Hangar 1: The UFO Files

23.976

August, 1991. The Pacific Ocean. The USS Nimitz

is returning home to Hawaii after a long deployment in the first Gulf War.

My name is Kevin Via. I was a PH2 stationed on the USS Nimitz in 1991

when this happened to me.

Kevin is an expert at identifying all forms of U.S. and enemy jets because

he's the one responsible

for photographing and documenting them for the Navy.

I had finished my evening shift, and as usual I had gone up to

the deck to look at the ocean, hopefully watch the sunset.

And while I was sitting there, they locked the ship down.

This protocol could mean that there is an imminent

danger. Via has only thirty seconds to clear the deck.

He doesn't make it. Everything is locked down before he has a chance

to go under.

Kevin decides to wait it out.

I started feeling like something was buzzing inside me. I started looking around.

Whatever was buzzing was everywhere.

I could feel it in my body, I could hear it, I could feel it

on my hands against the rail that I was holding onto.

The next thing he sees paralyzes him with fear. As Via looks over

the ship's starboard side,

he's astounded to see something rising out of the ocean.

In front of me was a very large object. I mean, this thing was huge.

It was larger than the Nimitz.

I could see the water underneath it glow.

I'm not sure if it was lights coming down from the ship

or the ocean itself was being illuminated.

It had to be that this thing came from out of the water.

I knew that I saw something from another world.

The craft continues to rise until it levels off above the height of the Nimitz.

And it sits there about 200 yards from the ship,

for about 15 minutes, not making any sound,

although he says the buzzing sensation

remained the whole time. The craft now appeared

to have no apparent color, it almost looked like glass.

It started to move slightly, and then all of a sudden it went up ...

and I mean up fast.

It was literally from where it was at me in front of the ocean

to a pinpoint in the sky in a half a second.

Following the incident, Kevin Via is isolated for questioning.

When these guys started questioning, my first impression was,

"Well, I'm not gonna tell them

what I saw because everybody will think I'm a lunatic."

I just wanted to go about my normal life and pretend

like nothing had changed. Although everything had changed.

Did Kevin Via witness a UFO ? Underwater UFO reports are some of the most

extraordinary encounters that we have on record.

We are surrounded by water on this planet. 71 % of the Earth is underwater.

Most of which is totally unexplored.

But underwater UFOs, they could be very close, watching us without us

ever knowing they're there.

Are UFOs lurking beneath the waters of our planet ?

If so, how big is this mysterious network of underwater craft

and where are they coming from ?

MUFON investigates UFOs in the abyss right now.

The Mutual UFO Network, known as MUFON, is an independent organization,

not bound to any government.

They investigate reports of UFO sightings from around the world.

Over the past five decades, they have collected

more than 70,000 files secured at a location

known as Hangar 1.

Now, MUFON is granting access to their vast archive.

These are the files of Hangar 1.

While we often look to the skies for evidence of unidentified flying objects,

MUFON files contain many sightings of underwater UFOs.

Where do they come from and why are these mysterious craft hiding in our oceans ?

Think about how much space there is to hide in the ocean.

If there are UFOs underwater, we'd have no way to know how many there are or

what they're up to.

But some of MUFONs files hint that there could be something very big

hint that there could be something very big going on down there.

October 4, 1967. Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia.

In the fall of 1967,

a man by the name of Laurie Wickens is driving home late one evening

with his friends.

In the distance, Wickens spots a strange unusual flashing object.

This object has flashing yellow lights, and it looks like it's falling

out of the sky right towards the harbor.

Wickens is so alarmed by the speed and trajectory of the object towards the water

that he pulls his truck over.

Wickens fears that he just witnessed a plane crash. So he goes to the nearest

payphone and makes an urgent call to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The senior officer on duty, Corporal Victor Werbicki, listens to Wicken's call

and assumes he is drunk.

However, soon multiple calls

start coming into the police department,

all describing a similar crash into the harbor.

It turns out most of the town saw this crash.

We call it a crash, but we are not sure because it didn't go into

the water immediately.

It was above water.

Above water and sitting there for a while and then submerged.

It doesn't appear that what people witness was any kind of earthly craft,

and it's just plunged into the middle of Shag Harbour.

Corporal Werbicki rounds up a team of local fishermen

to help investigate.

Werbicki sees this strange yellow light in the water, so he and his team get

into boats and head towards it.

There aren't any signs of survivors, bodies, or even wreckage.

And, now, the yellow light and submerged object

they had seen from the shore is nowhere to be found.

They are soon joined by the United States Coast Guard. The Coast Guard arrives

on the scene and they resume the search for another few hours.

They can't find anything and eventually call off the search around 3:00 A.M.

But once the police search ends, a secret military investigation begins.

What most people don't know is that on October 5, 1967, the Canadian Forces Headquarters

dispatched the HMCS Granby to investigate. They had specially trained

divers who went down to do a thorough investigation.

Decades later, several of the crew members come forward to MUFON and finally admit

that the Granby did, in fact, track a UFO underwater for an entire week !

From the private interviews done years later,

the story emerged that the Granby

tracked that underwater UFO

over a 25 mile stretch to a place called Government Point.

A military base at Government Point

picks up unusual activity from the underwater object.

Suddenly the UFO starts acting strange.

This craft that had been eluding the Navy for a week seems as though it's stopped

and given up.

It's just sitting there in the water.

So more ships are dispatched from Government Point to investigate.

What they did was surround the disabled UFO and they brought in

Navy divers to go under to check on what was down there.

As they Navy closes in on this craft, their instruments suddenly

pick up a second object.

There is another UFO in the water,

and it's heading right towards them !

The crew is completely stunned. The second UFO positions

itself on top of the first one,

and it appears as though this second craft is repairing the first UFO.

Somehow they sent out a distress signal to their people.

The crew has no idea what they're dealing with.

They're completely out of their element with not just one unknown object

but now two.

At this time, another witness reported a Russian submarine

in nearby Canadian waters.

This prompted a few of the U.S. vessels

which were tracking the UFO to be pulled off that duty

to investigate the Russian sub.

And while they were doing that, the two UFOs made their move.

The UFOs race towards the surface, blast out of the water,

and vanish into the sky.

One underwater craft is strange enough, but the fact that

this UFO apparently

called for help ... and that help arrived immediately ?

What does that say ?

How many of these things are down there ?

There was another ship in the vicinity that was able

to come to the rescue and assist this thing under the water,

which shows me an organization here behind the scenes.

There's something far more going on than mere exploration.

Could there be an entire network of underwater UFOs

operating on our planet, and we just don't see them

because we're looking up instead of down ?

Coming up, halfway around the world, a Royal Navy ship tracks

a UFO above and below the storm-tossed north Atlantic.

And later ...

MUFON investigates a region infamous for both

its water UFO sightings, and unexplained disappearances.

The Great Lakes Triangle.

The Great Lakes account for more disappearances

per square mile

than the Bermuda Triangle. When we return.

Inside Hangar 1, MUFON files report that some UFO encounters

occur not just in our skies, but in our waters as well.

In Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, an underwater UFO sighting

leads to a military pursuit and reveals that a vast

UFO presence could be hiding right here on Earth.

How far might this network extend ?

You know, it's interesting when you think about how there have been reports

of underwater UFOs

from navies all over the world, and they share so much in common that it's hard

to believe these could just be isolated incidents.

There is definitely something going on beneath the water.

February 28, 1963. The North Atlantic, Norway.

A twenty-year-old lieutenant Tom Preston is on board one of approximately

10 ships in the Royal Navy's North Atlantic Fleet

that is participating in a training exercise off the coast of Norway.

Preston is on morning watch duty inside the ship's darkened radar-sonar room

with five other witnesses,

three radarscope operators and two sonar scope operators.

Suddenly a blip appears on the crew's radar screen. There is something in the sky,

about the size of a jet fighter, and it's headed right for them.

Preston is alarmed at how suddenly the blips appear on radar so he notifies

his Senior Officer.

When the Senior Officer arrives,

he's also concerned by what he sees and contacts the nearest ship to confirm

that they picked up the same target ...

and they did.

The crew attempts to contact the object, but it does not respond.

They don't know if this thing is a friend or an enemy.

All they know is that it's coming at them fast,

so they scramble jets to get a closer look.

Within minutes, the jet pilots give visual confirmation

that a UFO is flying over the ocean.

Preston and his crew watch the radar screen as the two jets

approach the target,

but as soon as they get too close,

the UFO suddenly turns and dives directly towards the ocean.