Vietnam "enemy helicopters" and HMAS Hobart

Vietnam "enemy helicopters" and HMAS Hobart

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	6

The Vietnam "enemy helicopters" and HMAS Hobart episode links a deadly 1968 friendly-fire incident to later UFO claims. In mid-June 1968, U.S. and Australian forces near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in Vietnam reported night-time contacts they took for North Vietnamese helicopters. In the early hours of 17 June, U.S. Air Force jets sent against them mistakenly attacked the Australian guided-missile destroyer HMAS Hobart, killing two sailors and wounding eight.^[1] In October 1973 General George S. Brown, by then Air Force chief of staff, recalled at a press conference that the contacts "were called enemy helicopters" and that "we never found any enemy".^[5] News agencies reported his remarks as describing a series of UFO sightings.^[2] In 2014 a man described as a former Vietnam-era intelligence analyst, Harry Howard, said he had briefed Brown. According to Michael Shellenberger's 2024 UFO timeline, he claimed that some of the era's "enemy helicopters" were in fact UAP.^[6]

HMAS Hobart

According to the Wikipedia account, Hobart (D 39) was one of three Perth-class guided-missile destroyers of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). She was built in the United States as a variant of the U.S. Navy's Charles F. Adams class and commissioned in 1965.^[1]

• Vietnam. In March 1967 she became the first RAN combat ship deployed to the Vietnam War, beginning six-month rotations that ran until late 1971. On her first tour she fired over 10,000 rounds at 1,050 targets and was fired on ten times without casualties.
• 1968 deployment. She relieved HMAS Perth on 31 March 1968 and joined Operation Sea Dragon, the interdiction of North Vietnamese coastal traffic. After gun problems on several destroyers, her captain decided to fire the 5-inch guns only in emergencies. On 11 June she returned to the Sea Dragon area with USS Theodore E. Chandler, and USS Edson joined them. Boat traffic between the mainland and Tiger Island was a priority.
• Later. She served in the Cyclone Tracy relief effort, was modernised in the late 1970s, was decommissioned in 2000, and was sunk as a dive wreck off South Australia.

The attack (17 June 1968)

The Wikipedia account describes the attack as follows.^[1]

• The mission. During the night of 16–17 June the three destroyers were ordered on surveillance around Tiger Island, because of reports of North Vietnamese helicopter activity.
• First pass. At 03:09 Hobart's radar picked up an aircraft approaching with no IFF transponder active. At 03:14 it fired a single missile. The missile killed one sailor, wounded two, and damaged the chief petty officers' mess, the air-search radar, the missile control compartments and the funnels.
• Second pass. Two minutes later it fired two more missiles, which hit almost together. They killed another sailor, wounded six, and caused major damage near the Ikara magazine. That magazine was empty, so no fire broke out.
• Third pass. The aircraft turned for a third run, but was driven off when Hobart's forward turret, firing under independent control, sent five rounds at it.
• Aftermath. At 03:30 Edson reported coming under fire, and the destroyers formed up for anti-aircraft defence. At 05:15 they joined the cruiser USS Boston, which had been hit by a missile from another aircraft, and the destroyer USS Blandy. Debris collected from the ships showed the missiles were of U.S. Air Force origin. Hobart was repaired at Subic Bay and returned to the gunline on 25 July.

The inquiry

The U.S. Navy held an inquiry into a series of firing incidents between 15 and 17 June, with three RAN officers attending as technical advisers.^[1]

• The patrol boats. A few hours before the attack on Hobart, Patrol Craft Fast PCF-12 and PCF-19 and the Coast Guard cutter Point Dume were attacked by what they identified at the time as hovering enemy aircraft. These were in fact believed to be friendly planes. PCF-19 was sunk.
• The Phantoms. F-4 Phantoms of the Seventh Air Force, responding several hours after the patrol-boat attack, could not distinguish the radar returns of surface ships from those of airborne helicopters. They opened fire on Hobart, Boston and Edson.

A popular account on Listverse adds details not found in the inquiry summary. It says Australian spotters saw about 30 floating lights near the DMZ, that a swift boat's sinking killed five crew, and that no wreckage of enemy helicopters was found the next morning. It says the incident "was chalked up to atmospheric disturbances or possible helicopter activity".^[4]

General Brown's remarks (1973)

General George S. Brown had commanded the Seventh Air Force in Vietnam. In October 1973, as Air Force chief of staff, he spoke about the episode.^[2][4][5]

• His words. A transcript quoted by Harry Howard, attributed to a Department of Defense transcript of a press conference in Illinois on 16 October 1973, has Brown saying: "They weren't called UFOs. They were called enemy helicopters." The contacts were seen only at night, in certain places, around the DMZ in the early summer of 1968. This "resulted in quite a little battle", in which an Australian destroyer took a hit, and "we never found any enemy, we only found ourselves". He added that the same thing happened, always after dark, at Pleiku in the Highlands in 1969.^[5]
• The news reports. The Naval Historical Society of Australia, under 18 October 1973, records a UPI and AP release quoting Brown: "Early in the summer of 1968 near the Demilitarised Zone, there was a series of [UFO] sightings which set off quite a battle, with an Australian destroyer taking a hit." The society identifies the destroyer as Hobart.^[2] In the society's quotation the word "UFO" appears in square brackets, which marks it as an editorial insertion.
• Interpretation. Listverse writes that Brown believed the Hobart incident was a case of UFO interference in military operations, though the government had grouped such sightings under "enemy helicopter activity".^[4] In the transcript he did not say what the objects were.^[5]
• Career. Brown later served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from 1974 to 1978.^[5]

Harry Howard's claims (2014)

In June 2014 the Nexus Illuminati blog republished a "Special Report – Black Triangles" by Harry (or "Harv") Howard.^[5]

• Briefing Brown. Howard wrote that he often briefed Brown when he was an intelligence officer at Seventh Air Force headquarters in Vietnam. After the first briefing, he said, Brown sent him a note: "It's alright if you choose to wear your glasses."
• Black triangles. His main subject was "black triangles", which he called "The Worst Kept Secret". He argued that very secret U.S. aircraft are buried too deep in black budgets to trace, as the U-2, SR-71 and F-117A were for years. He said black triangles were funded variously from "Star Wars" money and from funds the Pentagon had lost.

Shellenberger's timeline summarises Howard as claiming that some "enemy helicopters" in intelligence reports of the era were actually UAP, that some black triangles were black-budget craft funded by lost money, cost overruns and SDI funds, and that the craft manipulate gravity. It adds: "No evidence of his claims are given."^[6]

Assessment

The friendly-fire attack on Hobart is well documented. The U.S. Navy inquiry traced it to Air Force F-4s that could not tell ships from helicopters on radar, after earlier reports of hovering aircraft.^[1] What caused the original "helicopter" contacts has not been officially explained in the sources read here. Brown's own words suggest the "enemy" was never found, and his recollection was later recast in press reports as a UFO story.^[2][5] Howard's 2014 claims, by the timeline's own assessment, came without evidence.^[6]

Notes on the earlier version

• Brown's wording. The earlier version said Brown described sightings "which he said were called UFO sightings at the time". The transcript quoted by Howard has him saying the opposite: "They weren't called UFOs. They were called enemy helicopters." The word "UFO" appears in brackets in the news-agency version.^[2][5]
• Date of the remarks. The earlier version dated Brown's remarks to October 1973. The transcript is dated 16 October 1973, and the news release is recorded under 18 October.^[2][5]
• Explanations. The earlier version said "some analysts suggest radar errors or misidentification". The inquiry summary read here attributes the attack on the ships to the F-4 crews' inability to distinguish ships from helicopters on radar. Listverse mentions atmospheric disturbances. Other analysts' views are not covered in the sources read here.^[1][4]
• Brown's fact sheet. The Air Force historical fact sheet on Brown cited in the earlier version refused automated access.^[3]

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.

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See every 2014 event on the UAP Timeline →

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “HMAS Hobart (D 39)”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.