NUFORC Sighting 29252

Occurred: 1965-08-12 21:30 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2003-06-17 21:36 Pacific
Duration: < 60 sec
No of observers: 1

Location: Fort Ord, CA, USA

Shape: Triangle
Characteristics: Lights on object

Triangurlar object peeks at U.S. Army recruits following display of live fire at Fort Ord, CA. around Aug. 12, 1965.

On or near Aug. 12, 1965 a couple/few days before graduating basic training at Fort Ord, our company was to udergo live-fire obstacle course on or near the firing range area.

Prior to the exercise, following lecture the sun had already settled and it was quite dark. The cadre got us ready to go and yelling gung-ho style, then surprised us recruits with a sudden firing of 3, 30-caliber machine guns. The tracers flew from right-to-left over the range where we were shortly to crawl over. During that live fire, I noticed the track of the tracer rounds as they hit into the rocks to our left. Some of the rounds richocheted up and away from our location where I could discern what appeared to be the ridge line, estimating 60-100 feet up and 1000 yards away.

Suddenly, the machine-gun fire stopped, and each of us recruits became silent in awe of what we had seen, and extremely scared at what we knew were to undergo.

The lecture, to a now quiet audience, continued. A few minutes, later, my eyes returned back to where the tracer rounds had been landing. I noticed the stars over and behind what I thought was the ridge of a hill no higher than 100 feet, but still about a thousand yards away.

This is when I noticed the first light come over the ridge; no noise, nothing to overcome the voice of the person presenting instruction. I had expected to hear a helicopter but heard no noise. The light slowly drifted above the ridge line, I believe amber in color. When the second light appeared, I still expected to hear a helicopter but there was no noise but the voice of the lecture. If was about the time that the final light of the triangle made it over the ridge. It should have been a helicopter! But no, it began to "turn", more of a slow rotation, as it might have been "peeking" over the ridge. The "craft" was at an estimated "pitch" of 40-50 degrees as if it had followed some contour up to and over the ridge. If I was to estimate its size based on its distance from me, I would say 60 feet on a side, and not quite equilateral; The angle between the two "forward wing edges" might have been about 50-60 degrees. I do not know what was over, or what it looked like over the ridge.

Shortly after the entire "craft" broke the ridge line, was when I noticed its triangurlar shape as a black triangle blocking of the stars in the background. It continued to quietly rotate/turn back and down behind the ridge. None of the approximately 100 recruits I was with made any sign of having seen the same.

I was eighteen years old at the time, fresh out of high school, no job, just entering the military so that they would not draft me. Following my basic training, I went to work as a radio-specialist in the Army Security Agency and finished my military career three years and 11 months later. No more UFOs after that....

This inforamtion was provided to support, and possbily time, a previously posted witnessing of a "round" object between 1965 and 1967 in the same area. I wish someone could support mine after all this time…

NUFORC Note:

Date is approximate. PD

Posted 2003-06-18