Case files / nimitz-2004
The Nimitz encounter
- When
- November 14, 2004
- Where
- Off San Diego, California
- Reported by
- Navy F/A-18 crews from the USS Nimitz strike group
- Released
- April 27, 2020, by the Department of Defense
- Status
- Unidentified, per the Department of Defense in 2020
Pilots from the USS Nimitz strike group were sent to look at radar contacts off Southern California. They described a white object roughly 40 feet long, with no wings and no visible exhaust. A later flight recorded an object on the jet's infrared targeting camera.
That clip, known as FLIR1, first appeared publicly in December 2017. The Department of Defense officially released it in April 2020 together with Gimbal and GoFast, saying the phenomena in the three videos remained unidentified.