UFOs and USOs -The Santa Catalina Channel.

[Karl12]

Santa Catalina Channel.

Map:









The Santa Catalina Channel has been a rather infamous UFO/USO hotspot over the decades and (although it's the History Channel) there's a short segment about the area in the vid below.

Apparently people have been spotting them there for decades and back in the sixties families were even going down there to see them with a packed lunch.








See 3:10

Writes Ann Druffel,


“This body of water lies between the coastlines of Southern California and Santa Catalina Island, 20 miles offshore to the southwest. The area has for at least thirty years been the scene of UFO reports of all kinds: surface sightings of hazy craft which cruise leisurely in full view of military installations, aerial spheres bobbing in oscillating flight, gigantic cloud-cigars, and at least one report of an underwater UFO with uniformed occupants.”


Another researcher, Robert Stanley, editor of the now defunct magazine Unicus, writes,


“Even in the sixties, families were going down to the beach and waiting for a UFO to pass by…. By the 1970s, whole families were going down to the beach at Point Dume at night to watch the multi-colored UFOs [that] would sink under the water at times.”


MUFON field investigator Bill Hamilton writes,


“For years witnesses have seen many types of UFO cruising off the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Southern California. UFOs have actually been seen to come out of the water in the San Pedro Channel.”


I had already uncovered several firsthand cases myself. My next step was to put together a comprehensive list of all the recorded ocean-going encounters in the area.

I came up with more than 50 sightings..



Article: Fate Magazine, February 2006

As per usual many of the pertinent links have now been deleted from the internet but there are saved articles below which cover the freaky goings on.

The first California underwater UFO was on July 7, 1947 when two San Raphael teen-agers saw a "flat glistening object" emerge from the water, fly around and then dive back into the water 400 yards from shore. Throughout this same year, numerous steamers reported a mysterious 'undersea mountain' or a 'large mass underwater' which kept appearing and disappearing in various locations in the San Francisco Bay and down the coast.
Following this, the sightings came regularly, in 1951, 1954, 1955, 1957, 1962, 1964, 1970, 1980, 1990, 1991, 1993, 2004 the list goes on, most from the Santa Catalina channel. The sightings involve many highly credible witnesses including lifeguards, security guards, law enforcement officials, military officers and countless citizens.


Link Deleted.

Some interesting dates in that last article and here's more info on those 1947 reports of 'flying discs over Catalina' (the same time as Roswell).

One of the first such reports to make it into the local paper, was the supposedly widely-viewed account of several “flying discs” over Avalon in 1947, just about the same time as the infamous Roswell incident...

Not as widely reported at the same time, however, were a number of other “disc” sightings both before and after the Roswell incident.

On the evening of June 26, 1947, U.S. Army Major George Wilcox of Warren, Arizona, reported a series of “eight or nine” disc-shaped objects traveling near his home and at an altitude of about 1,000 feet above the nearby mountains.

That same evening, a Captain E.B. Detchmendy reported seeing a “white disc glowing like an electric light bulb” passing over Pope, New Mexico, a sighting echoed by several local townspeople.

Dozens of other sightings—many by military officers—were reported in the region in the coming days and weeks.

But the Southwest wasn’t the only venue. Similar sightings were reported throughout much of the western United States as far north as Washington State and as far west as California—including Catalina Island.

On July 8, 1947, the very same day that Roswell’s Daily Record was reporting the initial “flying disc” story, a remarkable incident reportedly occurred in the skies above Avalon. An article on the front page of the week’s issue of the Catalina Islander details an alleged sighting by three visiting Army veterans of six “flying discs” traveling at high speed from the northeast and passing directly over Avalon before disappearing over East Peak.

According to the story, the six discs appeared at about 1 p.m. and flew in a formation of two sets of three and were witnessed not only by the veterans, but by “hundreds” of others as well.

Alvio Russo, one of the reported witnesses and an Army Air Corps veteran who had flown 35 bombing missions over Germany with the Eighth Air Force, estimated the velocity of the discs at “850 miles an hour,” according to the story.

Bob Jung, listed as a “former aerial photographer” agreed with this estimate and said they were flying roughly as fast as the U.S. Navy’s “Tiny Tim” rocket, which he had photographed numerous times for the Navy.


Link Deleted.