US 6th Fleet
The US 6th Fleet, stationed near the Mediterranean Sea in 1979 during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, was proposed as the source of electromagnetic interference that scrambled the avionics of Spanish Air Force pilot Fernando Kamaro's Mirage F1 during his pursuit of UFOs in the Manises UFO Incident.
| Type | military |
|---|
Role in Manises Incident Explanations
Official explanations for the instrumentation failures experienced by Kamaro during his November 11, 1979, intercept mission attributed the avionics jamming to powerful electronic signatures from two LPH Iwo Jima-class helicopter carriers of the US 6th Fleet. The fleet was operating in the Mediterranean as part of U.S. naval operations during the Iranian Hostage Crisis.
However, pilot Kamaro explicitly rejected this explanation. He stated that he was too far from the fleet for its electronic systems to interfere with his flight navigation, radio, and emergency control systems. More critically, the US 6th Fleet explanation failed to account for:
- The truncated cone-shaped craft Kamaro witnessed with his own eyes
- The object's evasive behavior at supersonic speeds (Mach 1.4)
- The active jamming of Kamaro's infrared missile targeting systems when he attempted to lock onto the UFO
- The onboard alert indicating he was being locked onto by continuous wave missile radar
The explanation also did not address the initial commercial aircraft encounter that preceded the military intercept, nor the three radar signatures detected with estimated diameters of 200 meters each.
Significance
The US 6th Fleet explanation represents a common pattern in UFO case explanations where nearby military operations are invoked as mundane sources for anomalous events, despite pilot testimony and technical details that contradict such attributions.