Kevin Thomas and the Nimitz black triangle

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Contents 4
Kevin Thomas and the Nimitz black triangle
Illustration of a triangle of lights overhead
Illustration: a triangle of lights overhead. An artist's impression drawn for this site, not a photograph of the event.
Date1991
TopicsMilitary encounters (topic), Ocean & underwater (topic)
PeopleKevin Thomas, David Fravor
TestimonyShellenberger testimony, p. 108
Year1991 in UFO history
Timeline1991 on the UAP Timeline
Sources4

Kevin Thomas and the Nimitz black triangle — A Nimitz petty officer says he saw a huge black triangle rise out of the ocean.

Kevin Thomas, a former Navy combat photographer, said in a TV interview that in 1991, while serving aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, he saw a huge black triangle partly out of the water a few hundred yards from the ship. He said it rose and then shot off at enormous speed, and that two men questioned him the next day and told him not to talk about it.

There's no official record of the sighting, and no other named crew members have publicly confirmed it. The Nimitz is famous in UAP history for a later event: the November 2004 "Tic Tac" encounter off California, when pilots including Cmdr. David Fravor chased an unknown object, which became public in 2017.

Thomas's account is one of several reports of large objects emerging from or entering the ocean near Navy ships. Congress has since asked AARO to examine such "transmedium" reports, and AARO has said it's studying underwater cases.

People and topics

Illustration of a jet meeting an unknown object
Illustration: a jet meeting an unknown object. An artist's impression drawn for this site, not a photograph of the event.
  • Kevin Thomas — Navy photographer who described a black triangle rising from the sea near the USS Nimitz in 1991.
  • U.S. Navy — The U.S. naval service, whose pilots reported the UAP encounters revealed in 2017.
  • Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
  • Nimitz Tic Tac encounter — The November 2004 encounter between Navy pilots and a white Tic Tac-shaped object off California.
  • David Fravor — Navy pilot who saw the 2004 Tic Tac object.
  • AARO — The Pentagon office set up in 2022 to investigate UAP.
  • Transmedium — Able to move between air, space and water.

On the Timeline

An example of parallax scrolling using three separate 2D layers
An example of parallax scrolling using three separate 2D layers Photo: NuclearDuckie · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

See every 1991 event on the UAP Timeline →

References

Further reading

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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