USS Princeton data recordings claim

USS Princeton data recordings claim

Date	14 November 2004
Topics	Crashes & retrievals (topic), Military encounters (topic)
People	David Fravor, Alex Dietrich, Chad Underwood, Gary Voorhis, Kevin Day
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 159
Year	2004 in UFO history
Timeline	2004 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	7

The USS Princeton data recordings claim is the account by several former U.S. Navy sailors that, soon after the November 2004 "Tic Tac" encounters off southern California, unidentified men took away the recordings of what the ships' sensors had captured. The ships were the guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton (CG-59) and its USS Nimitz carrier strike group.^[1][2] The claims became public in November 2019, in a Popular Mechanics article built on interviews with five veterans who saw different parts of the events.^[1] Two of them, Gary Voorhis and Patrick "PJ" Hughes, said they were ordered to hand over data recordings or hard drives. David Fravor, the pilot at the centre of the encounter, offered a more ordinary explanation for missing tapes.^[1][2] Michael Shellenberger's 2024 UFO timeline, submitted to the House Oversight Committee, lists the claim under 14 November 2004.^[6]

The ship

The Wikipedia account describes USS Princeton as follows.^[5]

• Type. A Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser, armed with guns and anti-air, anti-surface and anti-submarine missiles. She was commissioned on 11 February 1989 at the Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and home-ported at Long Beach, California.
• Radar. She was the first of her class to carry the upgraded AN/SPY-1B radar. She was formerly home to two SH-60B LAMPS Mk III Seahawk helicopters, and now carries a pair of MH-60Rs. As of 2026 she is the oldest Ticonderoga-class cruiser still in commission.
• Strike group. In 2003 she was assigned to Cruiser Destroyer Group 5, the Nimitz battle group.
• November 2004. While training in the Pacific in November 2004, the Wikipedia account says, she tracked unidentified objects capable of "accelerating and maneuvering at extraordinary speeds". She called in two F/A-18F fighters from Nimitz, which tracked and filmed the objects.

The encounters

• Radar tracks. Operations Specialist Senior Chief Kevin Day, whose job was to "man the radars and ID everything that flew", said in the documentary The Nimitz Encounters that he first noticed strange tracks on or around 10 November, about 100 miles off San Diego. They came in closely spaced groups of five to ten, at 28,000 feet, moving south at about 100 knots.^[2]
• Recalibration. Voorhis told Popular Mechanics he overheard the Princeton's radar technicians talking about "ghost tracks" and "clutter" on the ship's Cooperative Engagement Capability and Aegis combat systems. The air control systems were taken down and recalibrated to clear what were assumed to be false alarms. Afterwards, he said, the tracks were "actually sharper and clearer". Sometimes they were at 80,000 or 60,000 feet, other times around 30,000 feet at about 100 knots. Their radar cross-sections matched no known aircraft, and they gave no transponder squawk and no IFF (identification friend or foe) response.^[2]
• The intercept. On 14 November 2004 Commander David Fravor, flying an F/A-18 Super Hornet from Nimitz, was sent to investigate. According to the Wikipedia account, Fravor said he was told the Princeton had been tracking unusual aircraft for two weeks. They appeared at 80,000 feet, dropped rapidly toward the sea, and stopped to hover at 20,000 feet. Fravor saw a white, oval object about 40 feet long hovering above a disturbance in the ocean. It rose, mirroring his descent, and then disappeared. Fravor and Alex Dietrich said four people in two aircraft watched it for about five minutes.^[3]
• The video. A second wave of fighters included Chad Underwood, whose aircraft carried an advanced infrared (FLIR) targeting camera. He recorded the video later known as "FLIR1" and coined the name "Tic Tac", partly inspired by a joke in the 1980 film Airplane!. He said he never saw the object with his own eyes, because he was concentrating on tracking it and making sure the tape was running.^[1][3]
• On the Princeton. Petty Officer 3rd Class Jason Turner watched the object's manoeuvres on a monitor aboard the Princeton, and said they astonished him. Voorhis said the "Tic Tac" gave off "a kind of a phosphorus glow" at night as it darted around.^[1][2]
• A longer video? Leading Petty Officer Ryan Weigelt, the power-plant specialist for the SH-60B Seahawk helicopter, said 8 to 10 minutes of video captured the encounter, far longer than the clip that was made public.^[1]

The recordings

The Popular Mechanics interviews, as summarised by 8 News Now and Fox News, contain two accounts of data being collected.^[1][2]

• Voorhis and the Aegis data. Petty Officer 3rd Class Gary Voorhis had fine-tuned the Princeton's radar system after the strange tracks appeared. "These two guys show up on a helicopter, which wasn't uncommon," he said. About 20 minutes after they arrived, his chain of command told him to hand over all the data recordings for the Aegis system.^[1][2]
• Hughes and the Hawkeye drives. Petty Officer Patrick "PJ" Hughes, an aviation technician responsible for securing data recorders, said his commanding officer ordered him to hand over the recently secured hard drives of the E-2 Hawkeye airborne early-warning aircraft. Two people he did not know were with the officer. "They were not on the ship earlier, and I didn't see them come on. I'm not sure how they got there," he said. "We put them in the bags, he took them, then he and the two anonymous officers left."^[1][2]
• "Unknown individuals". Fox News summarised the report as saying two "unknown individuals" took all the data recordings after the incident.^[2] Shellenberger's timeline frames it the same way: two "unknown individuals" came aboard by helicopter, and within 20 minutes a technician was ordered to hand over the data.^[6]

The sources differ on where Hughes was. 8 News Now describes him as securing data recorders "aboard the USS Princeton".^[1] Fox News says he was "miles away from the Princeton" and unaware of the objects at the time.^[2] The Wikipedia account calls him "a data technician who secured recordings from the E-2 Hawkeye aircraft involved".^[3] None of the sources read here name his ship.

Fravor's explanation

Fravor, interviewed on The Fighter Pilot Podcast in January of the year the Popular Mechanics article appeared, offered a mundane explanation for missing recordings. He said his own backup copies of the flight recordings had been lost, and that it was probably a case of tapes being reused.^[1] Fox News quoted him: "You know how it is when you go to and from cruise. Someone goes, 'What are these? Hey, they look like blank 8mm tapes. We'll just use them.'"^[2] On the same podcast, he questioned why investigators had talked to people who were not directly involved in the encounter when they had not questioned him.^[1]

A dissenting account

According to Shellenberger's timeline, on 30 November 2020 Karson Kammerzell, a Navy cryptographic communications operator, said he had been on the Princeton at the time. He said the object that interacted with Fravor's squadron was a triangle. In his view, the Tic Tac story covered up a triangle encounter, and those promoting it, including people linked to AATIP, were part of that cover-up.^[7] (See Karson Kammerzell's Tic Tac account.)

Aftermath

• Going public. The encounter became public on 16 December 2017, when The New York Times reported on the Pentagon's UFO program and published the "FLIR" and "GIMBAL" videos.^[3] The Princeton's Wikipedia account links the disclosure to the revelation of the funding of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.^[5] Fravor had been on record about the encounter since that December.^[1] The videos had been given to the press by Christopher Mellon, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Wired reported that a copy of one had been on a UFO forum since at least 2007.^[3]
• Navy acknowledgement. In September 2019 Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Gough confirmed that the videos were made by naval aviators. She called them part of "a larger issue of an increased number of training range incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena". The Pentagon formally released the three videos on 27 April 2020.^[3] Fox News reported that the Navy had issued new classified guidelines for reporting such incidents in 2019. It also reported that Senator Mark Warner and two other senators were briefed in June 2019.^[2]
• No confirmation of the collection. None of the sources read here record any Navy or Pentagon statement confirming or denying that data was removed from the ships.
• Congress. In 2023 Fravor testified under oath about the encounter before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. He told the committee that the Princeton's radar had detected what operators called "multiple anomalous aerial vehicles" descending 80,000 feet in under a second. He testified alongside the former fighter pilot Ryan Graves and the former intelligence officer David Grusch.^[3]

Assessment

The claim rests on the recollections of two enlisted men, given about fifteen years after the event. As reported, neither says who the visitors were or where the recordings went, and Hughes's own account has his commanding officer taking the drives. The Wikipedia account notes that the incident has drawn mundane explanations, including instrument or software malfunction, artefacts, parallax and other observational errors, and common aircraft or balloons. It also records criticism by the journalism professor Keith Kloor of what he called "thinly-sourced and slanted reporting" around the videos.^[3] The Department of Defense, as of 2020, still described the Nimitz and Roosevelt objects as "unidentified".^[3]

Notes on the earlier version

• Underwood's role. The earlier version called Chad Underwood "another pilot" and a lieutenant. The Wikipedia account describes him as a weapons systems officer and Lieutenant Commander. 8 News Now calls him "Lt. Chad Underwood", which may reflect his rank at the time.^[1][3]
• Fravor's comment. The earlier version said Fravor suggested "the recordings" might have been erased or recorded over by mistake. In the 8 News Now account he was speaking of his own backup copies of the flight recordings, and his comments came from a podcast in January, months before the Popular Mechanics interviews were published.^[1][2]
• Hughes's location. The earlier version did not say where Hughes was serving. The sources disagree, as described above.^[1][2]
• Fravor's testimony date. The earlier version dated Fravor's congressional testimony to July 2023. The Wikipedia account read here gives only the year 2023, so the month is not covered in the sources read here.^[3]
• The New York Times report. The earlier version cited The New York Times' December 2017 article directly. That page refused automated access, so its contents are described here only through the Wikipedia account.^[3][4]

People and topics

• Nimitz Tic Tac encounter — The November 2004 encounter between Navy pilots and a white Tic Tac-shaped object off California.
• U.S. Navy — The U.S. naval service, whose pilots reported the UAP encounters revealed in 2017.
• David Fravor — Navy pilot who saw the 2004 Tic Tac object.
• Alex Dietrich — Navy pilot who saw the 2004 Tic Tac object.
• Chad Underwood — Navy pilot who filmed the FLIR1 video in 2004.
• Gimbal and GoFast videos — The Navy infrared videos of UAP released in 2017–2020.
• The New York Times — The newspaper that revealed AATIP in December 2017.
• AATIP — The Pentagon UAP effort associated with Luis Elizondo, revealed in December 2017.
• Gary Voorhis — Technician aboard the USS Princeton in 2004.
• Kevin Day — Radar operator aboard the USS Princeton in 2004.
• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.

On the Timeline

• Wesley Clark on faster-than-light travel (3 November 2004) — Gen. Wesley Clark says faster-than-light travel is possible.
• Raechel's Eyes (2005) — A woman claims her daughter communicated with a hybrid being about secret projects.

See every 2004 event on the UAP Timeline →

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “USS Nimitz UFO incident”, “USS Princeton (CG-59)”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.