Navy Pilot Saw a Wingless Object Off California

The sea was calm, and the sky was blue. Below the object, a white patch churned on the water. Alex Dietrich, a former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, described the scene from a November morning in 2004 off the coast of Southern California in an interview with the British channel Sky History. AOL also reported her account.

During the training flight, the warship Princeton’s radar detected objects moving at speeds and altitudes the crew struggled to explain. They suspected a malfunction. But Dietrich saw the object herself. Looking down, she spotted the patch on the water and, above it, a matte-white oval object about the size of a plane and roughly 12 meters long.

“It had no wings,” she said. It had no control surfaces, exhaust, windows, or markings. The object moved in ways that seemed to defy the laws of physics, hovered over the water, and moved unpredictably, she said.

What Happened Next

The pilots returned to the ship and reported what they had seen to their commanders and the authorities. They expected an official investigation to follow. According to Dietrich, it never did.

Pilot David Fravor, who was on the same flight, told members of Congress in 2023 that the crew watched the object for about five minutes. The lack of an investigation, Dietrich said, leaves people who encounter phenomena like these unsure whom to contact or what to do.

What Remains Unknown

No verified documentation identifying the object has been presented, and there is no proof of what it was. The accounts rest on testimony from people who were there, not on official details confirming what they saw.

Dietrich worked to publicize documents the Pentagon recently released and said she was seeking transparency. The material should be examined carefully before anyone draws conclusions, she said. It remains unclear, according to Dietrich, why the crew’s reports were not addressed.