SIGHTING: BAHAMAS

Witness Testimony

"Myself and another person witnessed two "ghost rockets" while onboard a ship at seaIn 1985, a year after leaving the Coast Guard, I landed a job with the RCA Service Company at the Atlantic Underwater Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC) base on Andros Island in the Bahamas. I lived and worked on Andros for 13 months as a crew member on several different torpedo retrieval boats and also on AUTEC vessels that deployed sensitive sonar testing equipment in the Tongue of the Ocean -- affectionately rendered as the acronym TOTO.During one voyage on an AUTEC vessel in the summer of 1985, we were underway in the channel between the north end of Andros and New Providence islands, bound for a port in West Palm Beach, Florida.During the midnight to four o'clock a.m. watch, my watch partner and I sighted what I would describe as two "ghost rockets" that flew side by side over our ship on a west to east trajectory. These "rockets" were highly unusual as neither made any sound, were traveling at an oddly slow rate of speed and were visible to us for about 15 seconds. However, the rockets left behind contrails that glowed brightly and which were "multi-colored," in that the contrail smoke changed from white to green to blue to pink and then disappeared completely after about ten minutes. (I estimate that they passed over us at an altitude of about 500 to 1000 feet; both rockets were white-colored and perhaps 25 to 40 feet in length).I never have been able to determine to a 100% certainty whether or not those "rockets" were a part of some sort of secret Navy submarine or destroyer test being conducted in the area; I have always assumed that they were not and for good reason: As an AUTEC vessel, we would definitely have been informed that such a test was being undertaken and subsequently, warned to stay out of the area. This had always been the Navy's practice during similar rocket firing tests that I witnessed while working at sea in the same area.After returning from the voyage, I asked a friend at the AUTEC base who worked as a sort of "air and ocean traffic controller" about the incident. He told me that he had no knowledge of any sort of test-firing of rockets on that night and due to the sensitive nature of his job, he certainly would have been in a position to know. (And as a very close friend of mine, he would have told me even if it was supposed to be "top secret"). Again, I have never heard any satisfactory explanation as to exactly what it was we saw that night. I have also never heard of rockets that travel in such close proximity to each other, i.e., the "side by side" flight that we witnessed, or at such an unusually slow speed. Since that incident occurred, I have learned that there is a known history of so-called ghost rocket sightings in other parts of the world, particularly in Sweden."