On the night of October 4, 1967, at about 11:20 p.m. Atlantic Daylight Time, it was reported that something had crashed into the waters of the Gulf of Maine near Shag Harbour. At least eleven people saw a low-flying lit object head towards the harbour. Multiple witnesses reported hearing a whistling sound "like a bomb," then a "whoosh," and finally a loud bang. The object was never officially identified, and was therefore referred to as an unidentified flying object (UFO) in Government of Canada documents. The Canadian military became involved in a subsequent rescue/recovery effort. The initial report was made by local resident Laurie Wickens and four of his friends. Driving through Shag Harbour on Highway 3, they spotted a large object descending into the waters off the harbour. Attaining a better vantage point, Wickens and his friends saw an object floating 250 m (820 ft) to 300 m (980 ft) offshore in the Gulf of Maine. Wickens contacted the RCMP detachment in Barrington Passage and reported he had seen a large airplane or small airliner crash into the Gulf of Maine.
Assuming an aircraft had crashed, within about 15 minutes, 10 RCMP officers arrived at the scene. Concerned for survivors, the RCMP detachment contacted the Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) in Halifax to advise them of the situation, and ask if any aircraft were missing. Before any attempt at rescue could be made, the object started to sink and disappeared from view.
A rescue mission was quickly assembled. Within half an hour of the crash, local fishing boats went out to the crash site in the waters of the Gulf of Maine off Shag Harbour to look for survivors. No survivors, bodies or debris were taken, either by the fishermen or by a Canadian Coast Guard search and rescue cutter, which arrived about an hour later from nearby Clark's Harbour.
By the next morning, RCC Halifax had determined that no aircraft were missing. While still tasked with the search, the captain of the Canadian Coast Guard cutter received a radio message from RCC Halifax that all commercial, private and military aircraft were accounted for along the eastern seaboard, in both Atlantic Canada and New England.
The same morning, RCC Halifax also sent a priority telex to the "Air Desk" at Royal Canadian Air Force headquarters in Ottawa, which handled all civilian and military UFO sightings, informing them of the crash and that all conventional explanations such as aircraft, flares, etc. had been dismissed. Therefore this was labeled a "UFO Report." The head of the Air Desk then sent another priority telex to the Royal Canadian Navy headquarters concerning the "UFO Report" and recommended an underwater search be mounted. The RCN in turn sent another priority telex tasking Fleet Diving Unit Atlantic with carrying out the search.
Two days after the incident had been observed, a detachment of RCN divers from Fleet Diving Unit Atlantic was assembled and for the next three days they combed the seafloor of the Gulf of Maine off Shag Harbor looking for an object. The final report said no trace of an object was found.
While the official story of the incident ends here, further evidence attributed to various military and civilian witnesses might imply a highly secretive military search involving a small flotilla of Royal Canadian Navy and United States Navy ships about 50 km (31 mi) northeast of Shag Harbour near Shelburne (see map above), site of HMCS Shelburne, a top secret submarine detection base jointly operated by both navies as part of the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS).
According to one military witness, he was allegedly briefed that the object had originally been picked up on radar coming out of Siberia. After crashing in Shag Harbour, it traveled underwater up the coast and came to rest on top of a submarine magnetic detection grid reportedly located off Shelburne, where it was supposedly joined by a second vehicle. Navy ships were allegedly anchored off HMCS Shelburne's facilities at Government Point for a week, according to the witnesses, in an attempt to recover the object. [1] A barge was said to have been brought in from the United States to assist in the recovery, as reported by another military witness. Regional newspaper stories did mention a barge with "atomic furnaces" being brought to the government wharf at Shelburne Harbour on October 6 for emergency repair, theorized by some as a cover story to explain its presence there. [2]
One American diver, known only as "Harry" in the book Dark Object by Styles and Ledger, stated that the object wasn't from planet Earth. "Harry" claimed photographs were taken by the divers and some foam-like debris brought up. [3] Another military witness claimed that there were actually two objects, one perhaps trying to assist the other. The naval search was suddenly called off on October 11. That night, a seemingly identical UFO was reported departing the area by witnesses near the original Shag Harbour crash site.
The most recent History Channel documentary about the incident, which aired on August 10, 2006, also reported that one of the divers involved in the Shag Harbour search did come forward during the mid-1990s, refusing to allow his identity to become known publicly. Once the researchers verified that the man in fact had served as a diver during that search, he recounted his version of what had happened at Shag Harbour.
In this recounting, by the time the divers reached Shag Harbour, they already knew that nothing would be found there, because the target had already been located off the coast at Shelburne. He went on to further say that the Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force as well as the United States Air Force and United States Navy monitored the "unknown objects" by radar and sonar, and that the objects were underwater. This monitoring continued for at least three days, until a Soviet Navy submarine was detected entering Canadian waters northeast of Nova Scotia. With that, the navy ships departed to intercept the submarine, and by the time they had returned, the "unknown objects" had evidently departed.
However, unlike the event at Shag Harbour, no official documentation or confirmation has yet emerged to support witness stories of a second search near Shelburne. There has been nothing to substantiate the diver's claims, with the exception of archived records that indicate a substantial amount of search and monitor activity in the Shelburne area during that 10 day period.
