So Supernatural - ALIEN: Tic Tac, GoFast, and Gimbal

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

Navy pilots stationed in the Pacific Ocean saw something inexplicable in November 2004. Eleven years later, a different crew saw the same unidentified phenomenon. The U.S. government has confirmed that leaked tapes of the encounters are real… But what exactly are we looking at? 

NASA's International Space Station broadcasts a continual live feed from their position in the Earth's outer atmosphere. Anytime you want, you can tune in and see asteroids, distant stars, and occasionally images that defy explanation. Bright lights descending toward our planet. White blurs hovering in space. A row of glowing spots emitting a red beam that looks a lot like the phasers from Star Trek. But every time someone spots something unusual, NASA will step forward with a super simple, reasonable explanation. They always find a way to prove it was not aliens. With three exceptions.

That's right, there are three video clips that the government has never been able to debunk. Today, they're called Tic Tac, Go Fast, and Gimbal. Thank you. discussing Tic Tac, Go Fast, and Gimbal, three videos of unidentified flying objects recorded during U.S. Navy training exercises. Whatever they are, the objects travel in ways unlike any technology from Earth, which is why many assume they're from another planet. I have all that and more coming up. Stay with us. eyewitnesses who aren't your average Joe Schmoe off the street. They're trained pilots and technicians with years of experience working for the U.S. military. And the events all happened not long ago. It's the fall of 2004 and two ships are parked about 100 miles southwest of San Diego. The crews are USS Princeton and the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. Besides the ship's crews, they're loaded with Navy pilots

running routine flight drills, keeping their skills sharp as they wait for deployment. As the pilots hit the skies, radar technicians back on the ships track their flights. It's all pretty standard stuff. But sometime around the end of October, a few technicians notice unusual blips registering on their equipment. As many as five to 10 objects keep flying within 10 miles or so of where they're running these drills.

They're all cruising at about 28,000 feet, which is too high for them to be birds, but they're moving too slowly to be planes. The techs broadcast a few radio transmissions asking who these aircrafts are, but they don't receive any replies. They even recalibrate their equipment, thinking the blips could be some bug in their software, but they're not. Their screens keep showing these unidentified flying objects.

Now, thanks to pop culture, a lot of people hear unidentified flying object and think alien spaceship, despite its very literal meaning. I mean, a balloon can be considered a UFO until someone confirms it's just a balloon. In this case, the UFOs could be anything, a spy plane, a missile, or even a drone smuggling drugs into the country. So on November 14, 2004, the Navy dispatches Squadron Commander David Fravor to intercept the objects, whatever they are. But a half hour into David's flight, radar technicians spot one of the blips. They give him some coordinates and he heads out in that direction, mentally preparing for what he'll do if the UFO is actually hostile. Near the coordinates, his plain infrared camera picks up on something and it's directly below him. David peers out his

window. He can see pretty far in every direction, and for the most part, the ocean is peaceful and still. Except for the area directly underneath this thing. It's some type of aircraft that's hovering and churning the water beneath it, creating so many waves that the ocean looks like it's boiling. As far as David can tell, the object doesn't have wings. It's oval-shaped, smooth, and white. It looks like a tic-tac mint, so that's what his team ends up calling it. But here's the weirdest part. David's infrared camera measures heat, and the object isn't emitting exhaust. No propulsion system is registering at all. However, the ship is staying in the air. It's not using a traditional engine. As David's trying to figure out what he's

looking at, the Tic Tac suddenly starts darting all over the place as if it realized it was being watched and wants to get away. David chases it, banking and angling his plane to keep it in sight. But the Tic Tac is executing these impossible maneuvers, dives, darts, hairpin turns. David's plane just can't keep up. And eventually, David is due for a refuel. So even though he really doesn't want to, he turns around. When he lands back at the Nimitz, he tells one of his subordinates, Lieutenant Chad Underwood, about what happened. Chad's scheduled for a flight soon, so David wants to give him a heads up. After that, David's probably thinking the drama is over.

But it's just the beginning. As soon as he steps into the Nimitz hold, he realizes that everyone is already talking about his mission. Some of them are unnerved, especially the crew who saw the objects appear on the radar firsthand. But a bunch of people are treating the tic-tac encounter like a big joke. Someone turned on a whole bunch of television monitors and is playing different alien-themed movies and TV shows on each one, like Signs and The X-Files and Men in Black. Keep in mind, David hasn't spoken a word to suggest that he thinks the Tic Tac had anything to do with aliens. If anything, he's been especially careful to stick to the facts

and to stay away from the A-word. But like I said, unidentified flying object has a certain connotation. And David's use of UFO is apparently enough to get him bullied, even though he was simply reporting what he saw. To avoid being labeled as some sort of conspiracy theorist, all he can do is hope Chad will spot something similar to back up his account. Luckily for David, that's exactly what happens. Shortly after taking off, the infrared camera on Chad's plane

picks up an unusual object about 10 to 20 miles away, presumably the Tic Tac. It's far enough away that he can't actually see it with his eyes. But from looking at his screen's readings, Chad can tell it's not your standard fare aircraft. It's crossing tens of thousands of feet in a matter of seconds, as if it's not just flying, it's teleporting. Chad spends about 10 minutes trying to get closer to whatever it is. He plays around with his cameras to see if he can figure out what's going on, but he doesn't make any progress. Before he knows it, the object veers sharply to the left, accelerates out of range, and just

disappears. Now, when an airplane changes course so abruptly with such speed, it creates a sonic boom. But this ship disappears in complete silence, seemingly defying the laws of physics. By the time Chad lands back at the Nimitz, he's visibly shaken. But even without knowing about David's harassment, he knows that he absolutely should not tell anyone that he maybe saw an alien ship. In fact, he's not even sure that he believes what he saw. He just can't come up with a better theory. I mean, maybe the military was testing out some super new high-tech top-secret aircraft, but why would they send it flying through an area where the Navy was actively running training programs?

It doesn't make sense to me. And Chad doesn't get any hard answers either. But at the very least, David and Chad have a ton of physical evidence to support their accounts. The infrared cameras on their planes automatically record everything they pick up. The same goes for the radar systems on board the Nimitz and the Princeton.

So there's plenty of footage taken from multiple vantage points backed up on numerous platforms. But shortly after David and Chad's flights, all of those tapes disappear. Seriously, I have to imagine that Chad gets really freaked out when he finds out. But David pretty much shrugs it off. Maybe the bullying is getting to him. But he suggests that maybe it's an honest mistake. Like these tapes weren't labeled correctly or something. And someone accidentally recorded over them.

Which, okay, is possible, but for someone to make the same mistake with David and Chad and the radar text footage, that sounds a little too coincidental if you ask me. And I like to believe the United States Navy isn't that careless. And here's the thing, one eyewitness even says the tapes didn't go missing by accident. The person in charge of storing footage on the Nimitz is this guy named P.J. Hughes. Literally the same day P.J. logs and files the Tic Tac tapes, three men drop by his office unannounced. One is his superior officer, and the other two are complete strangers who refuse to introduce themselves. After bagging up every copy of the radar recordings, plus Chad and David's videos, they leave without any explanation. The same thing essentially happens to PJ's

counterpart on the Princeton. The other technician claims that two men flew in on a helicopter, confiscated all the tapes, then wiped their local backups. In other words, there was no innocent mistake here. For reasons unknown, someone somewhere wanted to bury all evidence of the Tic Tac encounters. Coming up, we'll see what happened to the videos after they disappeared. Now back to the story. After the footage of the Tic Tac is mysteriously erased, everyone assumes the drama's over. The crew moves on and the videos are never seen again. Until more than two years later, when one clip resurfaces online. On February 3rd, 2007, someone with the username TheFinalTheory

pops into an online message board called Above Top Secret. It's a community where people share stories about UFO sightings and alien encounters. And that's exactly what the final theory wants to discuss. Allegedly, they do some kind of like high level work with computers, and they've recently hacked into some US military database with video evidence of UFOs. At first, it's just talk. But the next day, they share a link to download this video, which happens to be Chad Underwood's lost infrared footage when his plane's camera picks up the mysterious Tic Tac ship. Now, you'd think this would be like catnip to a group of alien enthusiasts.

But the other users are pretty skeptical. And for two main reasons. First, the final theory's posts are full of typos and grammatical errors, so it doesn't feel like a super credible source. And second, the clip doesn't have any audio, so it would have been pretty easy to fake. After some digging, one moderator learns that the video is hosted online by a video effects company based in Germany. So, you know, the people whose job is literally to create fake footage that looks real. So needless to say, pretty much nobody takes the post seriously. It fades into the background until the Tic Tac vessel shows up again, this time eight years later and in real life, not online. And this time, it brings friends. while conducting routine test flights, a group of Navy pilots run into a fleet of unidentified objects

that looks just like the Tic Tac ship. The objects don't have any wings or any apparent means of propulsion. Now, David and Chad's encounters happened on a clear windless day, but this time around, winds are blowing up to 140 miles per hour, which for perspective is similar to a Category 4 hurricane. And yet, the gusts aren't slowing the tic-tacs down. They're flying directly into the wind. The whole flock is just zipping around like it's nothing. I'm not an expert on airplane mechanics, but even the pilots are floored by what they're seeing. I'm going to play you some audio from their radio conversation,

and you can hear in their voices how confused they are. Oh, my gosh. They're all going against the wind. The wind's 120 miles to the west. Oh, man. These objects are so quick, the pilots are struggling to get a lock on them with their instruments. One guy's hovering over the fleet while the Tic Tacs speed around right underneath him. He keeps trying to make his infrared camera focus in on them, but he can't do it.

They're just that fast. When he finally gets his equipment to lock in on one, he is thrilled. I mean, just listen to this clip from his recording equipment. So the end of that clip may be hard to make out because the pilot's talking over another voice on the radio, but what he says is, what the f*** is that thing? This is an experienced Navy pilot who has no idea what he's looking at, and he never figures it out. They track the objects for as long as they can until they eventually speed off into the distance,

just like what happened last time. None of these pilots have come forward about what happened, so I don't know their names. Nobody does. Maybe officials are pressuring them to keep quiet. Maybe they just don't want to be called nutjobs or conspiracy theorists. It's impossible to say. But regardless, the whole thing doesn't make much of a splash until three years later, in the winter of 2017 to 2018, when two recordings of the incident are leaked. This time, the source isn't some anonymous person on an obscure message board. The two videos, titled Go Fast and Gimble, appear in a joint release published by two groups. One is maybe what you'd expect, a group called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, which researches UFO encounters. But the other

is the New York Times. Yeah, even if you're super skeptical about UFO accounts, it's hard to argue with such a reputable paper. If they released doctored footage, it could ruin their reputation. The clips themselves aren't quite as cool as you might imagine. They come from black and white computer screens that just show a blob floating over a background. Honestly, they look like graphics from that old Asteroids arcade game. If you were to stumble across these videos online without any context, you wouldn't even think there's anything to get excited about. And the time story is still missing one big thing,

official confirmation that the video was taken by the U.S. military. Nobody with any real authority is willing to come forward and verify it. That is, until September 18th, 2019, when the U.S. government finally admits the footage is entirely real. Coming up, the military tries to explain away the UFOs, and in the process, only raises more questions. Now back to the story. In 2019, the U.S. government confirms the Tic Tac, Go Fast, and Gimbal tapes are all authentic. They even release a partially censored report about David and Chad's encounter with the Tic Tac. The names are blacked out, but by this point, a few crew members from the Nimitz and the Princeton have come forward with their stories about the incident.

And the government report corroborates all their claims. Like, yes, the Tic Tac is real. Yes, it moves in a way we can't explain. We still don't know what exactly it is. So, yes, it could maybe be an alien spaceship. After these releases, the media goes wild. There's coverage on NBC News, CNN, The New York Times, and they're all reporting on a UFO sighting

as possible proof of extraterrestrial life. And I should mention, the public has still barely seen a sliver of the actual encounters. Chad interacted with the tic-tac for about eight to ten minutes, but only about a minute of footage made it online. And the GoFast and gimbal recordings aren't that long either. They're both maybe like 34 seconds, which raises the question, what happened to the rest of the footage? Earlier, I mentioned how some unidentified random men confiscated all the original tapes from that first Tic Tac encounter. It's easy to hear that and think maybe there's some kind of cover up going on. But now that the government has admitted that it's all real,

how could a cover-up still be happening? Unless, and stay with me here, the military is just changing tactics and is taking control of the narrative. And yes, I know how all that sounds, but there is a precedent for this type of deception. Officials from all over the world have a long history of releasing information about UFOs to gaslight alien enthusiasts. According to information leaked by Edward Snowden,

British secret agents intentionally joined conspiracy theory forums online just to spread misinformation. The U.S. government has a similar operation commonly called the Mirage Men. I've talked about them before on this show. A former agent named Richard Doty says that he spent years meeting with people who claimed to have seen UFOs or aliens. Each time he met a new eyewitness, he'd basically say, hey, I'm with the government. Tell me everything you know and I'll let you in on the truth. But once he got whatever information he needed, he'd make up these ridiculous lies and feed them back to his tipster. This served two purposes. Richard could keep track of what the ufologists knew.

And by spreading misinformation, he could make them seem gullible and irrational so nobody would take them seriously. And all of this was done with one goal in mind, to prevent anyone from finding out the truth. Now, something similar could be happening with the tic-tac-go-fast and gimbal footage, only instead of the government pulling the strings from behind the curtain, now they're doing it out in the open. I mean, sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight, right? It's the last place anyone expects. And the more you think about it, the more it kind of makes sense. There's always going to be a decent-sized community

that lives for the sort of mystery these three videos offer. If officials stay silent, especially in the wake of the New York Times report, the footage would just keep pinging around the internet, being analyzed and picked apart. And maybe one day someone would stumble onto something they shouldn't. But when the government publicly acknowledged the tapes were real, it squashed any doubts about what they weren't telling people. Everyone moved on to the next news cycle, not feeling the need to dig any deeper. Is that thinking a little paranoid? Sure, but have you met me? Just look at this statement

an astronomer named Seth Shostak gave to NBC News. A reporter asked him if he thought the objects in the Tic Tac Go Fast and Gimbal videos were extraterrestrial spaceships. Seth responded by saying he's not ruling out anything, but he doesn't think so. There's just too much we don't know about these crafts, and they could be anything, which sounds reasonable. Except Seth follows that statement up by saying, in his opinion, he thinks many unidentified objects are birds. Yeah, birds. Let's take a moment to let that sink in. Every eyewitness and all the equipment says these aircrafts are 40 feet long, don't have wings, and can travel faster than any plane known to the American public. I mean, has Seth ever seen a bird before? In fairness, Seth works

for a group called SETI, which is a private organization, so he isn't a government employee. But a lot of SETI's studies get public funding from NASA and the National Science Foundation. So if officials are pressing Seth to say the Tic Tac isn't an alien ship, he might not feel like he's in a position to say no. All the while, the press seems embarrassed to even be covering this stuff. At one point, the New York Times runs a front page news story on a Defense Department program that investigates UFOs. The piece talks a little bit about the initial Ticac encounter and some of the steps taken to investigate it. They even embed the leaked infrared footage at the very top of the article. But then, two days later, they publish this weird follow-up

where they pretty much apologize for covering alien sightings at all. The article's called On the Trail of a Secret Pentagon UFO Program. And the entire time, the author keeps reassuring readers that everyone at the Times has done their due diligence and fact-checked everything. The second paragraph of the article reads, quote, on UFOs get into the New York Times? Not easily, and only after a great deal of vetting, I assure you, end quote. It's almost like without these constant reassurances, he's worried people will assume he's making this stuff up. But at the same time, he's undermining his own argument

by essentially saying that this is all so bonkers, no reasonable person would ever believe it. And on some level, I get it. There are so many ridiculous UFO stories out there, so many hoaxes and obvious lies and information that can't be verified. Lots of people feel it's almost impossible to take any sighting seriously. But if we're not going to believe trained Navy pilots whose testimony is backed up by video evidence and verified by the U.S. government, what will we believe? When do we hit a turning point where it's not shameful to

suggest that we might possibly have visitors from space. Humans once thought the Earth was flat and sat at the center of the universe and that the moon was a living god. And when scientists found hard evidence to suggest otherwise, they were often mocked or persecuted. Are aliens already here? I don't know. If they are, they don't seem dangerous or unfriendly.

But we'll never get real answers until we open our minds and accept what's right in front of us. Thanks for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode. To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all AudioChuck originals.