USS Canberra sailor watches huge metallic cigar pace naval exercise — approximately 1958

Around 1958, an eighteen-year-old sailor aboard the guided-missile cruiser USS Canberra was on watch during a multinational naval exercise involving an estimated eighty to one hundred fifty vessels in waters described as the English Channel about three hundred miles off France. Through binoculars he saw a large metallic-gray cigar-shaped craft approach the ship. Radar personnel reportedly described it as initially moving at about five thousand miles per hour. As it neared the exercise area, it slowed and hovered at an estimated altitude of thirty-five thousand feet about fifteen miles away. The sailor estimated it to be as large as a football field, with no visible lights or surface features. For about an hour it appeared to match the ship’s turns. After his watch ended, he briefly left the deck and returned to find that the object had departed eastward toward Europe. He later checked the ship’s log and found no entry describing the encounter, although he believed portions of the log appeared unusually written. The following day the ship entered an English port and he heard no further discussion of the event.