UFO Report

11-06-1973

Strange Object’s Maneuvers Near Nuclear Shipbuilding Disturb Navy

http://www.nicap.org/reports/731106_waterufo.net_item.php_id=461.pdf

By Robert B Klinn and David Branch

Exclusive To The Register

PASCAGOULA, Miss. --- As a first step apparently highly serious operation to determine the cause and nature of a submerged, metallic, beam-emitting, disappearing-reappearing, course-changing object seen maneuvering Tuesday evening, Nov. 6, in the Pascagoula River, the U.S. Navy Friday dispatched to the site of the mystery Lt. Cmdr. Craig Dorman of the Naval Coastal Systems Laboratory at Panama City, Florida. These columnists learned Monday that this Navy’s concern stems from the proximity of the observations to the Navy’s nuclear shipbuilding activitiesapproximately 200 yards away.

In a comprehensive report being written by Dorman and to be released next week, the Navy is expected to disclose that it has absolutely no idea what the object is (or was) in the Pascagoula River.

Dorman is part of the Navy’s Seal Team, an underwater demolition, combat-trained, airborne killer unit. His trip to Mississippi was especially for this mission. Early Friday morning at the Coast Guard base at Mobile, Ala., Dorman met with Coast Guard Lt. (j.g.) Michael Donohoe. They proceeded to Pascagoula, where together they debriefed the witnesses---seven civilians and two military personnel.

According to Donohoe, with whom we spoke Monday, “The Navy was basically caught off guard. The Navy believes the observed object is something totally new and differenttotally unknown. We were caught unaware and want to prevent it from happening again.” Donohoe said the Navy intends to be ready scientifically for another such sighting and is presently preparing capability in the Pascagoula River Area.

“The basic purpose is to document this story from start to finish,” said Donohoe, referring to Lt. Cmdr. Dorman’s mission. “Something in the water is causing that illumination. It remains an unidentified object, and we want to maintain a file as a reference for any future sighting,” The Navy, he said, is engaged in an objective and scientific approach toward bringing its full facilities to bear on the river area.

We note that such an approach represents a totally different attitude from that which has been displayed since 1949 by Air Force personnel in their UFO investigations.

The Navy’s complete report is expected to show where the Navy’s nuclear shipbuilding activitiesa function of Ingalls Shipbuilding, a subdivision of Litton Industriestakes place with relation to the location of the sightings.

Friday, United Press International, in a story based on an early Coast Guard press report, told of the first Tuesday-night (Nov. 6), river-object sightings by twin brothers Raymond and Rayme Ryan, who were fishing on the Pascagoula River. An illuminated object was following their boat, and repeated efforts to beat the object away with an oar made the light grow dimmer. The UPI story noted that Pascagoula Coast Guard officers in a 16-foot boat had subsequently located the object in four to six feet of water and moving at four to six knots, but that they were unable to retrieve it because it would seem to go out and move away and then reappear. The story quoted the Coast Guard press report description of the object as “an amber beam, four to six inches in diameter, attached to a bright metal object.”

Neither the Coast Guard press report nor the UPI story named the officers of the Coast Guard vessel who had witnessed and pursued the object. Neither the Coast Guard press report nor the UPI story was based on a direct interview with the Coast Guard witnesses. Monday, we tracked down and by telephone interviewed these witnessesPO Charles Crews and PO Alan Nations.

Officer Nations stated that at 9:20 p.m., he and Officer Crews were in the Coast Guard vessel and were approaching the Ryan brothers in their boat. “One fisherman was there beside the boat. From 50 yards I saw the light lighting up the boat. It was a dim light, moving in a straight line in a northwesterly direction at four to six knots. When we got directly over it, I could see that there was a light amber light source about four inches long which cast an oval-shaped beam straight ahead for four, five, or six feet. Beneath the four-inch light source and attached to it was a metallic rod a couple of feet long and about four inches wide.” Nations and Crews tried beating the object with boat oars and hooks, but it went out and reappeared 20 yards away. “The Ryan brothers chased it around in their boat and reached it again before we did. They beat it with their oars,” said Nations.

Crews also described observing the light coming up from the water and onto the Ryans’ boat as the Coast Guard vessel approached. “Three boats started chasing it,” Crews explained. “Each boat tried to get on top of it. Then it was under all three boats. I looked down and saw a metallic object three feet long, three or four inches wide, and shiny like stainless steel. It went 20 or 30 yards, then went out. Then it lit up again on the same course and we tried to hit it with oars. The light went out and then it relocated again.”

At 10 p.m. they lost it. At 8 p.m., Oct. 11, as you are probably aware, shipyard workers Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker were also fishing at the Pascagoula River, when three humanoid entities with pointed ears, wrinkled skin, and crab-like claws reportedly abducted them into an egg-shaped spaceship in which they were scanned by a huge glass eye and then released. Even before Hickson had passed a lie detector test, University of California engineering professor Dr. James Harder had concluded that the entities are cosmic anthropologists.

Is it possible that these Pascagoula entities are studying our Navy’s nuclear ships?

This reference: Newspaper article from “The REGISTER”, Pascagoula, Miss., Nov. 14, 1973,

P.1-2. From George Fawcett’s file on UFO’s at sea. With thanks to CUFOS.

ALSO

Far from the waters of the mythical Bermuda Triangle, where fact and fiction often mix to produce a spine-tingling air and sea tale, the waters near the city of Pascagoula, Mississippi, had their own "other world" mystery, which made national headlines twice within three weeks. On October 11, two on-shore fishermen (Hickson and Parker) were allegedly abducted by an interloper descending on them from the air, and on November 6, four offshore fishermen, later joined by the Coast Guard, encountered a strange submerged object. Concerned, the Navy made a thorough investigation.

Not depending on the press story for all the facts, I called Raymond Ryan, one of the fishermen who chose to do battle with the submerged craft, and the Coast Guard in Pascagoula, who were called to investigate and also got into the action. Chief Bob Pace, on duty at the Coast Guard office, was cooperative and permitted me to talk with the two crewmen who, like Ryan, challenged the evasive USO with an oar.

Raymond Ryan, a fisherman in the Pascagoula waters all his life, said he made his living netting mullet and trout. Ryan related that he and his brother, Rayme, each accompanied by a son, had gone out to the brackish waters every night in the past week, and, encouraged by their big catch on the night of November 5, looked forward to a bigger haul on the sixth.

Instead of mullet and trout, the Ryans found a submerged metallic monster. In dark, shallow waters, said Raymond, he and his son, Earl, were in one boat, and his brother, Rayme, and his son, Rayme, Jr., were in another, all preparing to net. Suddenly he heard his brother, Rayme, shouting from his boat beckoning him to "come quick." Near Rayme's boat they all witnessed an underwater bright light in less than ten feet of water.

Raymond and his son gained quickly on the submerged light in their fast boat, using a high-powered outboard motor. As they approached, the light dimmed. Curious, Raymond first poked his long oar into the water. No response. Then he heftily swung his oar from overhead into the water. To his dismay, the light went out.

For a while the Ryans played a cat-and-mouse game, the light dimming when they were close, blacking out when poked at, only to reappear in super-brilliance elsewhere in the shallow waters. In the next close encounter, Ryan had a good look at the submerged craft. "It was large," he said, "maybe more than nine feet in diameter, and it was round and metallic,"

Ryan said there was no question in his mind about the craft's metallic structure. "It looked like the rounded top of a parachute, with lines like ribs running from a dark hump in the center," he said, "and the lines went down as far as I could see to the outer rim."

Ryan added, "The whole object glowed a milkish white, and, when the light was on, it glowed above the water." When the Coast Guard boat came, he said the light headed for the channel, which goes into the gulf. "It's ninety feet deep there," said Ryan, "and whoever controlled it knew where the deep water was, to get away."

With so few close-encounter cases on record of man versus "USO," I was especially interested in questioning Ryan for his awareness of any electromagnetic or physiological effects occurring either during or after the incident. He assured me that he and others in the Ryan family suffered no ill effects, that the object made no audible sound, that his boat did not pitch or roll or vibrate, or have its engine stop or falter, and that he saw no wake or eddying on the water's surface during all the maneuvers.

Ryan, however, did have two disappointments: one, during the close encounter with the USO, he had the urge to strip off his clothes and jump into the water to get a good eyeball-to-eyeball look, but, upon seeing a young lady aboard a boat near shore, changed his mind, letting his modesty prevail; the other, when he resumed fishing after the object and the Coast Guard boat left the area, he found that the mullet and trout had also disappeared. "I caught no fish that night or the next," he said. "The thing scared all the fish away!"

When the Coast Guard's 16-foot Fiberglas runabout arrived on the scene with Boatswain's Mates Nations and Crews aboard, the "USO" was again pursued. During this stage of action, according to Ryan, the submerged object was in about ninety feet of channel water that led into the gulf. Luckily, I was able to reach BM3 Charles Crews, on duty at the Coast Guard headquarters following the incident, for a firsthand account of his experience.

Crews told me that on the night of November 6, he was asked by Boatswain's Mate 2/C Nations to check out a possible submerged UFO. He reported to the radio room, where he met Ryan and his son, who related their sighting of a strange underwater object.

At 9:45 P.M. Crews and Nations were aboard their sixteen-foot Fiberglas Coast Guard runabout on the way to the site where the submerged object was last seen.

About fifty yards away, Crews said, he could see another boat with a man gesturing, trying to attract his attention. As the runabout approached, he could see what appeared to be the man shining a large light into the water. However, as Crews and Nations got closer they were surprised to see that the light was coming up from the water. The light, he said, reflected off the front portion of the boat and the lower half of the man. The light was motionless at first, said Crews, but when two other fishing boats approached the area, it began to move in a straight course at about four to six knots.

Crews said that he tried to run up on the light from behind but could not because of the interference from the other boats. When he did manage to get closer, he got a good look. The light was about three feet by four feet and oval-shaped. As it passed under the fishing boats, he said he could see that the light was reflecting off a metallic object! Then all the boats followed the object, which Crews observed was still moving at the same speed and on the same course.

Said Crews: "We tried to make contact with it by using oars. One thing of interest here; when we put the oar into the beam of light, it appeared that the light penetrated the oars. The oar didn't cast any shadow. I could not block out any of the light. I would compare it with an X ray."

Crews then observed that the light traveled several yards farther and blinked out. The boats, he said, sat still for about two minutes; then suddenly the light reappeared about thirty yards away, still on the same course and traveling at the same rate of speed. They again gave chase in the runabout, but the light dimmed and went out. Crews said he and Nations returned to their station at 11:00 p.m. Crews confirmed Ryan's testimony about no fish being caught that night after the object was sighted.

Boatswain's Mate Crews sent me two drawings of the submerged object [NOTE: sketches were not included in the book-CF-]. Figure 1 shows the object as it appeared passing beneath the Coast Guard boat. Figure 2 shows a brief, 2-second sighting of the USO.1 Crews comments, "This observation occurred at the time we first came upon the light from behind. In the drawing of a fin-like protrusion, the light seemed to be coming from beneath the object. The edges of the object seemed to be blacked out by a shadow running completely around it. However, the rest of the object appeared to be reflecting the light. I reported this description to the Navy debriefing team who interviewed me."

Shortly after the encounter with the USO, fisherman Ryan disclosed that he was "told" instead of "asked" to appear before three Naval Intelligence officers who arrived at the Coast Guard headquarters from Panama City Naval Base. One was a high-ranking officer, he said; another was in plain clothes. Said Ryan, "I was being taped while the man in plain clothes took notes of everything I said."

The USO incident in Pascagoula waters remains unexplained. The two investigating Naval officers from Panama City offered no clues; nor the plain-clothes man, reportedly from "some" government agency. Certainly if these emissaries from Intelligence had some notion that the USO was a secret U.S. naval device they would not have made the trip to involve Ryan. Ryan's testimony would have been redundant. Also, it seems foolish to entertain the notion that a secret submarine device, manually or remotely controlled, would dare to enter shallow, heavily trafficked fishing waters, risking entrapment on sand bars or causing potential hazards to fishermen.

Not far from Ryan's underwater encounter and the nearby shoreline where Charles Hickman and Calvin Parker were abducted, the Navy was reportedly preparing to launch the U.S.S. Spruance, the first of a new fleet of multimission destroyers with highly sophisticated electronics. The Spruance was being built at the Ingalls Shipyard, and there are other shipbuilding facilities in the Pascagoula area, including a large nuclear facility operated by Litton Industries for the U. S. Navy. Perhaps USOs, like their aerial counterpart, the UFO, may have more than a casual interest in nuclear installations. As far back as 1952, a Project Bluebook report and map with indicator pins were released that showed that UFOs were seen preponderantly in the critical areas of nuclear development in the U.S.A.

Note1: Boatswain's Mate Charles Crews's drawings of unidentified submarine object in waters of Pascaguola, Mississippi.

UFOCAT PRN 102888 [DOS: 11-06-1973]

UFOCAT URN 102888 Newspaper Clipping, Arkansas Gazette, November 08, 1973

UFOCAT PRN 102891 [DOS: 11-07-1973]

UFOCAT URN 102891 Newspaper Clipping, November 08, 1973

UFOCAT PRN 110169 [DOS: 11-06-1973]

UFOCAT URN 075002 UFO Nachtrichten, January 1974

North America United States, Mississippi, Jackson

Pascagoula River Latitude 30-20-39 N, Longitude 88-34-03 W (D-M-S)

Reference: The National Gazetteer of the United States of America, Prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, Washington D.C., 1990

UFO Location (UFOCAT) Latitude 30.40 N, Longitude 88.59 W (D.%)

Latitude 30.38 N, Longitude 88.55 W [URN 110170, 75002 & 110169]

Latitude 30.33 N, Longitude 88.60 W [URN 116857]