Tanker Ticonderoga disk sighting off Oregon coast
12 November 1947 · Off Cape Blanco, Oregon
Summary
The tanker Ticonderoga was the vantage point for a sighting reported on 12 November 1947 off Cape Blanco, Oregon. An Air Force check-list gave the location as 40 miles south of Cape Blanco, 20 miles offshore and named the observer as Second Officer Claude Lee Williamson, with an excerpt from the Oregon Journal of 13 November 1947 as its source. Another copy of the same check-list carries the same entries. It records two objects in sight for 45 seconds at 700 to 900 mph, with a ball shape and jet-like streams of fire.
The narrative page says the officer radio-telephoned the United Press. The discs came out of the north horizon and curved west in a long, low arc. He did not think they were meteors, because they generally do not travel in pairs. Ordinary Seaman James S. Lynde was listed as also observing "discs". The copy in the D087 compilation gives the officer's first name as Glenda, while its check-list gives Claude.
Later Air Force and Navy studies repeated the account. The Air Materiel Command report named Williamson and put the ship 20 miles off the Oregon shore. The 1948 study also said 20 miles. The 1949 version of the study said 80 miles. None of these pages gives a mundane explanation for the sighting.
A separate letter in the incident summaries placed the ship at 43 degrees 15 minutes north and 124 degrees 54 minutes west at 0620 GCT and said the discs were heading southwest. Its writer suggested they may have been heading for an object seen off the Golden Gate. The same letter linked the sighting to a Navy survey ship's report of an echo that vanished at a supposed reef site about 400 miles west of San Francisco.
Where the files disagree
Two documents give different accounts of the same detail. Both are quoted as written; we don't say which is right.
Distance of the Ticonderoga from the Oregon shore
Second officer's first name
“Second Officer Glenda Lee Williamson radio-telephoned the United Press.” page 112 →
“Second Officer Claude Lee Williamson radio-telephoned the United Press.” page 82 →
What the files say
“Didn't think they were meteors because they generally do not travel in pairs and usually fall to the horizon.”
Page 82 →“Location 40 miles south of Cape Blanco, Oregon, 20 miles offshore.”
Page 81 →“According to the tanker Ticonderoga's second officer, two "flying discs" were seen heading SOUTHWEST when the ship was in 43 degrees fifteen minutes north and 124 degrees 54 minutes west, at 0620 GCT, 12th November 1947.”
Page 9 →“This officer said the disks were in sight 45 seconds, moving at a speed estimated at 700-900 mph, curving in a long, low arc.”
Page 29 →