Alien Encounter

I don’t want to give too many personal details because I’m not sure what I’m allowed to talk about and what will get government suits knocking on my door. The Pentagon released those three UFO tapes in 2020 so none of this should be too controversial for Uncle Sam. What I will say is that I served in the United States Navy from 2015 to 2019. I spent nearly all my time in the Navy on aircraft carriers, the big ships you see in movies that launch jets off their decks. If you don’t know what I’m talking about check out Top Gun. I highly recommend it.
I wasn’t a pilot or anything cool like that, but I had a good time in the Navy. My best memories are from when I was part of Seventh Fleet. Yokosuka was a fun place to be stationed. At least when the sailors and marines there weren’t doing something stupid, it was fun. The command would take away off base privileges if we got too rowdy in town and the local authorities complained. Sometimes the Japanese could be a bit touchy about stuff.
I won’t mention any specific ships, but we patrolled the pacific around Japan, China, Indonesia – basically all-around Asia and the south pacific.
Things were a little hot back then, still are I hear, because China keeps trying to assert its dominance in the south China sea. Dumb things, like building bases near major international shipping lanes and then claiming that part of the sea as their territorial waters. Real geopolitical pissing contest stuff.
Regardless, we were always on mission, this is around 2017 and 2018, playing chicken with the Chinese Navy, making sure they knew we didn’t respect their imaginary boundaries by flying over them. We weren’t looking for a fight or anything, but we always prepared like one would break out. It’s standard Navy operating procedure.
I was an Aviation Ordinancemen (AO for short), so it was my job to make sure the planes had their weapons serviced and ammo fully stocked for a firefight. “The dogs with the biggest teeth fight the least”, my Chief always said.
I was out on the carrier deck one evening loading some ordinance onto a recently returned jet when I heard some chatter on the comms. My headset was a bit crappy so I couldn’t get some of it, but I saw a yellow shirt (the guys who wave the jets in) looking up in the sky intently.
I asked the yellow shirt what was up, and he said one of our pilots saw something weird in the air. I was a little jumpy when I heard that. We were close to the disputed border, and I figured China launched a few planes of their own to test our nerve. I didn’t want to be a part of an international incident.
The pilot was circling the ship at different altitudes. I could make out over the comms that he was searching for something that dropped off his radar. This went on for a while. Eventually he was ordered to land and refuel.
I didn’t know the pilot, but I’d seen him around the chow hall and the gym. He had a pretty heavy deadlift, so I’ve noticed him before. I went over to his plane and checked on his armaments. I knew they were good because my buddy Ryan worked the day shift and his crew put them on, but I wanted to get close enough to hear what the pilot was saying to the yellow shirt. It’s crazy loud on the flight deck so you have to be right on top of people to hear them.
The pilot didn’t say much, just that he caught something on his radar that was moving strangely, not like a jet. Not even obeying basic physics. That was creepy. Maybe a new kind of Chinese drone. Top brass must have liked the idea even less than me because we dropped anchor and stayed put for another 3 days.
We had to work port and starboard, meaning half the ship works for 12 hours and the other half works 12, launching and refueling planes on loop while they searched for the strange object. It was miserable. We had just enough time after our shift to shower, eat, and sleep before we had to muster back on the flight deck.
The command refused to use the word UFO, but some of the crew was starting to say it couldn’t have been a new Chinese drone and the pilot who saw it was clearly freaked out.
I’ve never been a big believer in UFOs, but on the third night of anchor I saw something that I know human technology cannot do. I was on the flight deck checking the missiles on a jet when an extremely bright, blueish light flooded the sky. It wasn’t so harsh that we couldn’t look at it, but it somehow still illuminated everything perfectly evenly. The strangest thing about it was how the light looked blue, silver, or green depending on what angle you looked at it.
The light shot backwards and then up in a zig zag pattern. It didn’t accelerate or slow down between maneuvers. It stopped and started like inertia and air resistance didn’t exist. It moved like a giant invisible hand was jerking it around in the sky, like a kid playing with a toy airplane.
The light was still for a few minutes and then slowly circled the carrier deck in a wide arc. It was about a quarter of a mile away, but the light was easy to spot.
Our comms gear was going wild. I could hear snippets of voices trying to give us orders, but a metallic humming blocked any coherent messages from getting through. A Green Shirt finally pieced enough of the message together to know they wanted us to launch every available jet that was currently on the deck.
We launched the first plane as fast as we could and watched it take off and bank wide left to approach the humming blue/silver/green light. I don’t think anyone on the flight deck was breathing as the plane approached.
When the jet got within a few hundred yards the light just dropped out of the sky like it was a puppet whose strings were cut. We all ran to the edge of the deck, but there was no splash or sound of impact. The light was just gone.
For four more days we worked continuously to launch and land planes, searching every inch of ocean for a sign of that strange aircraft. I even heard they pulled one of our ballistic submarines from their post to search the seabed. They never touch the submarines for anything, they are our greatest nuclear deterrent.
We spent another two days in debriefing rooms where they told everyone on the deck and the control tower who saw the incident to keep our mouths shut. They used legal language of course, but the message was the same.
Not sure if this is still supposed to be hush-hush, what with the release of UFO videos, but I thought it was time I shared my personal experience with them. If anyone from the government reads this, my name is “John Smith”.