United States.USS Gyatt · a destroyer and Navy fighters track a fast object

On November 19, 1964, the guided-missile destroyer USS Gyatt, working with a Navy F-8 Crusader fighter at 35,000 feet (10,700 meters) inside the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Range, detected a high-speed, high-altitude object on radar. The object slowed and settled to the Crusader's left (at nine o'clock, in the clock-face terms pilots use for directions), about nine miles out, keeping that position relative to the fighter. The pilot lit the afterburner, the extra fuel injection that gives maximum thrust, and tried to close the distance; at about five miles, the object accelerated extremely in a 20-degree climb and pulled away rapidly.

It remained on the Gyatt's radar for twenty-one minutes, and as the Crusader returned to Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station, it closed again from astern to four miles. The pilot, under full moonlight and good visibility, described the object as delta-shaped, about the size of a jet fighter.

The Gyatt's radar was an AN/SPS-49 undergoing an evaluation program, which is why a camera was recording the scope. According to the initial report, it registered a track in excess of 3,800 knots; the later analysis of the scope photographs, however, gave the object a course of about 165° relative to the Gyatt and a relative speed of about 485 knots. Five days later, on November 24, another Crusader flying at Mach 0.99 (just under the speed of sound) at 45,000 feet (13,700 meters) was rapidly left behind by a high-speed, high-altitude object held by the weapons range radar.

The case reached the highest levels of the CIA: briefing notes prepared for Walter N. Elder, special assistant to Director John McCone, summarize the episode with the same figures (speed, altitude, behavior) and record that the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) had no further information and that the CIA had asked it to report similar incidents going forward. On February 1, 1965, the Assistant Director for Special Activities (whose office ran the A-12 spy plane) signed a first memo. It records that the commanding officer at Ramey had identified the UFO as a YF-12A and that, through that office's efforts, Naval Intelligence was "finally convinced" it was not a YF-12A or similar category Lockheed aircraft. The memo also asked the Office of Scientific Intelligence to analyze the original radar film.

The reply memo, dated February 11, 1965, was handled under BYEMAN control channels, the system by which the CIA compartmented the secrets of its reconnaissance programs, with access restricted to Project OXCART (the A-12 spy plane program, predecessor to the SR-71). It reviewed the radar photography and associated correspondence and reached a different conclusion from the initial reports: that there was "in fact" no high-altitude ultra-high-speed UFO north of Puerto Rico in the November 18-24 period, but "apparently valid tracks and/or observations of unidentified aircraft" on November 16, 17, 18, 19 and 24.

On the specific November 19 incident, the analysis concluded the "so-called UFO" was "probably a delta-wing fighter of a type having significantly higher climb performance than the F-8C" at the 50,000-foot altitude regime; the memo is signed by Donald F. Chamberlain, Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence.

The U.S. intelligence apparatus investigated this case with a military radar, scope photography, a pilot's visual corroboration, and a final analysis that reached the desk of the CIA Director's assistant. The 3,800 knots of the initial report, repeated in the briefing notes, did not survive the analysis of the radar photographs, which gave the object a relative speed of about 485 knots.

The OXCART control channel through which the memos traveled invites the thought of a classified U.S. aircraft, but the file points elsewhere: the Office of Special Activities, which ran the A-12, wrote that it had convinced Naval Intelligence that the object was not the YF-12A or any similar category of Lockheed aircraft, after the commanding officer at Ramey had identified it as such. Most likely the channel was used because that office had to rule out that the contact was its own aircraft.

It was not an unusual check: the CIA's history of those programs says Project Blue Book investigators "regularly called on" the project staff in Washington to check reported UFO sightings against U-2 flight logs. The same history explains Ramey's suspicion: on February 29, 1964 President Johnson had announced the "A-11", and the aircraft revealed to the public was the YF-12A interceptor.

The CIA's conclusion is that of an aircraft: "probably a delta-wing fighter" with better climb performance than the F-8C at 50,000 feet, and unidentified aircraft in the other contacts from November 16 to 24. The memo does not say whose fighter it was. Its next paragraph does raise a concrete option: the MiG-21, a delta-wing fighter, had a reconnaissance version with an AFA-39 camera and possibly signals-intelligence equipment, the Gyatt was 325 nautical miles from Cuba, well within its range, and the missile tests scheduled in the area made it an attractive target; but the document itself says there was no evidence at hand to suggest or deny any MiG-21 reconnaissance activity based in Cuba. What remains open is whose aircraft it was, more than whether it was an aircraft.