Dispatch No. 005 · From the public record

The CIA ruled out its own Mach 3 aircraft. The object remained unidentified.

In November 1964, a Navy pilot and USS Gyatt encountered a delta-shaped target near Puerto Rico. The original radar film was sent to the CIA.

14 August 20264 min readPuerto Rico · 19 November 1964

USS Gyatt (DDG-1) underway at sea, circa the late 1950s or early 1960s. Official U.S. Navy photograph. The image does not depict the 1964 incident. — USS Gyatt (DDG-1). U.S. Navy photograph, Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 106723. The photograph does not depict the November 1964 incident.

On November 19, 1964, roughly 220 miles northwest of Puerto Rico, radar operators aboard USS Gyatt detected an unidentified target moving at extraordinary speed. An F-8 Crusader already in the air was directed toward it. Then the pilot actually saw it.

This was not merely a fleeting visual report. The destroyer tracked the contact on radar for approximately 21 minutes, recording more than 100 nautical miles of movement while the Navy pilot attempted to understand what was moving through the sky ahead of him.

The radar scope was filmed during the encounter. That original film was later sent through intelligence channels to the CIA, where the case reached officers connected to OXCART—America’s most secret reconnaissance-aircraft program.

Not a conventional aircraft

The pilot described a dark gray or black object, delta-shaped and roughly the size of a fighter. It showed no navigation lights and left no visible contrail.

When it accelerated, he reported seeing a brilliant light or cone-shaped fire appear behind it. The case estimates placed its speed beyond Mach 3, while its acceleration, ceiling and ability to decelerate appeared to exceed anything the pilot had previously encountered.

The obvious suspect

There was an immediate possibility: the YF-12A, America’s highly classified Mach 3 interceptor derived from the CIA’s A-12 OXCART reconnaissance aircraft. If one of those secret Lockheed programs was operating in the area, it could explain both the shape and the performance.

The CIA’s OXCART office checked its own activity. The YF-12A, the A-12 and similar Lockheed aircraft were ruled out as the source of the encounter.

More than sixty years later

No conclusive identification emerged. The CIA and Office of Naval Intelligence records describe a visual encounter by a trained Navy pilot supported by radar tracking from USS Gyatt, yet the American aircraft most capable of producing the report were eliminated from consideration.

That leaves the question the file never answered: what did USS Gyatt encounter that night?