NUFORC Sighting 71382

Occurred: 1970-10-15 23:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2009-07-28 14:27 Pacific
Duration: 1 minute
No of observers: 1

Location: San Diego/Pacific Beach, CA, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object, Left a trail, Aircraft nearby

I saw a UFO in the night sky over Pacific Beach in San Diego, & while being trailed by 2 jets firing tracers the object turned north on.

July 2009 My UFO Experience: I was walking up the sidewalk/steps to our south facing home on Law St. in Pacific Beach (San Diego, Ca 92109) in 1970 or 1971, I think about 11 to 12pm when I glanced up at a cold clear night sky & saw a large craft the size of a blimp perhaps with many lights (in fact all I saw were the lights, no outline of the object) approaching to my right & slightly to the north moving silently from east to west. It was being trailed by two fighter jets (I assume from Miramar Naval Airstation or North Island) that were shooting tracers towards it. This obviously grabbed my attention. I had never seen tracers other than in WWII documentaries.

As the craft came to be directly in front of me (well above the roofline of the house to the north), it turned north on a dime and accelerated & vanished in an instant. I realized that it was a UFO when I saw it streak towards LA like a bullet & disappear. The two jets, which I could now hear, continued to follow by slowly arcing to the north. The pilots had to be as totally mystified as I was. No man made craft then or now could have made that maneuver. I thought about reporting this to some authority like the police or the newspaper, but it was late & I just went to bed. I told my family & friends the next day & I combed the San Diego Union to see if anyone else had reported this but found nothing.

This is by far the most incredible & unexplainable thing I have ever witnessed, and to this day I can still visualize it like it happened last night. I have never witnessed a remotely similar event & to my knowledge, no one has ever reported seeing a UFO over San Diego.

I have always wanted to notify an appropriate organization to see if an investigation could locate a Navy report which had to have been filed by the pilots, perhaps two per jet.

From that point forward in my life I have always had a tremendous interest in UFO sightings, documentaries, stories, etc.

I have had a lifelong interest in the manned space program (I still have an old scrapbook of news & magazine articles about the Mercury, Gemini & Apollo programs) as well as astronomy & the knowledge constantly evolving about the Universe. I loved the movie Contact so much that I read Carl Sagan’s novel which was just as awesome.

I have watched some UFO programs on the Discovery Channel & I believe there were several very well documented UFO sightings/encounters near Catalina Island or the Channel Islands around this time. I have been wondering if there is a connection between those events & the one I witnessed. I would love to discuss my experience with a relevant organization in the hopes that it sheds new light or somehow furthers our understanding of this type of phenomenon.




NUFORC Note:

We are grateful to the source of the report for his having submitted. However, talking about a sighting that is at least 38 years old does no good. We are saddened that he did not contact the newspapers there locally, in order to report the event. Date indicated for the sighting is approximate. PD


Posted 2009-08-05

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