Five U.S. Navy witnesses of the famed 2004 Nimitz UFO Encounters spoke to Popular Mechanics of their experience detailing "an advanced acceleration, aerodynamic, and propulsion capability."
The UFO has been described as "an elongated egg or a 'Tic Tac' shape with a discernible midline horizontal axis," moving erratically "beyond the laws of physics," and not resembling any type of conventional aircraft.
"Umm, no!" Gary Voorhis told Popular Mechanics with a laugh. "In the video I saw, you got a good sense of how the pilot was having a difficult time trying to keep up with this thing. It kept making tight, right angle turns."
The magazine also interviewed Jason Turner, P.J. Hughes, Ryan Weigelt, and Kevin Day, who were witnesses to what the Navy recently confirmed as "unidentified aerial phenomena," per the report.
"When they'd show up on radar, I'd get the relative bearing and then run up to the bridge and look through a pair of heavily magnified binoculars in the direction the returns were coming from," Voorhis told the magazine. "I couldn't make out details, but they'd just be hovering there, then all of a sudden, in an instant, they'd dart off to another direction and stop again.
"At night, they'd give off a kind of a phosphorus glow and were a little easier to see than in the day."
Voorhis told the magazine it was originally believed the activity on the brand new AN/SPY-1B radar system he was witnessing was "ghost tracks" and "clutter," but the rebooted the system and only confirmed a UFO sighting.
"Once we finished all the recalibration and brought it back up, the tracks were actually sharper and clearer," Voorhis told the magazine. "Sometimes they'd be at an altitude of 80,000 or 60,000 feet. Other times they'd be around 30,000 feet, going like 100 knots. Their radar cross sections didn't match any known aircraft; they were 100 percent red. No squawk, no IFF (Identification Friend or Foe)."
A video clip of just over 1 minute was published in December 2017 by To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, a UFO think tank founded by former Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge, but Voorhis told Popular Mechanics he saw a much longer and clearer version on his USS Princeton's network.
"I definitely saw video that was roughly 8-10 minutes long and a lot more clear," Voorhis told the magazine.
Voorhis claims the ship's recorders were ordered to be reloaded because all the drives and radio communications were wiped clean, per the report.
"They even told me to erase everything that's in the shop — even the blank tapes," Voorhis told the magazine.
Another anonymous witness aboard the USS Princeton confirmed the UFO sighting defying physics, per the report.
"I do remember the events of 2004 very well," the operation specialist told Popular Mechanics. "The decision was made to scramble two fighter jets to investigate. From what the pilots described, the movement of the UFO was defying the laws of physics.
"What really made this incident alarming was when a Blackhawk helicopter landed on our ship and took all our information from the top secret rooms. We were all pretty shocked and it was an unspoken rule not to talk about it because we had secret clearances and didn't want to jeopardize our careers."
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