UFO/USO Reports from Santa Catalina Channel.

This is a repost of quite an old thread so a great many of the links ae now defunct - will post the remaining ones at the end.

Looks like there's been an unusually high (and constant) number of UFO/USO sightings from the area around the Santa Catalina Channel off the California Coastline - below are some of the reports including a bizarre incident in 1992 where residents flooded the police with reports of multiple objects emerging from the ocean - there's also an excellent article by MUFON's Preston Dennet who goes into more detail about UFO/USO reports in the area.






• Dates:

"The first California underwater UFO was on July 7, 1947 when two San Raphael teen-agers saw a "flat glistening object" emerge from the water, fly around and then dive back into the water 400 yards from shore. Throughout this same year, numerous steamers reported a mysterious 'undersea mountain' or a 'large mass underwater' which kept appearing and disappearing in various locations in the San Francisco Bay and down the coast.
Following this, the sightings came regularly, in 1951, 1954, 1955, 1957, 1962, 1964, 1970, 1980, 1990, 1991, 1993, 2004 the list goes on, most from the Santa Catalina channel. The sightings involve many highly credible witnesses including lifeguards, security guards, law enforcement officials, military officers and countless citizens

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• Incident:

Topanga Canyon - see 3:10

The Santa Catalina Channel separates mainland California from the island of Catalina, this particular stretch of water is as deep as Mount Everest is high and UFO's/USO's have been seen both entering the water and emerging from its murky depths.
But on June 14th 1992 , there were reportedly hundreds of USO's observed rising from the water.
Independent witnesses claim that there were in excess of two hundred USO's that emerged from the water, hovering momentarily before accelerating off into the sky at blistering speeds, all the while in complete silence.
There were many witnesses, many of whom filed reports with their respective local police forces, some of which were as far away as Malibu.
These reports quickly filtered through to the US coast guard who subsequently refused all requests to search the area of the sightings.[/size]

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• Recording of witness phone call to police:

"I'm ashamed to tell you cause you're gonna' think I?m crazy -I have never been more frightened in my life"

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• Main Article / Quotes:

Article: Fate Magazine, February 2006

..Most of these reports came from a certain stretch of California coastline, from about Santa Barbara south to Long Beach. This particular body of water, I soon learned, had a widespread reputation as a UFO hotspot. After several witnesses told me they believed there was an underwater UFO base there, I decided to conduct a more in-depth investigation to determine the truth.
My first step was to survey the research of other prominent investigators. To my surprise, most of the local researchers were already aware of the sightings.

Writes Ann Druffel,


“This body of water lies between the coastlines of Southern California and Santa Catalina Island, 20 miles offshore to the southwest. The area has for at least thirty years been the scene of UFO reports of all kinds: surface sightings of hazy craft which cruise leisurely in full view of military installations, aerial spheres bobbing in oscillating flight, gigantic cloud-cigars, and at least one report of an underwater UFO with uniformed occupants.”


Another researcher, Robert Stanley, editor of the now defunct magazine Unicus, writes,


“Even in the sixties, families were going down to the beach and waiting for a UFO to pass by…. By the 1970s, whole families were going down to the beach at Point Dume at night to watch the multi-colored UFOs [that] would sink under the water at times.”


MUFON field investigator Bill Hamilton writes,


“For years witnesses have seen many types of UFO cruising off the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Southern California. UFOs have actually been seen to come out of the water in the San Pedro Channel.”


I had already uncovered several firsthand cases myself. My next step was to put together a comprehensive list of all the recorded ocean-going encounters in the area.
I came up with more than 50 sightings..

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• Coastal Sightings list:

1953:

Engineer Frederick Hehr and several others are on Santa Monica beach when they observe a “squadron of saucers” performing maneuvers in the daylight sky over the bay. Later that day, the objects return and perform more maneuvers for a period of about ten minutes.



July 10, 1955:

Around 11:00 a.m., several fishermen off the coast of Newport Beach observe a bluish-silver, cigar-shaped object flying overhead at a “moderate speed and medium altitude.” Two and a half hours later, a Washington family of three are sailing 13 miles off the coast of Newport Beach on their way to Catalina Island when they observe a “perfectly round, gray-white” craft about 2,500 feet above their boat. When the object maintains its position over their boat, they radio the Coast Guard, which sends out a plane. The object darts away before the plane arrives.



• November 6, 1957:

Early morning in Playa Del Rey, three cars driving along the Pacific Coast Highway suddenly stall when a large “egg-shaped object” surrounded in a “blue haze” lands on the beach only a few yards away.
Witnesses Richard Kehoe, Ronald Burke, and Joe Thomas exit their cars and observe two strange-looking men disembarking from the object. The UFO occupants have “yellowish-green skin” and wear “black leather pants, white belts and light colored jerseys.” They walk up to the witnesses and begin asking questions. Kehoe and the others are unable to understand the occupants, who are apparently speaking a foreign language. After a few moments, the figures return to the object, which takes off and accelerates out of sight.
That same day at 3:50 p.m., an officer and 12 airmen from an Air Force detachment in nearby Long Beach observe six saucer-shaped objects zooming across the sky. Two hours later, officers at Los Alamitos Naval Air Station report seeing “numerous” objects criss-crossing the sky. At the same time, police stations in Long Beach receive more than 100 calls from residents reporting UFOs.



December 1957:

The crew of the British steamship Ramsey observes a large metallic gray disk with antenna-like projections off the coast of San Pedro. One of the crewmen grabs his camera and captures a blurry photo of the object before it moves away.



1960:

Actor Chad Everett and two friends are on the rooftop of his Beverly Hills home one night when they observe a lighted object moving back and forth at high speeds over the nearby ocean. Because the object moves so quickly and at right angles, the witnesses are convinced it is a genuine UFO.



1970:

As investigated by Bill Hamilton, an anonymous gentleman sailing from Catalina Island to San Pedro Harbor observes a metallic saucer with four “hemispherical pods” underneath it flying only a few hundred feet above his boat.



May 1973:

Art director George Gray (pseudonym) observes an object sending down a beam of light while driving along the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica in the pre-dawn hours:
“The UFO was over where the beach was…hovering I would say maybe a hundred, two hundred feet in the air. It was silver. It was your basic UFO…it was definitely completely metallic with a silver dome on top and a silver dome on the bottom of it, like two plates put together. And it had little lights around it.”
Gray is able to bring in additional witnesses before the object moves away.



Summer 1988:

Professional photographer Kim Carlsberg observes a darting, star-like object while relaxing in her Malibu beachfront home. Suddenly, the object moves directly toward her.
"The brilliant point of light advanced until it became a luminous sphere some fifty feet in diameter,” reports Carlsberg. “It ominously hung in the air a hundred feet from my window… the apparent standoff lasted no more than a minute before the sphere departed as quickly as it appeared. It tore away diagonally through the night sky and vanished.”



Summer 1990:

Private pilot Toshi Inouye and his student observe a large, red, glowing cigar-shaped object hovering near their plane as they fly over the Santa Monica Bay in late afternoon.
“It was standing still in the air, glowing red,” says Inouye. “We were kind of stunned. We didn’t know what to do.”
Inouye considers calling the nearby airport control tower when the object suddenly darts away.



May 4, 1990:

Early in the morning, two Malibu surfers are lying on their surfboards waiting for the next wave when they observe a,
“brushed aluminum saucer with a bump in the middle [which] approached the shoreline from out of the fog bank sitting about a mile offshore.”
The object darts back and forth then moves back out to sea.



1998:

Adam (pool-cleaner) and Mario (military private) are driving along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu when they see six black, diamond-shaped objects darting at high speed up and down the coast. The two men are so impressed by the brief sighting that they spend the next hour driving up and down the coast hoping for a repeat appearance. While they don’t see any more UFOs, they do find other UFO watchers.
Says Adam,
“We did come across a couple of people who were just sitting in their lawn chairs along the road. I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but they were just sitting there along the side of the road, just looking up.”



January 3, 2004:

Young Chyren is standing along the Santa Monica coast at midday when he observes a metallic, saucer-shaped craft hovering only a few thousand feet directly above a small yacht less than a mile out at sea. He quickly grabs his camera and snaps a photograph.

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• Into the Ocean:

November 21, 1951:

As reported by researcher Harold Wilkins, several witnesses observe “an unidentified burning object” descending into the ocean somewhere off the coast of California.




August 8, 1954:

The Japanese steamship Aliki is off the coast of Long Beach when several members of the crew observe an underwater UFO.
As the intercepted radio message from the ship reads,
“Saw fireball move in and out of sea without being doused. Left wake of white smoke; course erratic; vanished from sight.”




1955:

Residents from the northern California coastal town of Santa Maria observe a “long silvery object” emerging from the ocean and taking off into space.




January 15, 1956 (Evening):

Residents of Redondo Beach report seeing a large, glowing object glide down out of the sky and float on the surface of the ocean about 75 yards off shore.
Dozens of witnesses converge on the scene, including a local night watchman, Redondo Beach lifeguards, and police officers from adjacent Hermosa Beach. As the crowd gathers, the water around the object starts to “froth” and the UFO sinks beneath the surface. The glow of the object, however, remains so intense that it can still be seen.
Police officers radio for assistance and divers are brought in to investigate. Unfortunately, by the time the divers arrive, the object is gone. Another police officer tests the area with a Geiger counter, which fails to register any radiation. Another search the next day also yields no results.




February 9, 1956:

Military personnel observe a fireball descending into the ocean off the coast of Redondo Beach. One year later, UFO researcher Leonard Stringfield obtains an official report on the incident, which says only:
“Fireball hits water. Submerges.”




July 28, 1962:

The captain of a chartered fishing boat notices lights floating in a stationary position in the water about six miles south of Catalina Island.
Upon closer observation, the captain is startled to see what he assumes at first is a Russian sub:
“It appeared to be the stern of a submarine,” he says. “We could see five men, two in white garb, two in dark trousers and white shirts, and one in a sky-blue jump suit. We passed abeam at about a quarter mile and I was certain it was a submarine low in the water, steel gray, no markings, decks almost awash, with only its tail and an odd aft-structure showing.”
Suddenly the submarine heads straight for the fishing boat as if to ram it. The captain makes an emergency turn as the sub moves past them at high speed, emitting no noise and leaving no wake except for a “good-sized swell.” The captain contacts the navy, which is unable to positively identify the sub.
UFO researchers Coral and Jim Lorenzen hear about the case and speculate that it may have been a UFO and not a submarine:
“The high speed, lack of wake and sound, and the huge swell make this object suspect.”
One might also mention the odd shape of the submarine itself, its lack of fear of observation, and its aggressive maneuvering.




February 5, 1964:

Eleven passengers are rescued by the Coast Guard from their emergency raft following the unexplained sinking of their yacht, the Hattie D. The crew was sailing south down the coast of California from Seattle, Washington, when their yacht either struck or was rammed by an unidentified “metal object.”
Crewman Carl Jansen says,
“I don’t care how deep it was…what holed us was steel, and a long piece. There was no give at all.”




December 2, 1965:

Mrs. Irwin Cohen and her son observe a glowing red object descending into the sea off San Pedro, setting off a large cloud of steam. As the object descends, the witnesses snap a few photos. They wonder if they witnessed a Navy missile or some other unknown object.




October 1968:

George Hiner is fishing in his boat off the eastern end of Catalina Island when he spots a “white-domed shaped object” (sic) through his binoculars. As he watches, the object rises ten feet above the surface of the water, then descends and rises again. He notices a strange parachute-like device beneath the object, which gently descends and then sinks beneath the waves.




June 1980:

Therapist Linda Susan Young and a friend are driving along the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica at night when Young observes an unusually bright light floating in place several miles out to sea.
Young was puzzled by its appearance and turned to tell her friend:
“I said to the guy with me, ‘What do you suppose this is?’ And he turned around and looked at it. And he only saw it for a second when it just shot straight up in the air and blinked out. It didn’t look like it went far enough to disappear from view, like a distance. It just sort of stopped. It just stopped being there…I have always assumed it was a UFO.”




1980s:

An anonymous gentleman (a senior electronics engineer) sailing on a foggy day between Santa Barbara Island and Santa Cruz Island observes a “fluorescent green colored light” ahead of him in the mist. Thinking it was another ship using bright lights to navigate the fog, he stops and waits for it to pass. As it approaches, however, he is still unable to distinguish any detail.
When it is a quarter mile away and heading directly toward him, the witness discovers why:
“I finally realized that this dumb thing was underwater…I’m guessing it was—I don’t know—maybe 300 feet in diameter, but I couldn’t get any vertical dimension on it because it was under me in the water. It literally passed directly underneath me.”
The witness is sailing a fully equipped, 38-foot sailboat. As the object passes beneath him, he takes several readings from the depth sounder, determining that the object is about 100 feet deep. At this point, both depth sounders quit functioning. The witness checks his compasses.
“All three of them were slowly rotating and I wasn’t… I tried calling the Coast Guard and the radio was dead.”
The object moves away and disappears, leaving the witness badly frightened. A later check on his equipment reveals that all the compass mountings were broken. Says the witness of the incident,
“It was weird. I was just too damned petrified to move.”

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• Underwater Lights:

1990:

According to investigator Bill Hamilton, starting in late 1989 numerous witnesses in Marina Del Rey begin to have repeated encounters with “strange blue-green lights in the water.”
As Hamilton writes,
“In 1989 and again in 1990, witnesses have seen as many as twenty events an hour. One large light appeared to be as much as 100 feet in diameter. This large light spawned babies no larger than 10 to 12 feet in length. These lights were seen to move swiftly under the ocean’s surface some 500 to 1000 feet from the coastline in Abalone Cove…one of the lights was reported to have emerged from the water.”




Spring 1991:

In the early morning hours, Tony X. looks out the window of his Malibu beachfront home and observes a brilliantly lit object floating on the ocean’s surface about two miles away.
“It looked like a big prism,” says Tony, “kind of various colors out there. I got a telescope out there and looked at it.”
After a few hours, the light winks out.
Two years later, in January 1993, the object returns.
“I got the telescope out and looked at it, and it was the same kind of thing…the colors seemed so pure for lack of a better word. They seemed real coherent.”
Tony calls up the Coast Guard, but they deny having any information.




May 5, 1992:

Two friends walking along Malibu Beach observe a “sort of light/fireball” descend from the sky and into the ocean. Says one witness,
“It was going at an incredible speed and it was less than a mile away. It looked like it hit the ocean…. Once the object made its way to the ocean’s surface, it disappeared, so my guess is that it went underwater.”




1994:

Two men walking near the coast of Rancho Palos Verdes at night see several “glowing disks” floating in the water. One of the witnesses returns at a later date and sees the disks again. On this occasion, he observes several black helicopters in the area. Later, he is confronted by unnamed individuals (men in black?) who tell him in no uncertain terms that this area, off Abalone Cove, is off-limits.




January 11, 2002:

An anonymous gentleman camping along the coast at Point Mugu sees a light moving back and forth 100 feet above the water, and two other lights beneath the surface of the sea. The objects dart back and forth in tandem for 30 minutes (moving unlike any plane or helicopter), giving the witness the impression that they are searching for something. Afterwards, the light in the sky accelerates out of sight and the two objects in the water dive down and disappear.

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• Other strange UFO reports from the area:

We are concerned specifically here with a rectangular area between thirty-three (33) degrees and thirty-four (34) degrees latitude north and between one-hundred-nineteen (119) degrees and one-hundred-seventeen point five (11.7.5) degrees longitude west. Other "channel" and "basin" areas, named for the cities and islands associated with them, are involved here in question, is more meaningful. In most cases, the objects were viewed between the mainland and the large off-shore island of Santa Catalina.

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And:

Santa Catalina UFO -December,1973.

..The two witnesses took turns studying the light through a 16-power Navy spyglass, which they were able to steady on a ledge at Klinn's residence. As seen through the telescope, the "blob" resolved into a precise arrangement of round, yellow-gold lights. Though the entire mass appeared larger than Venus with the naked eye, through the 'scope the lights encompassed an area of approximately three (3) millimeters.
They were arranged in a vertical column bisecting a horizontal column of equal length. Additional columns of light appeared and arranged themselves into a nearly perfect light-studded triangle. The witnesses adjusted the telescope, and when Klinn again looked through it about three minutes later, the complex of lights had assumed the shape of a huge, cigar-shaped "machine." Its edges were clearcut against the sky. Along its side was a horizontal row of about five huge, fiery round lights along the length of the object. These lights were very much larger and brighter than the ones observed earlier; in fact, the entire object had expanded in size at least twenty times.

Each light held tremendous activity within it, "as if looking inside a boiling steel furnace, and even more so". Their primary color was yellow, but many other colors were visible in their teeming mass. As the witnesses watched astounded, the first light ballooned up "like a critical explosion" and smashed through the light directly to its right. That one in turn seemed to flare up, as did each in the entire row, as the first fireball traversed the entire row. At the extreme right, the fiery,explosive light paused and pulsated about twice per second; then the smashing reaction returned along the row of lights from right to left. The entire trip back and forth took an estimated thirteen (13) seconds.As this was happening, a fin-shaped appendage with a vertical row of smaller yellow lights was moving back and forth along the top of the cigar-shaped object "in a very mechanical way"..

Santa Catalina Channel "Cloud Cigars" - 1976 CUFOS Conference[/url]

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• Strange USO incident from 1989:

Santa Catalina Channel, Ca 1989

A large object was observed by several witnesses. This object was also picked up on sonar. It was floating on the surface of the Pacific ocean. Several smaller ufo's were released from this mother-ship prior to its submerging. Sonar tracking had it heading south towards the Santa Catalina Channel before disappearing.

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And:

In 1989, a large object was seen by multiple witnesses (and picked up on sonar) resting on the surface of the water in the Pacific Ocean. It released several, smaller objects before submerging. It was tracked on sonar heading south towards the Santa Catalina Channel before disappearing.

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• Family witness USO:

California family recalls underwater UFO incident

A California witness at Avalon Harbor recalled an encounter from 1982 with an underwater UFO as the family sailed to Catalina, according to testimony in Case 72642 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

The witnesses’ mother first noticed a ‘huge lighted object’ moving near their boat underwater.

The event occurred on June 15, 1982. “My stepfather and mother loved sailing in the 1980s,” the witness stated.“He owned a construction company and made good money. We would rent a sailboat for the weekend and sail to Catalina where my grandmother had a clothing store on the island. We sail over there many times.”

But the family had an odd encounter one evening when the witness, his stepfather and mother were sailing to Catalina.
“Around 8p.m. my mother yells to my stepdad to look over the port side and asked what is that? I looked and saw a huge lighted object moving fast under the water. My mother was very scared and went below.”

The witnesses’ stepfather did not know what the object was either.

“He was in the navy for years and sailed all over the world and knows ships and subs. It lasted around five minutes just going from one side and then the next in a crisscross pattern.”

The family steered away from the object.

“We sailed west moving away from it as it moved east. I never told anyone about this nor do we talk about it. My stepbrother is in the navy and worked on a LA class sub. We talked one night and he said just forget it and to not go there. I saw your show and had to write. The object was 50 feet in a circle and bright as more watts I have ever seen. I am an electrician and work on lighting and this thing was bright and gave off heat. My parents stopped sailing after that summer. I live less the 20 miles from the area and still think about it all the time. Very strange situation to be in.”

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• Six flying discs over Catalina (same time as Roswell)

One of the first such reports to make it into the local paper, was the supposedly widely-viewed account of several “flying discs” over Avalon in 1947, just about the same time as the infamous Roswell incident...

Not as widely reported at the same time, however, were a number of other “disc” sightings both before and after the Roswell incident.

On the evening of June 26, 1947, U.S. Army Major George Wilcox of Warren, Arizona, reported a series of “eight or nine” disc-shaped objects traveling near his home and at an altitude of about 1,000 feet above the nearby mountains.

That same evening, a Captain E.B. Detchmendy reported seeing a “white disc glowing like an electric light bulb” passing over Pope, New Mexico, a sighting echoed by several local townspeople.

Dozens of other sightings—many by military officers—were reported in the region in the coming days and weeks.

But the Southwest wasn’t the only venue. Similar sightings were reported throughout much of the western United States as far north as Washington State and as far west as California—including Catalina Island.

On July 8, 1947, the very same day that Roswell’s Daily Record was reporting the initial “flying disc” story, a remarkable incident reportedly occurred in the skies above Avalon. An article on the front page of the week’s issue of the Catalina Islander details an alleged sighting by three visiting Army veterans of six “flying discs” traveling at high speed from the northeast and passing directly over Avalon before disappearing over East Peak.

According to the story, the six discs appeared at about 1 p.m. and flew in a formation of two sets of three and were witnessed not only by the veterans, but by “hundreds” of others as well.

Alvio Russo, one of the reported witnesses and an Army Air Corps veteran who had flown 35 bombing missions over Germany with the Eighth Air Force, estimated the velocity of the discs at “850 miles an hour,” according to the story.

Bob Jung, listed as a “former aerial photographer” agreed with this estimate and said they were flying roughly as fast as the U.S. Navy’s “Tiny Tim” rocket, which he had photographed numerous times for the Navy.

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• Cheesy UFO Hunters episode - different witnesses from Catalina island:

1990, a pilot flying his small plane off Catalina Island spotted an object just below the surface of the water which enveloped his plane with a bright light, freezing his controls. His next recollection was waking in the hospital with L.A. County Sheriff personnel. Our team will use high-tech sidescan sonar and deep sea magnetometers to search and dive for the wreck and analyze the evidence.

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Links:

UFOs Over Topanga Canyon

UFOs Over Topanga Canyon

Is There An Underwater UFO Base Off The Southern California Coast?

Underwater UFO incident Near Catalina | UFO CHRONICLE – 1982

Isn't that approximately the same area of the tic tac UAP incident with the USS Nimitz?...

https://www.ufo-timeline.com/uss-nimitz-uap-incident-tic-tac-ufo/

...

It's absolutely the same area mate.

Here's a 1948 report, not quite in this area but just a little north, I thought it might be relevant...

...

Blue Book Unknown: Unexplained triangle seen above California town

It was the middle of the day when two people in San Pablo, CA reported seeing an unidentified flying triangle-shaped object flying alongside another, “amoeba” shaped object. This account is just one of hundreds of UFO reports that could not be explained by Project Blue Book. The account from 1948 is written in “The Blue Book Unknowns”, a compilation of unexplained UFO reports from the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book files.

Sept. 23, 1948; San Pablo, California. 12 noon. Witnesses: Sylvester Bentham and retired U.S. Army Col. Horace Eakins. Two objects: one, a buff or grey rectangle with vertical lines; the other a translucent “amoeba” with a dark spot near the center. The arms of the “amoeba” undulated. Both objects traveled very fast.

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THE BLUE BOOK UNKNOWNS (COMPILED BY DON BERLINER, FOR THE FUND FOR UFO RESEARCH.)

nivek said:

Isn't that approximately the same area of the tic tac UAP incident with the USS Nimitz?...

USS Nimitz UAP incident: Tic Tac UFO | UFO Timeline

...

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Close enough. The Nimitz incident looks to be maybe 90 miles further south, probably less.

I'm always a little cautious about connecting together too many old reports. I understand why and admit to being intrigued but prefer to stick to the recent encounters with the best evidence. There is a danger of making a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

No coincidence to me that these things prefer the flavor of US Navy warships in that general area.

Appreciate the replies guys and Dennet does go into more detail in this interview with Knapp about other localised USO sightings - he also mentions that the U.S. Navy were conducting sonar tests in that specific area in 2013.

Also quite an old but very relevant presentation here by Richard Sauder where he discusses existing technologies capable of constructing U.S. Naval manned undersea facilities (near Catalina island) and illustrations by U.S. Navy engineer Walter Kirshner.

Cheers.

Thanks @karl 12 . Short on time but now but that one from Sauder looks interesting.

Atomic energy was known to be theoretically possible long before it was made a practical reality. All it took to make that happen was the desire and application of resources. Same for landing on the moon. The US has resources nobody else does and the time to apply them to do all sorts of things we know about. Imagine the ones we don't - because they don't want us to.

OK, bear with the annoying homily please. Locally there is an old sewage treatment plant. Now the area is being built up and the property has become very valuable for development. But you can't just move the s**t plant so they sort of hid it. There are times when an indescribable eye watering funk comes out of that place and just stinks the whole area up very noticeably. Real estate developers have begun blaming everything BUT the poopie plant and have come up with highly improbably explanations for their investors but us locals aren't fooled. It ain't the river or some natural phenomenon, beyond the obvious.

No, if there's something right over there that is a likely culprit how much time do you spend looking elsewhere for a more probable explanation? Not saying it couldn't happen, just what's most likely.

karl 12 said:

This is a repost of quite an old thread so a great many of the links ae now defunct - will post the remaining ones at the end.

Looks like there's been an unusually high (and constant) number of UFO/USO sightings from the area around the Santa Catalina Channel off the California Coastline - below are some of the reports including a bizarre incident in 1992 where residents flooded the police with reports of multiple objects emerging from the ocean - there's also an excellent article by MUFON's Preston Dennet who goes into more detail about UFO/USO reports in the area.

• Dates:







• Incident:

Topanga Canyon - see 3:10







• Recording of witness phone call to police:







• Main Article / Quotes:







• Coastal Sightings list:







• Into the Ocean:








• Underwater Lights:








• Other strange UFO reports from the area:





And:







• Strange USO incident from 1989:





And:








• Family witness USO:







• Six flying discs over Catalina (same time as Roswell)







• Cheesy UFO Hunters episode - different witnesses from Catalina island:








Links:

UFOs Over Topanga Canyon

UFOs Over Topanga Canyon

Is There An Underwater UFO Base Off The Southern California Coast?

Underwater UFO incident Near Catalina | UFO CHRONICLE – 1982

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Our visitors have many underground and under the ocean bases.
I am quite sure there are 1 if not more bases in that area as well.
If the navy thinks they can locate them, they are fooling themselves, unless they have the technology to scan for them up to 2 miles below the ocean floor.
There will be no opening to them as well, they simply adjust their atomic phase and pass through any liquid or solid matter without disturbing it what so ever.
IMHO

Certainly some food for thought and very freaky UFO/USO reports.

Sticking with the Catalina Channel there's also some pretty wild police dispatch UFO recordings from the area on June 14th, 1992.

Apparently over two dozen witnesses in more than ten different locations (spaced no more than twenty miles apart) all reported extremely strange UFO activity on the same evening.

Pie / disc shaped objects putting out lightbeams (and a humming noise) are being reported.




The Night Of The UFOs' - California, June 14th, 1992.

Cheers.

SOUL-DRIFTER said:

If the navy thinks they can locate them, they are fooling themselves, unless they have the technology to scan for them up to 2 miles below the ocean floor.

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I know I am responding to an older post, but check this out: The Cold War, USOs, & the K-219 Submarine Incident

They had the ability to do exactly that and a hell of a lot more over 50 years ago. We tend to dismiss our technology as primitive compared to a species capable of interstellar travel and that may be true, but it isn't to say we haven't developed some truly impressive feats of engineering. We did so with national level Apollo-like resources applied and done in secret

After a UFO presentation one day at the local community center, I had an old retired military man approach me and tell me he had been on Catalina Island and watched a UFO over LA hovering over the city before it shot straight up and into space in an instant.

Seems that area of the California coast is the naval equivalent of Area 51 and has been for a long time.

It's very similar to the Bass Strait. There are tons of airship / UFO sightings in Australia, and even sightings of objects coming out of the water, posted previously. I think the objects seen there were mostly coming out of the ocean to the south of Australia.. Too bad Feindt isn't around to see the article below --it doesn't appear to be in his book..
1947.

Well, having just been clued in to what they were up to underwater in the early 1960's and being very, very surprised at the scope and amazing secrecy of their accomplishments I know that R & D never stopped or probably even paused since then, that programs of this nature can take decades, that programs with national level interest are protected by layers upon layers of secrecy, cover stories and compartmentalization mean that no single whistleblower is going to crack the egg, not even an Edward Snowden.

I can only imagine what they've come up with since then. I bet the concept of a 'transmedium' craft is hardly new

pigfarmer said:

Well, having just been clued in to what they were up to underwater in the early 1960's and being very, very surprised at the scope and amazing secrecy of their accomplishments I know that R & D never stopped or probably even paused since then, that programs of this nature can take decades, that programs with national level interest are protected by layers upon layers of secrecy, cover stories and compartmentalization mean that no single whistleblower is going to crack the egg, not even an Edward Snowden.

I can only imagine what they've come up with since then. I bet the concept of a 'transmedium' craft is hardly new

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Do you think the objects off the coast of California are top secret US projects?

Skepticide123 said:

Do you think the objects off the coast of California are top secret US projects?

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I do.

I also think that there are times when actual extraterrestrial craft are sighted, but that area off the coast of California is a place with a history of top secret testing. I’m sure the few that have lived near Groom Lake have seen surprising things too.

Kind of ironic in that the military have the best sensors, etc to record a UFO event but they are the most problematic to deal with

pigfarmer said:

I know I am responding to an older post, but check this out: The Cold War, USOs, & the K-219 Submarine Incident

They had the ability to do exactly that and a hell of a lot more over 50 years ago. We tend to dismiss our technology as primitive compared to a species capable of interstellar travel and that may be true, but it isn't to say we haven't developed some truly impressive feats of engineering. We did so with national level Apollo-like resources applied and done in secret

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How so?
We can see the bottom of the deepest part of the oceans, but can we know what may be hidden far below the bottom, and if so how far?

That sounds like a moving goalpost. They were hiding in the ocean until it was realized they can't hide there so now its sub-ocean floor? Dunno about that. This is a long one, sorry, and I did try to make it as brief as I can. I am serious about this next bit, I think it speaks to a lot of what we have all been interested in all these years even if it doesn't sound like it.

This is part of a larger thought I have had on the Whole Thing. Haven't actually hashed all this out yet into one coherent train of thought. This is just PF shooting from the hip over coffee.

When we think about the 'modern era' the big dividing line in our recent history is WW2. The end of that conflict saw the United States as an industrial, engineering and technical colossus. We developed a taste for projecting power and to this day maintain large fleets of blue water vessels i.e aircraft carriers, etc. to do so. A capability we take for granted but came at cost.

But there is another capability that came at cost and comparatively speaking, we got a helluva deal. In that conflict a very small number of extremely capable fleet submarines brought Imperial Japan to its knees with the literal destruction of the commercial shipping on which it was totally dependent. They did far more damage than other weapons systems in proportion to the investment required to maintain them. I don't think there were ever more than 50 boats operating in the Pacific at a time. Not as sexy as big aircraft carriers or fleets of bombers overhead but very, very effective and by design, relatively invisible. An accountant would be very happy about that ROI.

There is a larger discussion of strategy; deterrence vs first use of nuclear weapons. Don't want to get off track but it wasn't always obvious that deterrence was the correct way to go and that is critical to understanding why we do what we do. It's about context, always is. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed and people like Dr. Edward Teller didn't have their way. But if you want to achieve a goal with critical national importance in the midst of the Cold War why not turn to a system that has already shown itself to be a performer, to give you an excellent bang for the buck and a capability nobody else has ? Most people's understanding of these things involves The Hunt for Red October and obviously there's waaaay more to it than that but it's a not completely wrong depiction and actually has basis in fact.

Twenty years before the war and we had sugar boats, barely capable of submergence with a bucket for a toilet. Twenty years after the war we were operating on the ocean floor in nuclear powered submarines. By 1970 or so we had achieved what was called the '2 & 20 capability' meaning the deep submergence systems themselves were designed to either reach virtually every continental shelf on Earth or the bottom of the ocean about anywhere with few exceptions. So when we were watching Star Trek on TV men were descending to the 2000 foot limit breathing specialized gases and working in flexible suits, not those armored monstrosities like in For Your Eyes Only. They were secretly tapping undersea communications cables. There was a large and growing network of sophisticated underwater sensors all over the ocean floor and a network of satellite surveillance that was highly capable if not exactly real time at that point. Better yet, they were not only descending to extreme depths they had the capability to examine virtually anything and retrieve most. The recovery of a lost American H-bomb in 1968 was a bit of a clown show but was accomplished. Only a few years after that they snatched an entire Soviet submarine off the sea floor, brought it back to California and reassembled it in total secrecy.

If you make a triangle from San Diego, Los Angeles and San Clemente Island you literally encompass a huge portion of our 'secret stuff'. Lockheed's original Skunk Works, Naval training facilities - they still train SEALS on San Clemente and I am quite sure they are skilled in deep submergence techniques. All sorts of labs, warehouses etc where all sorts of things can be done unobserved. It's where the Navy has developed all sorts of amazing things and - and here's my point - if we could do that 50+ years ago and are only becoming aware of them relatively recently can you imagine the capabilities that have been developed since then we know nothing about? When I hear reports of USOs and so forth anywhere near there this is what I think of. If you sat on a hill near groom Lake before it became contaminated by poplar culture I bet you'd see some weirdness there too,. Tic Tacs and glowing balls of light pestering Navy warships doesn't sound like ET to me it sounds like business as usual for the area.

This is where the lecture about our primitive technology comes into play and we start talking physics and how what we do is stone knives and bearskins. Well, could be. But Occam's razor and real history says ET is not the safe bet there.

I am NOT suggesting ALL UFOs are military testing. What I am saying is that certainly some are especially in that area and when you become more aware of the history you have context and look at all this very differently. It also gave me insight as to how large national interest level programs might function and how a genuine extraterrestrial presence might be treated.

I have noticed that when any branch of the military is involved in a UFO story the author usually punches up the language: he isn't flying a fighter it's a F/A-18 Super Hornet. It isn't a nuclear missile sub it's a XYZ sub with 1234 impressive sounding missiles and stuff. They amp up the language to give it gravitas the same way they do someone's resume to lend credibility to the report. But amping up military techtalk is often done without really knowing how it all fits together, just that it sounds impressive. Context is important.

All I can say is what I have said. The military has the best equipment but can be trusted the least because we can never really be sure if they are telling us the literal truth or some portion of it. From what I've read the chances of anyone, and I mean anyone including a Robert Bigelow or even an Admiral Wilson having 'the whole story' is small. Very small. Secrets within secrets kept in many different compartments for good reasons, you could be working on something for years and never find out what it was really used for. This is why I like the Father Gill and Ariel School cases so much. Hopefully if that ever happens again this time it'll be in a school full of kids with smartphones.

Fravor saw a special project vehicle. His unrelated podcast anecdote about something coming up from the deep to snatch a practice torpedo away from the diver who was in the process of retrieving it was probably his brethren having a good laugh on him. I think the special operations people loves stories like that . Excellent cover. And yes, they do tests systems against friendly forces that are unaware. Not often but there are precedents.

“The mission was not an intelligence success but the operation was not detected by our own forces present in the splash-down area observing Soviet naval activity.”

— The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea by John Pina Craven
The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea

Still lots of weird reports out there but I think since 2017 and the NY Times article that we've been had, this is all part of some larger game.