by Bob Dawson
dated 3 Mar 1993, 15:32

I am new to this echo, and reading some of the messages here has caused me
to remember an incident that took place way back in mid 1971. I have no explanation, and thought someone else may have experienced something
similar...

It was a dark and starry night, but with no moon. I was
on the navy destroyer Dennis J. Buckley DD-808, and we were
heading west at about 27 knots somewhere between Hawaii
and Guam. We were eventually to be on a six-month tour
of duty that included floating off the coast of Viet Nam.
I was 22 and excited about getting the opportunity to see
the Orient, a part of the world that has always
fascintated me.

It was just after midnight and I was sitting on the fan-
tail of the ship, smoking a cigaret (I did strange things
in those years, when I thought I was immortal), and
talking with a couple of buddies. Although there was no
moon, it was pretty bright out from the light of the
zillions of stars that were sprayed across the dark sky.
It's AMAZING how many more stars you see when at sea,
with no city lights, smog, etc., etc., to block them out.

Anyway, at 27 knots, which is a little over 30 mph, a
destroyer makes a pretty good sized rooster tail from the
backwash of the props. We were watching that rooster
tail and talking about things in general, when one of the
guys shouted, "Hey! Look over there!" and pointed way
back behind us and to the port side.

There was a noticable glow underneath the ocean. It was
relatively bright, but looked like it was preety deep,
from our vantage point. Now we knew it wasn't the moon
reflecting on the water, because there wasn't any moon
out. And it had a definite oblong shape. As we watched,
the light got closer to the surface. It seemed to be
following us.

We continued to watch, and as we did, the glow got even
closer to the surface, and came closer to the ship, until
it was just about 15 yards off the stern, and about 30
yards to port. The object was half as long as the ship,
or about 50 yds., and was going just as fast as we were.

Although it varied its depth, it never broke surface.
There was never any sound from it; we heard nothing but
the slosh of the rooster tail, which isn't really that loud.
It paralleled our course for about two miles, then
quickly dove to the depths until the glow disappeared.
I've never seen, or heard, of anything like it before,
or since. I don't know what it was. We never reported it to
anybody, for fear we'd be rediculed.

By the way, one of the guys out there smoking with us was
a "lifer" who had been in for over 20 years at the time, and
he said he had seen some strange things at sea, but never
anything like that.

John,
telnet://ricksbbs.synchro.net:23
http://ricksbbs.synchro.net:8080
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