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USS Trepang Photographs

Sighting

Leaked submarine photos from 1971 allegedly show disc and cigar-shaped craft during Arctic exercises of USS Trepang

Witnesses — Leaked submarine photos from 1971 allegedly show disc and cigar-shaped craft during Arctic exercises of USS Trepang

Evidence — Photographs

Status — Resolved

Disclosure Rating — 5/10

Photos surfaced online in 2015 purporting to show unidentified craft taken from the attack submarine USS Trepang during tests near Iceland. The black-and-white shots depict discs emerging from the water and unusual cigar shapes.123

Investigators traced the images to a French magazine and suggested they actually show target balloons or experiments. The U.S. Navy has issued no official comment, leaving the photographs controversial.45

  Incident dossier

Date/PeriodEvent/Development
22 Feb – 22 Mar 1971USS Trepang conducted under-ice weapons experiments between Iceland and Jan Mayen during ICEX drills.67 Crew logs confirm the boat surfaced through pack ice several times for test firings. Photographs attributed to 10 March 1971 allegedly captured unknown objects breaching the sea or airspace.
2015French periodical Top Secret printed thirteen black-and-white frames it said were leaked periscope images. Digital scans quickly spread online via researcher Alex Mistretta and The Black Vault archive.1
2017Skeptics highlighted cloned cloud structures in one frame and matched silhouettes to 1970s target balloons, arguing manipulation.8
11 July 2024PolitiFact interviewed retired Rear Admiral Dean R. Sackett Jr., who commanded Trepang, and he reiterated that no unidentified craft were recorded during the patrol.9

  Key individuals

NameRole/Description
Dean R. Sackett Jr.Commanding officer; commissioned Trepang in 1970; publicly dismisses the UFO claim.
Senior Chief Sonar Technician John KlikaCited in the leak as first observer; tells investigators he recalls only standard target practice.8
Alex Mistretta and John Greenewald Jr.Independent researchers who traced the image chain of custody and obtained the submarine's 1971 command history under FOIA.6
Wim van Utrecht and Gilles FernandezPhoto analysts who demonstrated pixel-level duplication consistent with compositing.4

  Physical evidence

Thirteen grainy periscope photographs stamped "OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH – NOT TO BE RELEASED – SSN 674."7

Command History and deck-log extracts verify live-fire evaluations of inflatable target drones during the mission.6 No original negatives, duty-log entries, or radar tracks corroborate an anomalous contact.

  Assessment

Available military records, crew testimony, and photographic forensics favour a misidentified weapons-test sequence or deliberate hoax rather than extraterrestrial hardware. Unless the original film emerges for chain-of-custody analysis, the Trepang pictures remain an instructive example of how isolated images can migrate from naval archive to internet myth.

Close comparison of frames reveals identical smoke plumes copied within a single image, indicating post-production editing. Metabunk and Sécurité Civile balloon catalogues show a strong geometric match between the so-called "cigar" craft and 1970s MK-IV radar reflector balloons. Timing coincides with documented torpedo war-shot calibration, offering a prosaic source for airborne debris.

  References

  1. theblackvault.com ↩ ↩2

  2. theufochronicles.com ↩

  3. openminds.tv ↩

  4. metabunk.org ↩ ↩2

  5. en.wikipedia.org ↩

  6. documents.theblackvault.com ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. navsource.org ↩ ↩2

  8. skepticversustheflyingsaucers.blogspot.com ↩ ↩2

  9. politifact.com ↩

Occured on March 10, 1971

3 min read