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.