Appearance / Description of Object(s)

its all above

Description of Area / Surroundings

open sea. the mediteranean

Full Description & Details

This report is based on an event I experienced some 25 years ago when I was a petty officer 2nd class abourd the USS Forrestal. Specific details as to dates and exact geographic position are fuzzy. I believe we were transiting the Straights of Mecina in the summer of 1981 (between Italy and Siccily) and tehn probably out into the open sea (Med).

I was on watch as a radarman in the combat information center manning a surface radar console. At roughly 11:00 p.m. a friend stopped in and asked me to come up to the signal bridge when I got off work at midnight. When I arrived at the signal bridge (in the superstructure just above the captain's bridge) I could make out a number of people in the darkness and could hear a lot of quiet talking. My friend pointed out a bright orange star in the night sky (it was very clear) and asked what i reckoned it was. I told him I thought it was probably Mars, Jupitor or Saturn. He told me to take a look at it through the "big eyes" (high powered, mounted binoculars). What I saw stunned me. I saw a spherical object, with a bright corona and clearly delineated contours (it looked like photos of the sun rather than a light bulb where contours are diffuse). It appeared to tumble end over end and spin like a top at the same time. This strange appearence was suggested by what appeared to be moving internal lights as well as color changes within the object itself. The colors had a liquid fluidity to them which gave the object the appearnce of spinning and tumbling while remaining stationary.

Because there was nothing to compare the object to I can't make any estimates on the scale of the object or its distance from the ship. A meteorologist arrived on the scene and said it was ball lightening. At first this sounded reasonable (as I didn't know what ball lightening was) but I noticed that the object maintained its relative position to the ship and its height above the horizon even though we were cruising at a particular course and speed for some time.

I went down to the captain's bridge where I witnessed the officer of the deck ( a young ensign) and a number of other officers and enlisted men talking excitiedly about what we were all seeing. I listened to the officer of the deck communicate with other ships in company via the red phone (an encrypted frequency) about the object.

I went out to the signal deck again. Along with a number of other people I watched the object till it was lost in the morning sun some 6 hours later just as 2 other objects of differnt shape were spotted off the starboard bow (one I recall was vaguely triangular). No contacts were ever picked up by either surface or air radars. At one point in the evening I saw with my peripheral vision what I believed to be a meteor cross the sky from the back of the ship to the front. We noticed the object was gone afterwards. Some minutes later we saw a meteor-like streak in the sky come from the opposite horizon behind us moving towards the ship and then noticed that the object was back in its position again.

Can sighting be explained as any conventional man-made or natural object?

As I said, it maintained a constant relative distance, height and position to our ship over many hours. Natural phenomenon wouldn't do that. As far as being an aircraft . . . it made no sound. I was stationed aboard an aircraft carrier. I was very familiar with military aircraft of many types both in terms of their sounds, speed, and how they appeared in flight at high speeds. This didn't resemble any of those craft in any way.

Witness Background

I am a professor of art and am also a working artist. I have a Masters degree in Fine Arts

Views on UFOs, before and after sighting

I didn't think much about UF's before hand. I became interested afterwards and read a lot of literature on the phenomenon in later years. I don't know what they are. They suggest an intelligence other than our own co-exists with us. Whether they are from other planets or are something we so alien we can't conceptualize what they might be, I don't know. I think a lot of the UFO theories (and the counter theories by skeptics) are a bit irrational and often silly. All these conspiracy theories remind me of the kind of things conjured up and aimed at the Jews by Europeans (and now Arabs) for centuries. Crazy hyped up inventions. But something is certainly here with us in my opinion. What that is . . . . who the hell knows.

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