Saturday, May 29, 2021

Former Lt. Col. Douglas Kurth speaks out about the Tic Tac

 Introduction

Much has been written about the origins of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP,) and the November 2004 U.S. S. Nimitz encounters. We have now heard from many of the participants, namely U.S. Navy sailors and aircrew. One notable absence has been direct testimony of former Lt. Col. Douglas Kurth, the Commanding Officer of Marine Hornet Squadron VMFA-232. Now, thanks to the efforts of U.S. researcher Christian Lambright, we have some additional information. In a 2021 paper titled "2004-2021: Behind the Curtain;" Lambright discusses and analyses not only some new information about Kurth, but also the very origins of AATIP. However, in this current blog post I wish to focus solely on Kurth.

Contact with Kurth

Up until now, I know of only two researchers who have spoken to Kurth about his part in the Nimitz encounters. Journalist Giuliano Marinkovic located Kurth, and on 28 October 2017 managed to contact him by telephone. Giuliano put some questions to Kurth, but Kurth's response effectively was "I did something and I can't talk about it." 

In the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies document titled "A Forensic Analysis of Navy Carrier Strike group Eleven's Encounters with an Anomalous Aerial vehicle," it is revealed that researcher Robert Klinn also conducted a telephone interview with Kurth, on 9 November 2017. The document states:

"He did not want to talk any details due to a commitment to a former employee but indicated to Mr Klinn that he knew Paco well and that 95% of what was written in the FighterSweep article was correct"

As part of the new paper, Lambright explores the role of Kurth in the 2004 incident. Lambright quotes Kurth as follows:

"I was called for an interview to be a Program manager at BAASS and accepted the job. Nobody in Bigelow companies or anyone associated with BAASS knew anything about the Supersonic Tic Tac event until I told them about it. I interviewed some of the witnesses and wrote a report about the event and submitted it. My report started the entire sequence of subsequent reports and investigation into the events."

"I am fairly sure in my hiring interview, Colm Kelleher, who did the interview, did not know about the event."

Asked for further details about the actual event, Kurth responded:

"That's when they vectored Fravor's flight toward the Unidentified Contact. After a few minutes when my checks were completed, I accepted their vector toward the Unidentified Contact. I had Fravor's flight on radar and was directly over the top of them when they were visually observing the Supersonic Tic Tac. I was not on the same radio frequency as Fravor's flight. I saw the visual disturbance in the water (which had been previously and accurately reported) and that is what I used as my reference point to orbit overhead. The disturbance in the water cleared suddenly. It all seemed odd to me at the time...I never saw the object physically myself."

I will explore Lambright's analysis concerning the origins of AATIP, in a later post.

14 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. I wonder, IF this is the whole story, and Lt.Col. Kurth’s role was as just another innocent witness, why has it been inexplicably removed from the famously paraded narrative? something is rotten here, or rather many things. Kurth comes from a robustly elite military family, his father was, among many other prestigious roles, president of the Naval War College he was a very interesting article on his storied life... https://usnwc.edu/News-and-Events/News/Rear-Adm-Ronald-J-Kurth-45th-President-Naval-War-College-Passes-Away

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  3. I wonder, IF this is the whole story, and Lt.Col. Kurth’s role was as just another innocent witness, why has it been inexplicably removed from the famously paraded narrative? something is rotten here, or rather many things. Kurth comes from a robustly elite military family, his father was, among many other prestigious roles, president of the Naval War College he was a very interesting article on his storied life... https://usnwc.edu/News-and-Events/News/Rear-Adm-Ronald-J-Kurth-45th-President-Naval-War-College-Passes-Away

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  4. I wonder, IF this is the whole story, and Kurth’s role was as innocent witness, then why has it been inexplicably erased from the famously paraded narrative? Something is rotten, or rather, many things. Kurth does come from a robustly elite military family. His father, among other prestigious roles, was president of the Naval War College. Here is an informative article on his vast and storied career: https://usnwc.edu/News-and-Events/News/Rear-Adm-Ronald-J-Kurth-45th-President-Naval-War-College-Passes-Away

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    1. Hi UAP or SAP, Thanks for your comment and the link to the information on Kurth's father.

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  5. So Fravor and his wingman were there and saw the tictac but above them was another plane with Kurth in it and they saw nothing but the white water? Im guessing that the white water was caused by the tictac coming out of it and flapping around a bit until it got its thrusters up to pressure. Could Kurths view have been obscured by the 2 planes beneath him? Odd that he's not mentioned in Fravors account.

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    1. Hi David, Yes, there are many questions still to be answered, eg. did he record anything on his helmet camera, did his plane have a FLIR pod, etc. I wish Kurth would grant a full interview so that we could hear his complete story.

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    2. Keith,

      Fravor has said he did not have a ATFLIR pod. So there is that

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  6. This is fascinating to me. I have looked into this incident in some detail (i.e. read as much as I reasonably could online), and nowehere else have I heard mention of this man or that another aeroplane was in the vicinity of the Tic-Tac.

    It makes me even more inclined to believe that this was a next-gen, sub-launched drone.

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    1. Hi Matthew, Kurth's presence was originally reported in a 2015 article which revealed Fravor's story. https://sofrep.com/fightersweep/x-files-edition/

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  7. Hi Keith,

    In relation to the matter of Kurth's largely unreported presence around the Tic-Tac/white water event, are you also aware of the apparent wingman discrepancy?

    In the article which, I believe, started this whole thing off, (2017, December, NYT, 2 Navy Airmen and an Object That ‘Accelerated Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen’), the very first line identifies the 2 FASTEAGLE pilots as Fravor and 'Lt. Cmdr. Jim Slaight'.

    If one searches for Slaight's name in relation to this event, his presence is confirmed numerous times (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22lieutenant+commander+jim+slaight%22&t=ffab&ia=web), though many/most might well be repeating the NYT's copy.

    Four years later, though, Fravor's wingman was publicly re-identified (2021, May, 60 MINUTES, Navy pilots recall unsettling 2004 UAP sighting) as Lt. Cmdr. Alexandra Dietrich, a "wing woman" as it were, and Slaight has vanished.

    Have you seen anyone comment upon this matter anywhere?

    Thanks

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    1. When Slaight was stated to be Fravor's wingman; many people noted that there was a reference to the other pilot being "her," i.e. female. While Dietrich's name was known to some in the UFO research community; as she had not then gone public, those in the know, chose not to name her but did state that the other pilot was female and not Slaight. Turns out Slaight was in fact Dietrich's WSO.

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    2. Yes thanks for clarifying this Keith. I'd been meaning to check this out myself as I felt something was not quite right with the history, when I'd mentioned it to others.

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  8. Brill! Thanks for the clarification on both the Kurth article and Slaight/Dietrich.

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