct, but it could have been ONR instead---these two offices work pretty closely together]. Commander Thomas' study/file went on for an unknown amount of time; it could have been a year, it could have been several. Radford didn't retire from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs until 1957---pretty close to when Keyhoe's informants were keeping their file "with the approval of the Admiral". We don't know if there was any relationship whatever between these two files, or even if they in some ongoing form were the same thing. Whatever the exact situation, one can never say with any honesty that the Navy had no interest in UFOs. And, those early files contained some of the best cases of the era, and would be historically important.

What did Keyhoe's "leakers" tell him? Somewhere there's probably an old unexamined NICAP file which would tell us this, but I haven't seen it. In the book, Keyhoe, the honorable man, makes things tough to suss as well. He gives a very abbreviated example of a Naval Transport plane encountering a red-orange glowing UFO coming directly at it, which the pilot dived beneath it to escape the collision. [with no more than is here, one cannot honestly rate this as more than a fireball encounter which fooled the pilot into believing that it was closer than it was]. Later in the book Keyhoe has a chapter entitled "The Hidden Reports". But, although several of these are Navy, each is described in a way that it cannot be one of these "log" cases that the leakers gave to him. This is frustrating to say the least, as I would really like to know the kinds of things these guys were saving in their files.

The only thing discussed that Keyhoe is willing to talk about [since it breaks no confidences] is the Piri Reis map. This is, to me, quite bizarre. You can hopefully read about it in the two NICAP UFO Investigator articles which accompany this section. The newsletter articles don't mention the role of the leakers in presenting this information to Keyhoe, but Naval references are still scattered about even here. The real point is that these guys who were charged with keeping a UFO log for the Navy thought that it was a strong possibility that someone thousands of years ago had been mapping the planet using aerial technology. And Keyhoe was apparently buying it: both in the book, and as indicated by his willingness to put the subject in the newsletter twice. Just so as not to be misunderstood, I believe that the Piri Reis map is a genuine artifact of the time frame of Christopher Columbus and an interesting mystery in many ways. I do not think that it is at all obvious that it must be drawn by using aerial technology--and in fact know that really wonderful maps can be [admittedly laboriously] put together by the grunt work of just-us-humans sailing and walking about making measurements and stringing them together [see the accuracy of the near-Greece Mediterranean area from Ptolemaic times, if you doubt this]. The fact that the Piri Reis map seems to be but a portion of a much larger thing, very possibly using an origin point around Alexandria Egypt, is also interesting, but hardly indicative of "ancient astronauts" or Atlantaens. The great debatable mystery as to whether the map shows Antarctica is the big thing, but even that doesn't lead you to ET. Still, we have Naval intelligence people concerned with UFOs [and Don Keyhoe] who are going there. This is more than intriguing to me, but I can't get much more clear about the Navy and Keyhoe in my mind without more to go on. How "sold" were people like this on a centuries-old surveillance, and in some sense, "presence" on Earth by extraterrestrials?

Ed Ruppelt once said "Why don't the #%@&!!! things swim so we could give them to the Navy?" Maybe the Navy would have been happy to "have" them. There sure seem to have been people there who took them a lot more seriously.

Posted by The Professor at 6:02 AM

SOURCE: The Big Study