Hypothesis: Fravor's Tic Tac was Kurth's FA18

"na they have an FA18 growler for EW and thats a 2 seater"
What's that comment in response to?
to you! post #74

"Or maybe it was Kurth all along and he had an EW unit on his Jet, it was altered as per the reports.
Would explain a lot. Radar jams etc"


The nimitz strike group does have a FA18 for EW, its a dedicated aircraft called the Growler and it's a two seater

Kurth was flying a one seater

It's strange Fravor said the radar was clear, while Kurth saw him and Dietrich on his radar.
 
na they have an FA18 growler for EW and thats a 2 seater

At this moment its (w/o anti grav scenario):

- Kurths Jet & Weather Phenomenon & Misidentification

versus

- Some submarine launching EW balloons / blimps & Misjudging size and distance

IDEA: Maybe we can have a talk with some of the princeton radar guys or someone who used to do radar in submarines who could give some insights regarding EW training at san clemente island. If launching EW 100 miles away could be part of a training?

@Mick West Do you believe Kevin Day would be up for another
Why not both? Parts of the Kurth's Jet hypothesis seem consistent with the balloon/parallax hypothesis. Some aspects of the Kurth's Jet hypothesis explain some aspects of the eyewitness reports, as you've argued, but omits or has to stretch to explain others (for example the reported shape and surface features of the Tic Tac, Dietrich's report that it "tumbled impossibly," or Fravor's report that it bounced around like a ping pong ball near the surface and then ascended).

On the other hand, the balloon hypothesis can be used to explain at least some of these things (user Parabunk has argued this), but not things like the unexpected appearance of a fast-moving object, or the later appearance of a contact at the CAP point. The discrepancies in the eyewitness reports could be chalked up to different memories of a particularly intense and confusing 8-10 second period where three F/A-18s, an unusual balloon, and a submarine all converge on one spot at the same time. Suppose (and this is pure speculation) Fravor has his eyes only on the balloon during the event, but Dietrich sees both the balloon (ascending, tumbling impossibly, and then disappearing), and then immediately after saw Kurth's F/A-18 flying into the distance at high speed (consistent with the account in the '04 CVW-11 Event Summary claiming the "capsule" achieved 600-700 knots and disappeared into the haze), and incorrectly (but understandably) thought that they were the same object. (Kurth's flyby could have even contributed to the balloon's erratic behavior, or it popping).
 
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could be a mix of both indeed. this one ufo forrest incident was also a mixture of multiple events and misidentifications leading to one of the most famous ufo stories.

(randlesham forrest or similar sounding iirc)
 
Logic tells me that the US Navy etc would not embarrass themselves by publicly releasing information stating they are unable to even track their own stuff. Its very clear that the accounts were given by servicemen who were played as part of a larger scheme. They are the mouthpieces of the uncertainty and fear aspects of this whole fiasco.
The only part of it that supports the accounts is the private charter flights in the area who say they regularly see things...but noone owns a camera.
With regard to changing stories, you will see this pattern repeated. There are many UFO cases in which a new 'player' has entered the field years after the event and suddenly recounts a new side of the story previously unheard and this new story always contains lots of conflicting information. This is classic disinformation campaign. The idea is to shake the credibility of accounts and prevent people such as users of this site from being able to derive the truth.

All planes have radar transponders and easily identifiable signatures. This follows that a misidentification by a pilot would have little bearing as the radar team would vector the craft, not a pilot.

If radar jamming was in employ, the Navy jamming their own planes, it follows that they probably also fired a signal into said radar transceivers to produce a 'false' reading. The radars either worked or they didnt. I dont see both scenarios being true.
 
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An mp3 file can be created from a youtube video. It seems that a number of programs can convert audio to text. I think MS Word can even do it.
I grabbed the Spanish transcript, but it's missing the English parts. The cc translates that Spanish into English but ignores the English, so there's no transcript for when Dietrich speaks.

(Question) "Ask if she saw Kurtz's jet during the encounter"

The young woman translates Dietrich's answer into Spanish; here's the CC of that back into English. It's a mess --

"in the man s good she but knows that I was in the air at that time he was doing a functional check says that he does not know exactly what to think at which point in the air was one of the key witnesses that there is of this day a princeton controller so there was person Some that they were using on the radio or that were doing maneuvers in the air but that she was otherwise the most united of the team so she is there just trying not to lose her uncle"

Basically useless. Here's Dietrich's answer to my ears, with pauses omitted:

"So during our encounter I did not see, no, he would have been, Colonel, Lieutenant
Colonel Kurtz, he would have been the skipper of the VMFA 232 Red Devil. They were
the marine squadron attached to our air wing, flying off the aircraft carrier with us.
I do know that he was out, airborne at the time, so, I think he was the single ship,
or the single aircraft, and (today?) was the single seat pilot in a single aircraft
and I think he was doing a functional check flight at the time in the area so I don't
know where exactly he was in relation to us, and I don't know exactly -- you know I
certainly can't speak for him in terms of what he saw but I do know he was one of
those witnesses, just like the controller on the Princeton and we had an airborne
controller called Banger -- it was the call sign -- which was an E2, which has an
airborne radar. So there were a lot of different folks who were airborne or involved
or on the radios and listening to all these different conversations happening,
but I'm not sure, again, I was the most junior pilot involved and just tried to
hang on and not lose sight of my lead."
 
change the point of view and you have a tic tac. the phenomena can even "blink" what could be an explanation for a perceived erratic movement.

D06F83D8-B175-4FB3-89E8-331453F0BAF0.jpeg50D46165-3BB7-497D-ADCF-DE117B54E949.jpeg

I just ran across a video of a supersonic jet flying at the speed of sound ("sonic"?), and the shockwave produced an instantaneous blinking round "cloud" much larger than the aircraft. I think it's not necessarily very probable that this happened with Kurth's jet, but this is the only thread so far where we've discussed fighter jets looking like white clouds. Especially with the "blinking", it might look from afar like a UFO breaking some laws of physics.
https://fb.watch/7gLq2oMxUH/

Source: https://m.facebook.com/combatlearjet/videos/657953884735532/

(Hopefully this embeds well.)
image.jpegimage.jpegimage.jpeg
 
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I just ran across a video of a supersonic jet flying at the speed of sound ("sonic"?), and the shockwave produced an instantaneous blinking round "cloud" much larger than the aircraft. I think it's not necessarily very probable that this happened with Kurth's jet, but this is the only thread so far where we've discussed fighter jets looking like white clouds. Especially with the "blinking", it might look from afar like a UFO breaking some laws of physics.
Source: https://m.facebook.com/combatlearjet/videos/657953884735532/

Not sure if I can agree.. I think the encounter's description differs significantly, with a -straight line- fast flying plane with a white disc, compared to a instantaneously speeding zip zapping tic tac.. I mean, it is pretty far fetched..
 
Not sure if I can agree.. I think the encounter's description differs significantly, with a -straight line- fast flying plane with a white disc, compared to a instantaneously speeding zip zapping tic tac.. I mean, it is pretty far fetched..
More or less far fetched than some sort of extra-terrestrial/dimensional craft?
 
with a -straight line- fast flying plane with a white disc,
have you actually watched the clip? if you were far away enough to not discern the much smaller plane, the big white plume would look like it's "zipping".
 
I don't know why I am being ridiculed lately. I think I will refrain from commenting on this forum if this is how it is going.

I thought we were adults here, but alas.
 
I don't know why I am being ridiculed lately. I think I will refrain from commenting on this forum if this is how it is going.

I thought we were adults here, but alas.

If it helps my comment was not meant to ridicule, I can't help how other people reacted.
 
Nor my 'funny' tag was meant to ridicule you @Ravi. I actually thought @jarlmai's post was supporting the general debunking of tic-tac with some humour (which I found funny), not that he was ridiculing you, at all. I'm sorry anyway.
 
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I think the Kurth idea is just as valid as other guesses.

He was there at that exact time, but he wasnt meant to be there. They told him to skip it
He flew upto and then circled around the disturbance, then flew off
He saw them on radar , they didnt see him
Maybe he flew above them as per one account, but then there is an account indicating he was lower

If he was above them, they would have had an un obstructed view of him should they have looked up.

When he flew off, he saw the disturbance had cleared, when the tic tac flew off, Frqavor noticed the disturbance had cleared

Fravor/Alex saw a tic tac, Kurth did not see a tic tac


Do the math, as unlikely as it may seem, it does appear that there is a chance they saw his jet
 
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I just ran across a video of a supersonic jet flying at the speed of sound ("sonic"?), and the shockwave produced an instantaneous blinking round "cloud" much larger than the aircraft. I think it's not necessarily very probable that this happened with Kurth's jet, but this is the only thread so far where we've discussed fighter jets looking like white clouds. Especially with the "blinking", it might look from afar like a UFO breaking some laws of physics.
https://fb.watch/7gLq2oMxUH/

Source: https://m.facebook.com/combatlearjet/videos/657953884735532/

(Hopefully this embeds well.)
image.jpegimage.jpegimage.jpeg

dietrich said she was super junior and was focused to not loose sight of her lead.

fravor didnt expect another fa18 in their area.

kurth disregarded his orders to abort and decided to fly over the disturbance instead.

based on one reports altitude descriptions of fravor and kurth, kurth was below fravor and dietrich.

kurth only saw the disturbance below him and left when it ceased. he never saw a tic tac.

fravor saw a tic tac that left when the disturbance ceased.

the video above shows how clouding can have a round matte white shape that looks erratic due to blinking.

the tic tac shoot off at hypersonic speed according to fravor and reappeared at cap point.

kurths fa18 can fly hypersonic and left the disturbance heading back to cap point.

kurths fa18 was red team, so no friend transponder signature. his fa18 was also freshly serviced and he was doing check flights before he was ordered by his air controller to check the disturbance site. this could explain how they didnt identify fravors fa18 on their radar when it reappeared at cap point.

the whole eye witness encounter lasted only seconds due to dietrich, minutes would have been impossinle due to running out of fuel she said.

fravor and dietrich only had their eyes. no targeting pods, no flir, nada.

fravor himself said in an interview they are trained to not use their eyes but only sensors because the mind can trick you especially in the sky.

i believe 100% fravor mis ID kurths clouded jet for a tic tac but couldnt step back from his truth when he later found out because it would have been brutally embarrassing for him and the navy. if even he or others evaluated this scenario at all.

for what could have caused the disturbance, my money is on the submarine that was in this area. the radar tracks kevin day mentioned fit perfectly in altitude and windspeed and wind direction with the weather report from that day. this could indeed indicate the mentioned ice crystals the nimitz received a warning for.

we are talking about 30000 feet of altitude at merge plot so the disturbance / submarine could easily be multiple kilometers away and still be spotted at that alt over a otherwise perfectly calm ocean.
 
An f/18 cannot go "hypersonic" it's generally defined as above 5x the speed of sound.

So it depends if Fravor's "hypersonic" just means really fast, i.e. faster than a jet fighter (the fastest thing he would expect to encounter.)

It vanishing could just be the effect stopping or something else.
 
youre right. i mixed it up with "supersonic"

:)

i agree, could be that he estimated the craft closer to him and bigger. when the clouding went away, it looked as if it zipped off much faster
 
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I can't imagine how insulting it must be, when you have several highly trained fighter pilots, some with decades of experience, being told that they didn't see what they know they saw. Can you imagine how it feels when your whole career has been a pilot and you know you saw something highly unusual that day, only to have a load of people tell you you didn't see it (people who have probably zero knowledge of flying, bar sitting in a passenger plane)

We now have another female pilot who came forward and also saw the 'tic tac' that day. So we have probably 4 , maybe more, experienced pilots, describing the same object and its incredible speed and manoeuvres. Yet I read through the most ridiculous theories here, insisting they saw anything but what they claimed.

It's hard to see people so desperate to discredit the pilots experience, that they seek to come up with any ludicrous theory about this mystery craft. (which we all know was caught on radar too ) .I'm reading incredible theories here, anything to avoid having to accept the eye witness accounts of all the pilots who saw this event. Must be so insulting to be a witness to the event and to have your account laughed at by people who simply can not or will not accept that this event happened as described
 
Yet I read through the most ridiculous theories here, insisting they saw anything but what they claimed.
They don't claim to have identified the object. They don't know what it is.

your whole career has been a pilot
They're good at flying planes. They're good at fighting other planes. That's their career.
Nobody is suggesting they're bad at it.

They don't have a career identifying UFOs.

I don't really understand why you feel insulted on their behalf.
 
They don't have a career identifying UFOs.

Just highlighting it :)

The discussions we have in this thread is not to prove the pilots saw something mundane.
The discussion here is to try to find out what they saw.
 
Must be so insulting to be a witness to the event and to have your account laughed at by people who simply can not or will not accept that this event happened as described

Did you laugh when Day claimed (that Fravor told him) the so-called tic-tac did a barrel roll around Fravor?
 
Anyone have any new thoughts on this theory?

I find it a pretty compelling possibility. I have to say, an f18 inside of one of those clouds, seen from a certain angle, looks god damn suspiciously like a tic tac with a couple of antennas sticking out of it (it's twin tail rudders).

The fact that a mistake like this might seem highly embarrassing might explain why we haven't gotten to the bottom of it. Nobody involved would really want to be the one that draws out the perceived embarrassment it would cause.

Just a couple of things I want to talk about:

1) Has Keven Day ever been explicit about whether he actually saw the ufo radar contact drop to sea level during the Fravor encounter? I wish Mick had really pressed him on this during the interview, even though Day was becoming a little impatient with the line of questioning.

2) Has Fravor ever been specific about the ping-ponging motion of the "tic tac"? About the speed at which it changed directions, and how far it traveled during a single bound? How easy would it actually be to observe this motion against a nearly featureless background?

3) I've seen it written that Kurth's plane was part of the adversarial group, and that could explain why it didn't show up on the IFF system for Fravor's flight. Is this factual information or speculation?
 
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i think thats irrelevant now, i have seen an interview quote where kurt stated that he has seen fravor and co BELOW him and above the white water but without the tic tac
 
Fravor testified they arrived at the location at 20,000 ft. Kurth was told to stay above 10,000 ft. because they were coming in.

While Princeton was communicating with Cheeks, they were also attempting to hand off their AAV contact to the Air Wing’s E-2C Hawkeye, also airborne at the time. The crew from VAW-117 had been providing intercept control for FASTEAGLE flight during their training. Princeton now wanted the E-2 to guide the Super Hornets to an intercept with the AAV contact, currently hovering over their favorite spot, but now about 20,000 feet over the ocean.

The AAV returns had not been strong enough to show up on the E-2’s broad sweep, but once they focused their radar on the coordinates Princeton directed them towards, they managed a faint contact. The radar returns from the contact weren’t enough to generate a target track however, so Princeton cut the E-2 from control and contacted FASTEAGLE directly. Though he was unable to lock up the AAVs, the E-2 controller remained on frequency and listened to the entire ensuing evolution.

As Cheeks approached the spot he was being vectored to, Princeton advised him to stay above 10K as the section of Super Hornets were approaching the target. His radar picked up the FASTEAGLE two-ship, but no other contacts. A moment later Princeton directed him to “skip it” and return to the ship. Since he was so close, he decided to fly over the action and sneak a peek.

https://sofrep.com/fightersweep/x-files-edition/
Content from External Source
Advised to stay above but how far above if the FASTEAGLES were coming in at 20,000 ft. ? I'm confused.

At any rate, Kurth didn't see it. He did tell Bigelow about it much later, didn't he?
 
I'm not saying this is what Fravor etc saw.

But I wonder what a FA-18 looks like through Haze that is coming straight at you.
If it's coming straight at you, it can appear to move up/down or left/right rapidly - if the FA-18 pullsup/down or rudders left/right. even appear to spin if the FA-18 rolls around
 
I'm not saying this is what Fravor etc saw.

But I wonder what a FA-18 looks like through Haze that is coming straight at you.
If it's coming straight at you, it can appear to move up/down or left/right rapidly - if the FA-18 pullsup/down or rudders left/right. even appear to spin if the FA-18 rolls around
the haze is at the horizon though, in the distance
 
I have a question because I can't seem to find an answer to this, but did Fravor or the other pilots see the object zigzagging with their own eyes or was it only through the camera?
 
they had no cameras on the tic tac

fravor reportedly saw the tic tac "ping ponging irrationally over the white water in a cross shaped motion" (paraphrasing)

dietrich said the same, but its not very clear if she is just repeating fravor
 
they had no cameras on the tic tac

fravor reportedly saw the tic tac "ping ponging irrationally over the white water in a cross shaped motion" (paraphrasing)

dietrich said the same, but its not very clear if she is just repeating fravor
Fravor also said he viewed it for about 5 min and Dietrich said it was about 10 seconds. So there's definitely conflicting accounts.
 
Fravor also said he viewed it for about 5 min and Dietrich said it was about 10 seconds. So there's definitely conflicting accounts.
By the way - not sure what the minimum speed of an F-18 in comparable situations is, let's say 180 knots which can't be off by orders of magnitude - in 5 minutes you run 15 nautical miles at that speed. That's quite a few circles, or if you're not circling you're quite far off from this thing for considerable amounts of time... or put another way, I can't mentally stretch a descending approach towards the tic tac, three quarters of a circle (or whatever it was) and then a cut-across manoeuvre to five whole minutes.
 
891 views Aug 11, 2023
In this short, I used the physical modelling software Cinema 4D to re-create the exact reported distances from Cdr. David Fravor's jet to the ocean disturbance and the tic tac object. Then I created a sim of a descending clockwise turn down to about 8K, while the Tic Tac ascends to co-altitude. The closest approach is about 1/2 mile. The ocean disturbance is 135 long and the tic tac is 40 long. The camera settings are a 50mm lens and 35mm sensor. This should approximate what it looked like that day in November 14, 2004.
Content from External Source
Assuming this is accurate it gives a good representation of the water disturbance and Tic Tac at 1:25.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgGbbYxxyCI
 
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