Despite the frequency at which
UFO sightings are reported, very few of them turn out to be any cause for investigation. A lot of the time, the 'unidentified' object turns out to be a plane or a drone, and the person who spotted it is often discovered to be either drunk, high, or just unusually keen to believe that anything flying through the sky of an evening
must be evidence of
alien life forms.
However, sometimes reports come from slightly more reputable sources, and video footage of the object in question really does seem to indicate that it might be something extraterrestrial.
This was the case 13 years ago, when two Navy airmen flying about 100 miles off the coast of San Diego spotted something strange.
Navy Commander David Fravor and Navy Lieutenant Commander Jim Slaight were over the Pacific Ocean on a routine training mission when they saw
something unexplainable - and now the footage of their encounter has been released.
Fravor said that the pilots were first alerted to the location of the object by a Navy cruiser which had been tracking its movements over a period of two weeks. According to the Operations Officer on board the ship, the object would appear alongside several others at around 80,000 feet, then plummet downwards before hovering at around 20,000 feet.
After that, it either dropped off the radar or soared back upwards.
The pair were skeptical when they were first sent to investigate the objects, especially as nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary to begin with. However, after some time scanning the area around them, Fravor decided to look below - and there it was: a white oval object, just above the ocean surface, about 40 feet in length.
It was jumping erratically, causing the sea to churn up underneath it.
The Navy commander's immediate instinct was to make a slow descent towards the object, but he was forced to change his plans when the UFO suddenly shot up towards him.
"It accelerated like nothing I've ever seen," he said.
After making a snap decision to change his course, Fravor made a faster descent towards the possible aircraft, but it shot off his radar almost immediately.
The two pilots then radioed in to the operations officer and were instructed to fly to a "cap point" around 60 miles away. And this is where it got really weird.
While Fravor and Slaight were on their way to the meeting point, they got another message from the ship.
"Sir, you won't believe it," the radio operator said, "but that thing is at your cap point."
Fravor was stunned. "We were at least 40 miles away, and in less than a minute this thing was already at our cap point," he said.
By the time they arrived, the object had gone again.
"I have no idea what I saw. It had no plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s," Fravor said.
Whether or not the pilot's claims are true or not is a debatable matter, but video footage of the encounter seems to be pretty convincing. If you want to watch and decide for yourself, the clip begins one minute and 13 seconds into this video:
[[youtubewidget||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpBQFuLl2So]]
Unfortunately, the matter was never investigated further.
