Date:
June 15, 1968
Location: DMZ, Viet Nam
On
Friday, 15 June 1968, Allied forward spotters along the
eastern part of the Demilitarised Zone, a 9.6km wide strip
separating North and South Vietnam, reported seeing about
30 strange slow-moving 'lights' in the night sky.
Source:
AUFORN Special Report, Issue 34, April 2003
HMAS
HOBART HIT DURING VIETNAM UFO ENCOUNTER?
Story by Jon Wyatt
In
June 1968, Australia was dismayed by the news that the
guided-missile destroyer HMAS Hobart had been badly damaged
by 'friendly fire' in Vietnam: Two crew died and
seven were wounded during the USAF attack.
Officially,
the Hobart 'Incident' occurred during a night operation
against 'enemy helicopters' - but was it in reality a
UFO story?
The
evidence is very intriguing, and to find out why, let's
go to the beginning.
On
Friday, 15 June 1968, Allied forward spotters along the
eastern part of the Demilitarised Zone, a 9.6 km wide
strip separating North and South Vietnam, reported seeing
about 30 strange slow-moving 'lights' in the night sky.
At the time, the belief was these were lumbering North
Vietnamese Russian-built M-14 'Hound' helicopters ferrying
men and materiel over the border.
After
the sightings, Allied Command, fearing another Tet Offensive-style
build-up, rushed more anti-aircraft guns to the border,
and placed Phantom fighter-bombers at Danang Air Base
on standby, and it also asked available Allied warships
to patrol the DMZ coast. HMAS Hobart II one of those warships
that responded.
That
night, the forward spotters along the eastern DMZ again
reported the 'enemy helicopters' had re-appeared,
and the Allied forces sprang into action.
Details
of the subsequent aerial 'melee' remain sketchy,
but it is known several U.S. 7th Air Force Phantom fighter-bombers
soon arrived on the scene and began firing on the intruders,
and were supported by anti-aircraft ground fire. During
the Allied attack, the 'enemy helicopters' were
seen to move down the east coast and then out to the sea
- and there things went terribly wrong.
A
U.S. Navy Board of Inquiry, which investigated the Hobart
'incident' for the Australian government, found
shortcomings of the Phantom's radar system were partly
to blame: to stop big targets flooding the radarscope,
the radar had a cut-off mechanism, so the returns from
a warship and a slow moving low flying helicopter could
appear similar on-screen.
After
the 'lights' fled seaward, the first 'friendly fire'
incident occurred shortly after midnight when the U.S.
Navy swift boat PCF-19 was sunk by three air-to-air missiles
while patrolling some kilometres south of the DMZ. Five
of the seven crew died (more about this later).
At
about 3.30am, the Hobart was patrolling (blacked-out and
maintaining radio silence) near Tiger Island, about 20kms
off Cap Lay, when her radar room detected a fast, in-coming
aircraft. The IFF (Identication Friend of Foe) system
indicated it was 'friendly' and the ship was attempting
to establish further identity when a Sparrow air-to-air
missile struck her amidships on the starboard (right)
side. The missile penetrated the alluminum hull and exploded,
killing Ordinary Seaman R J Butterworth and wounding two
others.
While
the crew was rushing to Action Stations, two more air-to-air
missiles penetrated the starboard side and killed Chief
Electrician Hunt and wounded several others - and narrowly
missed a magazine. Hobart fired five rounds from a deckgun,
but the swept-winged attacker escaped.
During
the DMZ 'lights' operation, the guided-missile
destroyer USS Edson, the guided-missile cruiser USS Boston,
the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Point Dume, and the USS PCF-19
also came under 'friendly fire', but fortunately
without causing more casualties.
Eventually,
the Phantom pilots involved in the operation that night
and early morning, were recalled and grounded.
After
daybreak, U.S. helicopters airlifted the wounded Australian
sailors to Danang and the damaged Hobart went to Subic
Bay, Philippines, for repairs and was off the scene for
five weeks - and that night, DMZ 'lights' returned.
Whatever
the 'lights' actually were remains a subject of
conjecture, but it appears they were sighted for some
weeks and went unchallenged. A week after the Hobart 'incident',
the Melbourne Sun noted: "sightings were reported
by radarmen in Quang Tri Province about five miles [eight
kms] below the border zone. It was the sixth time since
last Saturday that such sightings have been reported ...
U.S. command has ordered its fighter-bombers and artillery
to withhold fire, not wanting a repeat of the incidents
in which the Allied ships were fired upon."
Also
adding further to the mystery, no wreckage of downed enemy
choppers was found. In August 1968, the Royal Australian
Navy News confirmed: "No physical evidence of
helicopters destroyed has been discovered in the area
of activity nor has extensive reconnaissance produced
any evidence of enemy helicopter operations in or near
the DMZ."
In
1996, I interviewed the Hobart's skipper, the late Ken
Shands, and he also said, "Neither before nor
after the incident ... was there any report by any of
the ships of a helicopter being there [around Tiger Island].
Now having said that, the captain of one of the American
ships told me later at Subic Bay that he thought there
were helicopters there, but the fact is he didn't report,
and if he believed there was a helicopter ... it was his
duty to report it at the time, but there was no report."
So
what appeared over the DMZ that sparked the mission that
saw Hobart hit?
The
events of that night have doubtless raised much discussion
- it was the RAN's costliest day of the entire war - and
Australian navy history books mention 'unusual atmospheric
conditions over the DMZ', 'insect swarms' or
'bird flocks' as possible sources of the sightings,
but were they unidentified flying objects?
General
George S Brown (1918-1978) was commander of the 7th US
Air Force and deputy commander for Air Operations, Military
Assistance Command Vietnam from 1968 to 1970 - and so
was in command of the Phantoms involved in the snafu.
In later years he rose to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff
in Washington. In 1973, he fronted a Chicago media conference
held to discuss the North American UFO flap of that year,
and while airing his views on UFOs at the conference he
said:
"I
don't know whether this story has ever been told or not
[but UFOs plagued us in Vietnam]. They weren't called
UFOs; they were called enemy helicopters, and they were
only seen at night and they were only seen in certain
places. They were seen up around the DMZ in the early
summer of '68, and this resulted in quite a battle. And
in the course of this, an Australian destroyer [Hobart]
took a hit ... there was no enemy at all involved but
we always reacted. Always after dark. The same thing happened
up at Pleiku at the Highlands in '69."
George
Filer, today Director of the Mutual UFO Network Eastern,
USA, served as a USAF intelligence officer under General
Brown during the Vietnam conflict, and he has also said,
"In 1968, I briefed General Brown, the USAF Chief
of Staff, most mornings on the intelligence situation
in Vietnam... a lot of times, we'd get UFO reports over
the DMZ."
The
late Bill Cooper served as a patrol-boat captain in Vietnam
from 1967 to 1969, and during a talk at the 1989 Los Angeles
UFO conference, he said:
"After
about five months, I was sent up north to the DMZ, to
a place called Qua Vieaf [perhaps Qua Viet] on the Tacan
[sic] river .... It was while there that I discovered
that there was a tremendous amount of UFO and alien activity
in Vietnam. It was always reported in official messages
as 'enemy helicopters'. Now any of you who know anything
about the Vietnam war know that the North Vietnamese did
not have any helicopters, especially after our first couple
of air raids into North Vietnam [during 1965]. Even if
they had, they would not have been so foolish as to bring
them over the DMZ, because that would have ensured their
demise."
Cooper
later recanted his belief in an alien presence and instead
insisted UFOs are "technology originally developed
by the Germans in their secret weapons programs during
WW-II, by geniuses like Nikola Tesla and many others."
However, the mystery of 1968 DMZ 'lights' marched
on, and the following is from another American patrol
boat crew member.
Jim
Steffes, ENC, USN Retired, served on the patrol boat PCF-12
on the night of the Hobart 'incident', and he confirms
strange goings-on in the sky. In his article 'The sinking
of PCF-19 as seen from PCF-12', he states the PCF-12
met the ill-fated PCF-19 at sea that night to fix the
PCF-19's radar. At approximately 0030 hours, the PCF-12
received a 'flash traffic' that PCF-19, the first
'friendly fire' target, had disappeared in a flash
of light. The PCF-12 reached the scene as Point Dume was
pulling the two badly wounded survivors aboard. As PCF-12
searched in vain for more survivors, she found she had
company.
As
he and the crew peered into the darkness, the moon sometimes
behind clouds, "we spotted two aircraft 'hovering'
on our port and starboard beams. They were about 300 yards
away and 100 feet above the water. As the boat swung around
to put the aircraft ahead and astern of PCF-12, I could
hear Mr. Snyder [the Officer In Charge] requesting air
support and identification of these helos. The answer
from the beach was 'no friendly aircraft in the area,
have contacts near you on radar and starlight scope'."
Steffes
says he saw one 'helo' in the moonlight and believed "It
had a rounded front like an observation helo and it looked
like two crewman sitting side by side." Then,
"I watched as tracers began to come toward us
as this helo opened fire. The guns were from the nose
of the helo. Our guns opened up and I ran back to my position
as the loader on the after gun. We heard a crash of glass
and a splash as one of the helos hit the water, the other
helo broke contact and left the area."
Steffes
says for the next two and one half hours the PCF-12 played
cat and mouse with one or more helos, opening fire whenever
they moved in. He also observed the Point Dume firing
tracers at blinking lights moving around her in the air.
All the radios were crackling constantly as friendlies
were checked out. "The result was no friendlies,
these had to be North Vietnamese."
Then,
three and a half hours later, at about 3:30am, military
jets roared overhead and after they acknowledged the PCF-19's
position, he soon heard explosions and gunfire to the
north (the Hobart 'incident'?). "As dawn broke,
we could only see the shoreline and the Point Dume."
Steffes
concluded: "We continued to monitor and track
these 'lights' for several weeks after this up until September
... I know what the 'official story' is, but this is mine
as true and complete as I can remember."
Jim
Steffes' story of course raise many fascinating questions
including:
Did
the PCF-12 crew fall victim to 'cultural tracking': aliens
using their advanced technology to mimick our technology
to interface with humans?
If
the lights were North Vietnamese observer helicopters,
why did they fly around for hours with their lights on;
why weren't they shot down, and why was no 'helo' wreckage
ever retrieved?
Many
Ufologists believe alien visitors havelong been studying
human wars, and this may have been the case in 1968.
Paranormal
Postscript:
Hobart
served out three tours of duty in Vietnam, however it
seems after 1968, she had an extra crewman.
A
Signalman, who served on the ship during the 1990s, says
that one morning at 4 a.m. when the warship was approaching
Hobart, Tas., he was climbing a flex ladder to the flag
deck when he felt the ladder move below him, then felt
"something actually walk past/through me on the
ladder." Then, when he reached the flag deck
and entered the Signalmans Shelter, he sensed "someone
in there with me and could hear them breathing as though
they had been running or working hard."
The
Signalman later learnt from the Chief Coxswain, a 15-year
veteran, that "a Leading Seaman Signalman"
had been killed while scaling the ladder to action stations
in 1968: "Apparently, the ship took a missile
hit and a piece of shrapnel took this poor man's head
clean off his shoulders."
During
the late 1990s, when the Signalman was re-posted to the
ship, he sent a young sailor up the ladder to 'test
the waters', and the bloke also came down shaking.
The
"Green Ghost", as the ship was also affectionately
known, was de-commissioned in May 2000, and scuttled at
Yankalilla Bay, south of Adelaide, in late 2002, where
she is now a scuba-dive spot.
Main
Sources:
1.
Sydney Morning Herald 19 June, 1968, p. 1 and Australian
19 June, 1968, p.1
2. Melbourne Sun 24 June, 1968, p.2
3. Royal Australian Navy News, 16 August, 1968
4. Navy in Vietnam: A record of the Royal Australian Navy
in the Vietnam War 1965-1973 by Denis Fairfax (Australian
Government Publishing Service 1980) pps.59-60
5. Interview with Ken Shands, Anzac Day 1996, Melbourne
6. General George S Brown, USAF Chief of Staff, Department
of Defense transcript of press conference in Illinois,
16 October, 1973, found at: http://gamegene.com/ufo.htm
7. 'George Filer Keeps Watching The Skies' by Michael
Vitez, Philadelphia Inquirer, 20 August, 2001, found at
www.rense.com
8. 'The Milton William Cooper Speech', 17 November, 1989,
found at: http://www.the-greys.com/pirho/speech.html
9. 'MajestyTwelve' by William Cooper, 1997, found at:
http://williamcooper.com
10. 'The Sinking of PCF-19 as seen from PCF-12' by Jim
Steffes, ENC, USN Retired, found at www.gunplot.net/vietnam/hobartvietnamandpcf19.html
11. Jim Steffes' Vietnam Photo Album website found at
http://www.bcres.com/river/steffes.htm
12. Article 'Ghost At Sea' found at www.castleofspirits.com
Source:
http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case60.htm
