Vietnam "enemy helicopters" and HMAS Hobart
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 7
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| Date | 22 June 2014 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Propulsion & physics (topic) |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 179 |
| Year | 2014 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2014 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 5 |
In June 1968 U.S. and Australian forces near the Demilitarized Zone in Vietnam reported mysterious contacts they took for North Vietnamese helicopters. During the confusion, U.S. Air Force jets mistakenly attacked the Australian destroyer HMAS Hobart, killing two sailors. In 1973 the Air Force's chief of staff publicly called the original sightings "UFO" sightings.[1][2]
The attack
In the early hours of 17 June 1968 Hobart was on surveillance near Tiger Island, following reports of North Vietnamese helicopter activity in the area. At 3:09 a.m. its radar detected an aircraft without an active identification transponder, which made three passes: on the first it fired one missile, on the second two, and the third was broken off when the ship's forward gun fired. Two sailors were killed and eight wounded. Debris showed the missiles were American, and the cruiser USS Boston had also been hit by a missile from another aircraft.[1]
The inquiry
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A U.S. Navy inquiry, with three Royal Australian Navy advisers, examined a series of firing incidents from 15 to 17 June. It found that U.S. patrol boats and a Coast Guard cutter had first come under attack from aircraft believed to be friendly, and that one patrol boat had been sunk; Seventh Air Force F-4 Phantoms sent to respond could not distinguish ships from hovering helicopters on radar and opened fire on Hobart, Boston and the destroyer Edson.[1]
General Brown's remarks
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In October 1973 General George Brown, who had commanded the Seventh Air Force in Vietnam and was then Air Force chief of staff, told reporters that early in the summer of 1968 a series of sightings near the Demilitarized Zone, which he said were called UFO sightings at the time, had set off "quite a battle", with an Australian destroyer taking a hit. He did not say what the objects were.[2][3]
Later claims
According to the testimony, a former analyst said in 2014 that some of the "enemy helicopters" were in fact UAP. The friendly-fire incident is well documented, but the cause of the original radar contacts has never been officially explained; some analysts suggest radar errors or misidentification in a chaotic period of combat.[1][4]
People and topics
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
On the Timeline
_battle_group_with_Australian_ships_1986.JPEG)
- Pahute Mesa vault claim (5 April 2014) — Steven Greer claims a rogue group hides money in a vault at Pahute Mesa.
- Boyd Bushman's final interview (August 2014) — Lockheed scientist Boyd Bushman says before his death that he worked on UAP technology.
See every 2014 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- HMAS Hobart (D 39) — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "On this day: 18 October 1973", Naval Historical Society of Australia · navyhistory.au · archived copy
- "General George S. Brown", Department of the Air Force Historical Support Division · dafhistory.af.mil · archived copy
- "10 UFO stories from the Vietnam War era", Listverse · listverse.com · archived copy
- nexusilluminati.blogspot.com · nexusilluminati.blogspot.com · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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