Beyond Area 51

by Mack Maloney

  After he died, Gleason’s third wife donated his huge collection of UFO books to the University of Miami library. He left nothing in his estate to indicate whether the story of his trip to Homestead Air Force Base was true or not—no evidence, no notes to friends or family.

  This was no surprise as, again, there were very few people in or out of show business whom Gleason trusted to talk to about UFOs. But according to published reports, one person he did confide in was Bob Considine, a famous and highly influential columnist for the Hearst newspaper chain.

  The two men would frequently dine at a famous New York City restaurant owned by Jackie’s friend Toots Shor and argue about the existence of UFOs. During these lively debates, Gleason tried very hard to convince Considine, a nonbeliever, that UFOs were real, telling him that pilots on both sides—the Allies and the Axis—saw UFOs during World War II. Gleason also was said to have claimed that as many as four presidents had told him that they knew UFOs existed.

  But Considine would not budge… until one day, when an Air Force officer happened to be in Shor’s restaurant and overheard the two men arguing.

  This man was no ordinary officer. He was General Emmett “Rosie” O’Donnell, commander in chief of U.S. Pacific Air Forces from 1959 to 1963 and leader of the first large-scale attack on Tokyo during World War II. O’Donnell was a war hero and someone who was a straightforward, no-nonsense type of guy.

  That day, after hearing Gleason and Considine, O’Donnell walked over to their table and politely interrupted them, then said two words to Considine: “Jackie’s right.”

  8

  The Navy’s Area 51

  The Weirdest Edge of the Triangle

  More than fifty ships and a thousand people have vanished inside the Bermuda Triangle over the past few hundred years. At least twenty airplanes have gone missing there as well. For some people, these disappearances defy explanation.

  Add in tales of massive rogue waves and weird electromagnetic storms and claims of time warps, wormholes, gigantic methane bubbles and compasses that just won’t work, and it seems the isosceles-shaped region whose vertexes are Bermuda, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico, has earned its reputation for being a very mysterious and dangerous place.

  The Bahamas, or at least most of them, are located inside the Bermuda Triangle; they provide just about all the landmass for what is generally considered a deep-sea phenomenon. Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that the popular tropical islands are steeped in their own kind of strangeness.

  Back in 1940, world-famous psychic Edgar Cayce predicted a piece of Atlantis would reveal itself in 1968 or 1969 off the east coast of North America. That prophecy apparently came true right on schedule when in 1968 dozens of enormous hand-cut stones were discovered in eighteen feet of water off the Bahamian island of Bimini. The stones, dubbed the Bimini Road, are thought to be at least four thousand years old.

  There are more reports, from sources such as Newsweek, that a large pyramid may also have been found off Bimini and that other enigmatic underwater formations—some looking eerily like Stonehenge—have been discovered off Andros, the largest of the Bahamian islands. Some researchers believe all these artifacts are leftovers from the ancient civilization of Atlantis.

  The Bahamas also hold legends of sea monsters that are part squid, part octopus and part shark. These monsters are said to live in the famous Bahamian blue holes, the unnatural-looking structures that dot the islands and whose origins are also in some dispute.

  On those same islands, tales are plentiful of mysterious monkey-like creatures called Chickcharnies that are almost never seen but will attack and kill any human that approaches them.

  The Bahamas are also rife with ghost stories, shamanism and the practice of voodoo. Ghost ships have been reported sailing the islands’ waters for centuries.

  Even Christopher Columbus wrote of seeing mysterious lights flashing on the horizon where the following day he would find land. That land, Samana Cay, is one of the Bahamas’ outer islands.

  Or how about the “electronic fog,” that ethereal vapor that Bahamas-bound pilots have reported surrounding their aircraft and flying along with them in otherwise clear weather.

  Then there’s the most famous Bermuda Triangle case of all: the disappearance of Flight 19. On December 5, 1945, five Navy Avenger dive-bombers vanished while on a training mission. A large amphibious rescue plane sent to search for them also went missing. No wreckage was ever found of any of the airplanes, and no sign ever of the twenty-seven lost airmen. A lot of the drama that day involved the Bahamas.

  A case can be made that, added all together, the strangest incidents inside the Bermuda Triangle—missing planes and ships, sea monsters, island monsters, baffling fog, ghosts and ghost ships, as well as the possible rising of Atlantis and many UFO sightings—occur in or near the Bahamas.

  So it’s odd, then, that in the middle of all this the U.S. Navy decided to build a very top-secret base.

  The Official Word

  This secret base is called the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center, or AUTEC.

  Built in 1954 on Andros Island, which is located just south of Bimini, according to the U.S. Navy’s website, “AUTEC provides instrumented operational areas in a real world environment to satisfy research, development, test and evaluation requirements and operational performance assessment of war fighter readiness in support of the full spectrum of maritime warfare.”

  Classic military-speak…

  But to understand the official explanation of AUTEC, one must first understand something called the Tongue of the Ocean. Commonly referred to as “Toto,” it’s a deep ocean basin located between the Bahamian islands of Andros and New Providence. Twenty miles wide by 150 miles long, Toto is more than six thousand feet deep in some spots and has a relatively flat bottom.

  The main support base for AUTEC is just astride Toto on the east coast of Andros Island, and the up-front, day-to-day activity there probably includes training new submarine commanders, testing new submarine-launched weapons systems and performing deepwater shakedown exercises for newly constructed submarines.

  But in the Navy’s own words, it has top-secret gear at AUTEC that can track up to sixty-three underwater targets simultaneously. Moreover, its significant land-based radar systems can spot anything flying within five hundred nautical miles of the facility, up to heights of seventy thousand feet.

  How this technology aids in the “operational performance assessment of war fighter readiness in support of the full spectrum of maritime warfare” is a question best left to the experts. But simply having gear on hand that can find so many things under the water and so high in the sky has led some in the conspiracy-centric community to question the Navy’s explanation about what really goes on at AUTEC.

  Stealth Subs and Wormholes

  Alternative theories abound. The Navy is secretly testing its new hypersonic rail gun at AUTEC, a fearsome electromagnetic weapon that can propel nonexplosive projectiles to speeds of up to six thousand miles per hour. The Navy has built massive underwater channels near AUTEC, tunnels that allow U.S. nuclear submarines to transit to an even more secret base inland on Andros Island. The Navy is working on making its nuclear submarines “invisible” through the latest in stealth technology.

  Other theories are more way-out. AUTEC contains a star gate through which humans can travel to other star systems. Or has mini-wormholes that lead to another universe. Or Edgar Cayce was right and the Bahamas are actually the top of what was once Atlantis, and the Navy built AUTEC there to exploit the secrets of that ancient yet highly advanced civilization. That would make sense if you believed that Toto was created by some cataclysm worthy of Plato’s Atlantis.

  Mostly, though, AUTEC is thought to be the “Navy’s Area 51.”

  UFOs over AUTEC

  AUTEC shares some similarities with that top-secret Nevada base. Both are highly classified areas in very unusual locations. Practically nothing about what goes on at either
place is available for public scrutiny. And both are sewn up extremely tight when it comes to security.

  But also, much like Area 51, there’s lot of UFO activity reported around AUTEC.

  Here are just three of many puzzling cases:

  THE LITTLE SUN

  One highly unusual sighting, made in the 1980s, came from the teenage son of a Navy officer assigned to AUTEC. He and several friends were passing the time on a beach across from the top-secret facility. It was a very dark night, with no moon. Suddenly the beach, the water and a nearby harbor lit up as if it was daytime. Startled, the teens looked up to see a large circular object racing across the sky. They described it as moving very fast and being as bright as a little sun.

  As they watched it go over their heads, the object suddenly broke up into four separate pieces. An instant later, these pieces completely disappeared, turning everything back to pitch-black again.

  In all, the sighting lasted about thirty seconds.

  SHRINKAGE REPORTED

  As reported in August of 2010, this sighting was made by a civilian contractor who actually worked at AUTEC. He was walking the beach on his day off when he heard a helicopter approaching. Looking up at the aircraft as it went over, he noticed a strange object flying nearby only about five hundred feet off the water. The object was metallic in color and moving west to east. It had no lights and made no noise but was moving extremely fast. As the witness watched in amazement, the object came to a complete stop over a nearby island. It hung there for a moment, then suddenly shrank down to the size of a bird and vanished. As reported by the witness, all this happened on a perfectly clear day.

  PARADE OF UFOs

  In what might be the strangest UFO sighting over the Bahamas—and one of the strangest sightings anywhere—on the night of January 10, 1985, hundreds of people on New Providence Island, which is right across the Toto from AUTEC, observed what many of them described as a huge UFO leading an almost endless line of smaller, extremely bright objects across the sky.

  This unexplainable array was estimated to be at least five thousand feet high. The lighted objects made no noise; in fact, many who saw them remarked on the eerie silence as the UFOs moved in perfect unison.

  Writing the next day in the daily Nassau Guardian, columnist Rod Attrill said, “Whatever it was just kept coming and coming, with more and more bright lights following from behind. Within seconds a majestic procession was trailing across the sky, some brighter than the others, but all maintaining perfect speed and position in relation to the others.”

  The object leading this spectacle was described as bulbous and teardrop-shaped and to some witnesses nothing less than gigantic. One witness described it as being shiny metal with lights coming from the sides as if through windows. Another saw it as something akin to the body of a wingless plane with its cabin lights shining.

  According to Attrill, based on the arc of sky covered by the objects, at five thousand feet high this lead object might have been a staggering half mile in length. Just how long the trail itself was proved to be incalculable, but it was hundreds of miles long at the very least.

  No explanation has ever been given for the bizarre sighting.

  From UFOs to USOs

  But there’s an unusual twist when it comes to AUTEC and UFOs, because in addition to many unexplained aerial sightings around the secret facility, there’s been a lot of USO activity reported in the area as well.

  USOs, as in unidentified submerged objects, are mysterious things seen in the ocean that, just like UFOs, can’t be easily explained. Some researchers believe USOs are simply UFOs emerging from the ocean; others see them as a completely different phenomenon.

  Physical descriptions of USOs are usually similar to those of UFOs—that is, disc-shaped or cylindrical objects, or glowing spheres. Frequently USOs are seen traveling at speeds faster than any Earth-based underwater vessels. Some have been reported moving as fast as five hundred knots when submerged—frankly impossible by our current laws of physics.

  With thanks to www.abovetopsecret.com and the National UFO Reporting Center, below are some classic USO incidents that have happened near AUTEC over the years.

  THE FREQUENT VISITOR

  A particularly strange USO has been seen regularly off Andros Island in recent years. This craft resembles a UFO in shape and is said to move extremely fast, both under the water and in the air.

  One witness saw this mystery craft close up while sailing off Andros. Spotting something moving along the surface of the water and thinking it was a whale, the witness steered toward it. But upon getting closer, he realized the object was hardly a whale. Rather, it was disc-shaped and made of gleaming metal in what he described as being an ultramodern design.

  As the witness watched from just a short distance away, the craft rose to the surface of the water and began streaking along the surface at what the witness described as extremely high speed. It traveled like this for a few moments before lifting into the skies and disappearing overhead.

  UNDER A STRANGE LAGOON

  In an incident first reported in 2008, four people cruising on a yacht lost their radio and all electrical power soon after anchoring in a lagoon close to AUTEC. Moments later, the yacht’s passengers saw five lights beneath the surface of the lagoon moving at incredible speed. The water was only about twenty feet deep and crystal clear. The witnesses estimated the lights were moving at least 150 knots or more, without leaving any discernible wake.

  The lights themselves were bright yellow and a few feet in diameter. They made no noise but were performing incredible turns at full speed while submerged. Even though the yacht’s captain had been involved in top-secret operations around the Caribbean while in the U.S. Navy, he later stated he’d never seen anything like these things.

  At one point, the lights came together to form a solid disc-shaped metallic object. The astonished witnesses then saw this object rise out of the water and hover about twelve feet above the surface. It was so close to them that they could hear water dripping from it as it hung in the air. Then the object shot straight up and was gone in an instant.

  As soon as the object disappeared, the yacht’s electricity and radio came back on.

  COLLISION COURSE

  In the summer of 1984, the naval support ship USS Yellowstone was sailing past Andros Island, heading north toward its home port of Norfolk, Virginia. The night was calm. At three a.m. a sailor on watch noticed a green glowing spot on the water’s surface about a mile in front of the ship. Brighter and more sharply defined than the bioluminescence most ships leave in their wakes, this spot was something out of the ordinary, the sailor realized.

  By the time he radioed the ship’s bridge with a warning, the green glow was less than a half mile away and coming on fast. The sailor thought it might be a research submarine, albeit a very speedy one. But whatever it was, he was convinced his ship was going to collide with it.

  A few seconds later, the green flash went by the Yellowstone’s starboard side, not twenty feet away. The sailor got a clear look at it for the first time and said the glow was actually a sharply defined object about forty feet in diameter and perfectly circular in shape. It was at least ten feet thick and only about six feet below the water’s surface. There was no sound and definitely no visible wake.

  By the time others on the ship’s bridge could react, the object was long gone.

  The Navy and the Unknown

  When people discuss UFO encounters with the U.S. military, usually the first and sometimes the only service mentioned is the U.S. Air Force.

  This is understandable. The USAF is America’s premier air service. Fighters, bombers, transport aircraft, ICBMs, satellites. The few official U.S. government investigations into UFOs were done by the Air Force. The famous, if ill-fated, Project Blue Book was an Air Force endeavor. Because UFOs are mostly an airborne mystery, they usually land in the lap of the U.S. Air Force.

  Yet the U.S. Navy has had its own experiences with UFOs�
��extensive ones, both in the air and under the surface of the ocean.

  During World War II, Navy pilots fighting the Japanese in the Pacific theater encountered foo fighters with almost the same frequency as their Army Air Force brethren did battling the Nazis over war-torn Europe. There are reports of UFOs trailing U.S. Navy ships during those Pacific operations and of more than a few USO incidents as well. (In fact, according to Keith Chester, author of Strange Company, the first in-depth accounting of aerial phenomenon observed during World War II, there may be many U.S. Navy Pacific theater reports regarding such things yet to be released or discovered in existing files.)

  Navy pilots also encountered many UFOs during the Korean War (1950–1953), and Navy ships encountered them off the coast of that embattled nation as well. Yet it was the Air Force that took a lot of heat for not admitting U.S. military pilots were spotting UFOs during this so-called Forgotten War. In 1952, during a large NATO exercise called “Mainbrace,” UFOs harassed a huge naval force that included a half dozen U.S. Navy aircraft carriers and many other surface ships. Hundreds if not thousands of sailors saw these objects—and many clear (but later impounded) photographs were taken of them. Yet officially the Navy has always kept quiet on the incident.

  The same is true in one of the most spectacular sightings of the fifties, indeed in all of UFO history, when on February 10, 1956, a Navy transport plane carrying Navy aircrews home from Europe encountered an enormous flying disc a few hundred miles off the coast of Newfoundland. More than one hundred Navy personnel were on this plane and watched as the six-hundred-foot-long disc maneuvered effortlessly around their aircraft. Yet it was U.S. Air Force investigators who debriefed the passengers when the plane eventually landed in Gander.

  Even more bizarre, one U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, was virtually haunted by UFOs throughout its entire service life, having many encounters with strange unidentified craft all over the world during its thirty years at sea. When the carrier was finally decommissioned, though, its logs were purged of any mention of these events.