The Incident
On June 30, 1967, at around 10 p.m., an officer was on watch aboard the USS Willard Keith (DD-775), a World War II-era destroyer about 280 miles (450 kilometers) off the northeastern U.S. coast, near North Carolina. The ship’s captain, who did not usually make late-night announcements, used the intercom to report that they had been “followed” for several hours by an unidentified light-bearing object.
The captain described it as a large red light, visible to the naked eye and also detected on the ship’s radar. The entire crew saw it. The captain tried to contact a naval port, which eventually relayed the information to military headquarters, including the Air Force and the Capitol. According to the report, no military or commercial aircraft from any country could be found to explain the alert.
At one point, the light vanished abruptly, as if “it had been switched off.” The captain returned to the intercom and reported that the object had disappeared from the radar screen at about 6,000 mph (9,600 km/h). He said the incident would be entered in the ship’s log under the category “UFO.”
Context and Significance
The report comes from a credible military source: a warship captain on duty at the time. Radar records also indicate that the object was in the area around the ship. However, there are no photographs, videos, or additional accounts from other sources. The incident is listed in the NUFORC database as unverified, and its date is considered approximate.
The report is especially interesting because the light was red, a color sometimes associated in various sources with physical phenomena such as plasma or atmospheric effects. The several-hour sighting suggests a sustained observation rather than a fleeting event. The estimated speed at which the object disappeared, 6,000 mph, also suggests movement at speeds and over distances beyond those familiar to military services.
Summary
The incident highlights the complexity of sightings at sea, the difficulty of verifying information from outside sources, and the importance of keeping accurate records of such sightings, even when they cannot be explained immediately. The case remains open to questions and further research.
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TL;DR: A Navy captain said the crew saw a large red light over the ocean. It appeared on radar, then disappeared at high speed, with no known aircraft identified.
