(Navy RA5-C Vigilante aircraft from RVAH-7. Navy image.)

There was some spirited conversation on the Balcony late yesterday about the “New Object” shot down off the Prudeau Bay complex in Alaska. Some of us used to be in the aerial collection business, and there is interesting old technology flying around with new capabilities. It was strange to have this pop-up from Marlow. We have an assortment of aviation related types in the circle and the memories flooded strongly. Marlow says it the way it sounded:

“Got a tale from long ago about UFOs that bears telling now . . .

My Vigilante squadron, RVAH-7, was between deployments in the mid/late 70s. As our next WESTPAC deployment approached, our personnel shortfalls were slowly filled but never completely, while our broke-dick, corroded to hell, hangar-queen airframes and their inoperable sensors were replaced piece by crappy piece. Once we were out of Hell’s C4 readiness dungeon of worthless REMF crapitude, we started receiving mission tasking from our type wing commander’s staff.

One mission was for several straight nights of infrared surveillance at decreasing altitudes (this meant subsequent increasing resolution) based upon hot spots detected on the previous night’s imagery. Our target areas were north Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and western portions of South and North Carolinas (we were looking for stills). This strange tasking was solely oral and delivered only to me, a lowly air intel type, and not to my boss the squadron Ops Officer.

Only after we had completed our tasking was I told what to do with what we had shot:

Provide separate mapped mission traces from the films
Box it all up in unmarked container(s) with no written reports or any copies made for our squadron’s or the wing’s files
Personally mail it to an address in the northern Virginia area (likely a law enforcement go between). My expenses & compensation would be made via cash
Ask no questions

On the last night, on the 3rd crew’s return flight (had to spread these mission qual flights around for crew readiness report reasons), crew reported some odd visuals that they happened to film obliquely with the vertical-looking infrared and side-looking radar system.

Crew members normally had been reluctant to report this stuff in the past and sit for debriefings, but with operational sensor systems that could back them up, they were a bit more open, so I rushed the film over to NIPSTRAFAC KW film processing and then back for a quick over-the-light-table look-see and debriefing and report drafting. Main job #1 was quickly done.

How some ever . . .

At film’s’ end, as they claimed, there was something there as they entered the Gulf, it was moving about, and it was located above Florida’s western pandhadle. There was more than one item. The crew turned, loitered, made a couple of offset obliquely rocking passes and then headed home.

So, with the crew’s permission and my sworn secrecy internally in the squadron, I drafted an official Information Report and decided on a For Official Use Only restriction. I filed it with some added hand written addenda that captured my back-of-the-envelop calculated object velocities — above 300 knots — plus one other observation — their appearance seemed to blink on and off as they were captured by the sensors.

Sent it officially over the transom per published OPNAV instructions to DC and never heard squat back. Long forgot about it, until many years later upon learning about the USAF’s black channel stealth fighter program.

Connection made.

-Marlow

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