US Navy UFO Crash Retrieval & Reverse Engineering Programs

Overview

This video examines the alleged role of the United States Navy in the retrieval, storage, and reverse engineering of non-human craft and technologies of unknown origin (TUO). UAP Gerb organizes the Navy's hypothesized UFO legacy program into four operational pillars — monitor, collect, store, and exploit — while focusing the investigation on the collect and store phases. The analysis draws on declassified documents, journalist reporting, senior official admissions, and firsthand witness accounts to argue that naval UFO operations are structured around classified agencies and programs that most observers have never encountered, chief among them the National Underwater Reconnaissance Office (NURO).

The video's central thesis is that the US Navy, working through NURO, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the CIA Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T), Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), and contractors such as Lockheed Martin and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has conducted clandestine undersea retrieval operations involving unidentified submerged objects (USOs) across at least six decades. Recovered craft are alleged to be transferred to ONR facilities and then routed to defense contractors and Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) for exploitation.

Anchor evidence includes the 1989 recorded telephone call between Admiral Bobby Ray Inman and NASA mission specialist Bob Echler, in which Inman confirmed US possession of recovered craft in operational condition; the separate 1989 disclosure by former Director of Naval Intelligence Sumar Shapiro that he personally studied extraterrestrial vehicles at close quarters; the deathbed testimony of former Navy Director of Science and Technology Development Nat Kobitz to journalist Ross Coulthart; and an alleged 1991 undersea retrieval near Aberdeen, Scotland, described by a retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel identified only as Mark.

Structural Framework: Four Pillars of Naval UFO Operations

UAP Gerb proposes that naval UFO legacy programs can be divided into four functional categories:

• Monitor: Persistent surveillance of USO activity, likely involving NURO underwater reconnaissance assets and satellites operated by the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office). This pillar is intentionally omitted from the video's focus.
• Collect: Active retrieval operations using submersibles, surface vessels, and SOCOM personnel to recover downed craft from the ocean floor.
• Store: Transfer of recovered objects to Office of Naval Research facilities and then onward to classified contractor and FFRDC laboratories.
• Exploit: Reverse engineering and material exploitation of technologies of unknown origin, conducted at installations such as the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane underground facility and through contractors including SAIC.

The National Underwater Reconnaissance Office (NURO)

NURO is described as the "hidden younger brother" of the NRO and is one of the video's central subjects. Established in 1969 through an agreement between the CIA and US Navy — with Secretary of the Navy John Warner as its first director — NURO was created to manage submarine intelligence missions and the exploitation of their intelligence product. Its founding missions included recovery of sunken submarines (most famously the Soviet K-129), tapping of Soviet underwater communication cables (the IVY BELLS program), ocean floor mapping (designated Project Desktop), and SIGINT collection from submarines under a program at one time called the Special Navy Control Program.

NURO is exceptional in that the entire agency is protected by a Special Access Program. Admiral Bobby Ray Inman is the only person publicly on record to have admitted serving as NURO's director. Inman took the position on 13 September 1974, simultaneously serving as Director of Naval Intelligence. He disclosed this role publicly only in an October 2021 interview with David Zur at the Caltech Heritage Project, and was subsequently warned by letter not to discuss the office in detail since all its activities remain classified.

Key NURO vessels identified in the video include the USS Halibut, USS Seawolf, USS Parche, NR-1 submarine, Hughes Glomar Explorer, and — by implication — the USS Jimmy Carter. Per Inman, NURO was principally concerned with technology acquisition for undersea reconnaissance, imaging ocean floors, and tracking objects of intelligence interest. The CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology served as one of NURO's founding agencies and exerted dominant control from its inception.

The video identifies journalist Christopher Sharp of Liberation Times as the source that first prompted the investigation. In September 2024, Sharp published and then partially retracted an article naming NURO, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, NRO, NGA, SOCOM, and the CIA DS&T as participants in undersea craft retrieval programs. Sharp stated he was threatened for publishing the information. After restoring and expanding the piece, Sharp reported that recovered craft are transferred to the Office of Naval Research, which then hands them to defense contractors for detailed analysis.

Key Officials and Their Disclosures

Bobby Ray Inman

Bobby Ray Inman is a four-star admiral and career intelligence official who served as Director of Naval Intelligence, Director of the NSA, Deputy Director of the CIA, and Director of NURO. He later served on the boards of SAIC and Wackenhut Services, two firms independently implicated in UFO legacy programs.

In 1989, Inman received a call from Bob Echler asking whether recovered UFO vehicles might become available for technological research. Inman replied that the answer "ten years ago would have been no," but that openness might be evolving. He directed Echler to CIA DS&T Deputy Director Everett Heinman as the right contact. A recorded follow-up call from Inman's office warned Echler he would be "breaching confidence and/or violation of the secrecy laws" by discussing Inman's involvement. In 2022, Inman publicly claimed on the Project Unity program that he had found plausible explanations for virtually all UAP sightings — a statement UAP Gerb characterizes as directly contradicting Inman's private 1989 disclosures.

Sumar Shapiro

Sumar Shapiro served as Director of Naval Intelligence and later joined BDM International as an executive. Introduced to Bob Echler by Inman, Shapiro disclosed in 1989 that factions within the US possessed extraterrestrial vehicles he had personally studied at close quarters. He stated teams disassembled the craft, packed them, and shipped them across the country to different laboratories. The craft featured unique interlocking components requiring disassembly in an exact sequence. A second meeting at Shapiro's Virginia home in 1990 ended abruptly when Echler displayed a hologram of an alien head; Shapiro became visibly upset and terminated the meeting.

Everett Heinman

Everett Heinman served as CIA DS&T Deputy Director from 1979 to 1982, then directed NRO Program B from 1982 to 1989, serving as the first chief of the Pine Gap, Australia ground element. When Echler met Heinman at CIA Langley on 10 August 1989, Heinman denied any knowledge of UFOs. In 2022, when contacted by Twitter researcher RGH_UFOs, Heinman did not deny involvement but offered to answer questions before going silent.

Nat Kobitz

Nat Kobitz was the US Navy's longtime Director of Science and Technology Development — its chief R&D scientist for over 30 years. Shortly before his death from cancer, he contacted journalist Ross Coulthart and over several months disclosed that he had been officially briefed on a classified program involving multiple retrieved non-human craft. He was shown what appeared to be a bulkhead from a craft at Wright-Patterson AFB, taken deep underground to a secure room. He described the craft's skin and inner bulkhead as composites bonded at an atomic level in a way that defied conventional explanation. Kobitz stated he saw no good justification for keeping the program secret from Congress and the public.

The Glomar Explorer and NURO Operations

The Hughes Glomar Explorer was built by the CIA at a modern cost equivalent of approximately $1.68 billion and launched in 1972 to recover the sunken Soviet K-129 submarine under Project Azorian. The ship was a NURO asset operated jointly by the CIA DS&T and the US Navy. From 1978 onward, Ocean Minerals Company — with Lockheed Missiles and Space Company as prime contractor — leased the Glomar Explorer for ostensible deep-sea mining, with UAP Gerb arguing these operations constituted cover for continued clandestine NURO missions.

A critical case involving the Glomar is presented through the testimony of witness RK, an E4 instructor at Great Lakes Naval Base, as documented by Leonard Stringfield. A San Diego sailor told RK that in June 1973, a UFO was shot down between Hawaii and the mainland by a Navy destroyer. The craft fell into 350-foot water and was retrieved by the Glomar Explorer, then shipped to Hawaii and on to Chicago. RK later observed a craft matching the sailor's description — 30 feet long, 10 feet tall, light silvery-blue, teardrop-shaped with no windows — resting on a wooden platform inside a Quonset hut at Great Lakes Naval Base in September 1973. Bobby Ray Inman separately stated he became aware of the Glomar's activities in Hawaii during 1972–1974, potentially placing him in proximity to this alleged retrieval.

Project Sand Dollar and the Deep Submergence Systems Project

In 1965, John P. Craraven — chief scientist of the Navy Special Projects Office — was briefed on a highly compartmentalized program called Sand Dollar. Sand Dollar was tasked with retrieving militarily sensitive hardware and other items with national security importance from the seafloor. The program was buried within the structure of another secret program, itself hidden within the Polaris subprogram. Craraven was shown a classified inventory itemizing objects of interest distributed across seafloors worldwide. The program remained classified as of 2002.

Craraven's 1964 Deep Submergence Systems Project (DSSP) was the direct response to naval requirements identified by Sand Dollar and by the loss of the USS Thresher. The DSSP aimed to build six DSRV units and additional Deep Submergence Search Vehicles (DSSVs) with operational depths of 20,000 feet. Only DSRV-1 (Mystic) and DSRV-2 (Avalon), built by Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, were publicly acknowledged. Craraven wrote that the DSRV was designed from the outset with clandestine intelligence missions in mind: "A DSRV designed, constructed, and deployed for every conceivable rescue mission would also be available for the intelligence 'mission impossible' that were sure to occur."

The 1991 North Atlantic Undersea Retrieval

The video's most extensively detailed case is an alleged undersea craft recovery described by a retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel named Mark on Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM on 19 April 2002.

Mark had served at 22nd Area Camp Pendleton and then at Futema USMC Air Station in Okinawa, where he began rescue diving with a Navy crew. He formed a friendship with a Navy lieutenant who became commander of a DSRV unit, leading to Mark's assignment to that unit in Virginia.

The incident: In early summer 1991, Mark's DSRV crew was dispatched from Virginia to approximately 250 nautical miles west of Aberdeen, Scotland — consistent with the Rockall Trough, which reaches depths exceeding 8,000 feet. A survey vessel had detected a radioactive signature on the seafloor. Side-scan sonar confirmed a craft resting on the bottom, but its dimensions were smaller than any known nuclear submarine. Naval authorities initially suspected a downed foreign nuclear submarine.

The craft: At just under 1.5 miles depth, the crew immediately recognized it was not a submarine but shaped more like an aircraft. The object was partially buried nose-first in silt and mud, with approximately two-thirds — its rear section — exposed. Its form was triangular with rounded rear corners, charcoal gray, approximately 60 to 70 feet long (6 to 8 feet longer than an F-14). The craft had no windows, cockpit, rivets, seams, bolts, or visible mechanical systems on its underside. Along its hull were repeating geometric markings — not matching any known language or script — described as hieroglyphic in style but consisting of geometric shapes rather than figurative characters.

The crew photographed the craft and a marine archaeologist was brought down on a second dive 12 hours later. The archaeologist estimated the craft had been in place for 30 to 40 years — placing the crash between approximately 1951 and 1961. On the third day, a fourth dive was made to retrieve the craft. Thrusters cleared silt from the midsection and the crew rigged the craft for lifting. When lifted, the craft ascended two and a half to three times faster than anticipated — indicating extremely low mass. The underside was completely smooth with no piping, exhaust, or mechanical features. Mark and his entire crew were steamed off-site within four hours of recovery with no debriefing and no additional NDAs beyond those signed when joining the DSRV unit.

UAP Gerb notes the hieroglyphic-style geometric markings parallel those reported on the 1965 Kecksburg, Pennsylvania UFO Crash acorn-shaped craft and in Daniel Sheehan's account of classified Project Blue Book files. He also notes that DSRV units Mystic and Avalon had a listed operational depth of just over one mile while the retrieval occurred at nearly 1.5 miles, suggesting the operation may have employed a secret, unacknowledged DSSV-type vessel.

The Navy Special Program

The Navy Special Program (NSP) is described as an umbrella classification structure for naval clandestine undersea operations. It appears in a 1974 National Security Council intelligence directive alongside the NRO, running parallel to the National Reconnaissance Program under the Executive Committee for the Director of Central Intelligence. UAP Gerb argues NURO is likely subsumed within the NSP. A 14 December 1984 memo to Director of Naval Intelligence Rear Admiral John Butts connects NSP oversight to Secretary of the Navy John Lehman (who also served as NURO director), Everett Heinman's CIA DS&T department, and inter-agency intelligence committee planning.

Samuel Gene Potit, who served as technical director of the Navy Special Program Office, directed Project Palladium in the 1960s — a program using naval vessels and submarines to create false UAP radar signatures and map Soviet air defense responses. References to Palladium appear in select Majestic-12 Documents rated moderate-to-high confidence, suggesting that whoever produced those documents had classified knowledge of Palladium prior to its 1998 public disclosure.

Naval Installations and Storage of Non-Human Craft

The video reviews several reported cases of naval bases holding non-human craft:

• Naval Air Station Sunnyvale, California (1952): CPO radar observer Derward "Buddy" Hack accidentally entered an unguarded hangar and observed a massive saucer with rows of windows; family members including his mother confirmed the account.
• Naval Air Station Brunswick, Maine (1956): A retired USAF colonel witnessed a film shown by Major Lester Goldberg depicting a silvery metallic disc with a well-lit interior and at least three gray-colored non-human bodies on tables.
• Great Lakes Naval Base (1973): Witness RK observed a 30-foot teardrop-shaped silvery-blue craft on a wooden platform in a Quonset hut, consistent with a craft a San Diego sailor claimed was retrieved by the Glomar Explorer.
• Naval Air Base Yuma, Arizona (1967): Witness Pete claimed to photograph a saucer at the installation; Stringfield's investigation was likely compromised by external interference and became a dead end.
• Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia: USAF veteran Steven Walker reported a flight line lockdown for an arriving classified aircraft that produced no discernible engine, brake, or landing sounds — consistent with claims that TR-3B programs relocated from Area 51 to Diego Garcia in the early 1990s.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is named by Sharp as providing deep submergence vehicles to support undersea retrieval efforts. WHOI employs advanced submersibles including the HOV Alvin, AUV Sentry, and ROV Jason, and manages the Navy Oceanographic Research Laboratory (now part of the Naval Research Laboratory). The facility has received over $3.4 billion in federal contracts since 2002, including sole-source indefinite-delivery contracts with the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane. WHOI also holds R&D contracts with SAIC and NSWC Crane Weapons Systems Division — both institutions implicated in the Off-World Technologies Division underground facility.

Key Claims

• Admiral Bobby Ray Inman served as Director of NURO beginning 13 September 1974 and remains the only person publicly on record admitting this role.
• NURO is one of the rare examples of an entire intelligence agency protected by a Special Access Program.
• In a 1989 phone call, Inman confirmed to Bob Echler that the US government possessed recovered craft in operational condition and directed Echler to CIA DS&T Deputy Director Everett Heinman.
• Former Director of Naval Intelligence Sumar Shapiro disclosed in 1989 that he had personally studied extraterrestrial vehicles and that teams disassembled and shipped craft to laboratories across the country.
• Nat Kobitz, former Navy Director of Science and Technology Development, was briefed in his official capacity on a program involving multiple retrieved non-human craft and shown a non-human bulkhead at Wright-Patterson AFB.
• The Hughes Glomar Explorer, a NURO asset, allegedly retrieved a downed UFO from waters between Hawaii and the mainland in June 1973.
• Project Sand Dollar, buried within the Polaris subprogram, was a Navy program tasked with retrieving objects from the world's seafloors; its classified inventory showed objects distributed globally.
• The Deep Submergence Systems Project was designed from inception to support clandestine intelligence retrieval missions, not merely submarine rescue.
• In summer 1991, a DSRV crew operating approximately 250 nautical miles west of Aberdeen, Scotland, recovered a triangular, charcoal-gray craft approximately 68–70 feet long from nearly 1.5 miles of depth; the craft bore no windows, seams, rivets, or mechanical features, and carried repeating geometric markings on its hull.
• A marine archaeologist estimated the craft had rested on the seafloor for 30 to 40 years, suggesting a crash date of 1951–1961.
• The recovered craft ascended two to three times faster than anticipated for its size, indicating anomalously low mass.
• The Navy Special Program is an umbrella classification structure that likely conceals NURO and related undersea retrieval programs.
• Project Palladium's appearance in Majestic-12 documents rated moderate-to-high confidence implies the document author had classified access, since Palladium was not publicly discussed until 1998.
• Multiple former Navy officials with direct or secondhand knowledge of UAP legacy programs describe the Navy's programs as the most secretive of any US military branch.

Sources

• YouTube — UAP Gerb
• Christopher Sharp, Liberation Times, September 2024
• Art Bell, Coast to Coast AM, 19 April 2002
• Leonard Stringfield, UFO Crash/Retrieval Status Reports, Volumes 1–7
• Jeffrey T. Richelson, The US Intelligence Community
• Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage
• John P. Craraven, The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea (2002)

Related Pages

• People: Bobby Ray Inman, Sumar Shapiro, Everett Heinman, Bob Echler, Nat Kobitz, John P. Craraven, Leonard Stringfield, Christopher Sharp, Ross Coulthart, Daniel Sheehan, Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet, Ner Liddell, Art Bell
• Organizations: National Underwater Reconnaissance Office, Office of Naval Research, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, CIA Directorate of Science and Technology, Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane, SAIC, Lockheed Martin, BDM International
• Operations: Sand Dollar, Glomar Explorer Operation (K-129 Recovery), Project Palladium, Deep Submergence Systems Project (DSSP)
• Concepts: Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle (DSRV), Deep Submergence Search Vehicle (DSSV), Unidentified Submerged Object (USO), Special Access Programs (SAPs), Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs)
• Locations: Aberdeen, Scotland, Rockall Trough, Pine Gap, Australia, Pensacola Naval Air Station