The Strange Disappearance of a Nuclear Submarine

The following account revealed by Richard Doty from the Air Force Office of Investigations (Retired) on Episode 1 of Season 22 of Gaia's “Cosmic Disclosure” series hits close to home for me, as my father in his employment at Westinghouse in the 1950's was directly involved in the research and development of nuclear technology as applied to the U.S. Navy's first nuclear-powered submarines. It brings back stories of dad loading reactors with test and control rods, maintaining a log of test data, and sometimes having to directly hold his feet to the fire with the program director Naval Admiral Hyman Rickover when accountability was in question. A recent chance meeting with a retired submariner Senior Naval Chief who was familiar with Admiral Rickover (Old Pencil Neck) reminded me of my father's anxiety whenever he would have to explain a result to the old man.

Richard Doty is an official Naval designee and public spokesperson assigned to purposefully disclose to the public at large information that had previously been categorized as “Classified” regarding official contact with alien species. This is a sanctioned release of information under the Department of Defense's agreement to softly disclose to the public our nation's more than half-century relationship with off-world civilizations. Doty is extremely credible with all of his accounts backed up by document releases and third-party substantiation.

In 1959, the U.S. Navy had just a few new nuclear-powered submarines, when one of them disappeared in the Antarctic Ocean. Ironically, after the U.S.S. Baseline disappeared, it was thereafter reclassified as Submarine X. This sub was part of the same class as two other nuclear subs that were lost, the Thresher and the Scorpion, all manufactured in Groton, Connecticut. The Baseline was commissioned on exercises in the Antarctic region to conduct tests of its nuclear powerplant along with other mediocre testing.

While on its mission, all communications suddenly ceased. In 1959, the only way for a sub to communicate was to surface to extend it's high frequency antenna. The South American relay station that had been in touch with the Baseline suddenly lost all contact with the Baseline at a particular location where a lot of anomalies had been witnessed. Immediately, surface destroyers were deployed to search for the lost vessel. An extended thorough search of four months proved fruitless. The Baseline was lost, without explanation. We did not have deep-water submersible technology then, so search capability was limited. The search was finally abandoned with authorities concluding that the sub had likely imploded for an unknown reason and sunk to the ocean floor at 15,000 to 17,000 feet deep, out of recovery range.

Antarctica was already known by the U.S. and many other countries for its many anomalous encounters, both visually and on radar and sonar – things that were there one moment and gone the next – unidentified flying objects – from the late forties through the fifties. An anomalous encounter was the best explanation.

Jump ahead to December 1979. Heard Island is a small island about 500 miles north of Antarctica; it is uninhabited except for a unique species of penguins. Various scientific expeditions came and went to study these penguins in 1979. One of these study teams from Australia observed what they believed to be the top of a submarine run aground on a barrier reef south of Heard Island. The captain of the research vessel reported it, but several months passed before the U.S. Navy, which was conducting some highly classified projects in the southern Indian Ocean, decided to divert and investigate the sighting. No one took much interest during the intervening time because there had been no submarine activity there in a long time.

Upon investigation, the Navy found the vessel and recorded it's tail number only to discover it was the U.S.S. Baseline which had been missing for twenty years. There it was – intact – some 900 miles from its last known location. Ordered not to board the sub, it was salvaged and towed back to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The discovery was a total shock and the Navy wanted to be very deliberate in it's recovery.

The natural assumption was that everyone aboard was dead; opening the hatch after twenty years would be a gruesome task. When they brought it back to Hawaii they found absolutely no damage on the outside of the sub. The fact that it had not submerged and imploded only added to the mystery. After three days, they finally opened the hatch and vented the craft, following strict protocol as a recovery team went inside. Inside, they found no bodies. Not one. What happened to the crew of 65 submariners and 4 civilian nuclear contractors?

No evidence was found that there had been any sort of struggle or that they had to abandon the sub in a hurry. Neither was there evidence of any sort of unauthorized hostile boarding. Nothing classified had been destroyed or scuttled by the crew, which would be expected if the latter had occurred. The log books were still there and intact, showing a standard notation every thirty minutes by the navigational control officer, indicating exact location, right up until the time and location the tracking station originally lost contact with the Baseline. So what happened after that?

What they did find was that the nuclear reactor was properly shut down, according to procedure. No part of the reactor was missing. The interior of the sub was dry, never flooded. None of the small firearms were missing or used, or even off their storage rack. All personal items, like girlfriend or wife and family photos, were right where you would expect to find them. However the crew got off the sub, they didn't take any personal items like one might expect. There was curiously no food left on the sub – nothing in refrigeration – no food anywhere – all removed – purposely emptied.

The only tell-tale evidence that something took place before the crew was taken off the sub was that of the complement of 14 conventional torpedoes, seven were missing. Did the sub encounter something and fire its torpedoes? There is no log of that event, even though every single occurrence should have been entered into the captain's log. Did they even have time to make a record under any sort of attack situation? Or could they have gotten rid of the torpedoes to lighten the weight of the sub for some reason?

Once abandoned, without a captain and crew, no submarine could float 900 miles on its own. The crew was obviously removed. Food was removed, the reactor turned off; the sub was sealed and left. It should have sunk, unless someone steered it to the location where it was found. Someone was in control until it was grounded on the reef at Heard Island for some particular reason. The Navy had no idea how long it had been grounded on the reef.

The questions here are obvious. The sub was kept at Pearl Harbor for several years with ongoing investigations without additional findings, before it was finally scuttled in deep water. When this event occurred, the Chief of Naval Operations was Admiral Zumwalt, who wanted to classify and hide it, shut it down. It was an embarrassment to the Navy and made nuclear power look like it was a failure.

The most interesting parts of the story, however, are the general conclusions drawn by the seasoned admiralty in the Navy. A consensus of opinion of the admiralty then and since is that the Baseline fired seven of its torpedos at an alien underwater perceived attacker before all personnel were removed somehow – dematerialization?, but not physically – before the ET's took over the sub.

Admirals of the U.S. Navy are aware of a few other incidents where ships or submarines and their crews have gone missing – one being both a Soviet surface ship and a sub that went missing during the cold war. Neither the Soviets nor the U.S. Navy could find either. After the Cold War, both sides got together to share information and tie down loose ends. Many vessels and/or their crews from many countries have disappeared under strange circumstances over many, many years.

It is agreed that there are forces on this planet that none of us know very much about. Our best military technology is vulnerable to superior technology from off world. We cannot compete with them. Does the U.S. Navy have encounters like this with any regularity? The answer from seasoned admirals is that their careers have more unexplainable encounters than they wish to speak of. A lot of things encountered are beyond strange – both biological and off-world – creatures that are unknown to exist – 90-foot long squids to giant 200-foot long deformed deep-water whales that do not surface to breathe air – unidentified objects three times the size of submarines witnessed underwater on sonar traveling at speeds faster than aircraft, capable of moving from water to air, thereafter tracked by surface ships.

Most curious are the sightings of underwater cities the size of New York fully lit up, spread out with tall buildings at the bottom of the ocean where we cannot go, with fast-moving craft tracked by sonar that come and go. Every experienced submarine captain has the same story about sitings at the same locations under the world's oceans. At maximum depth we can only look with wonder through the submarine portals to witness the unbelievable.