Recreation of the 1966 Subic Bay Naval Station photograph, in which two jet fighters climbing on full afterburner were captured with two unexplained round white dots directly above them, discovered only six years later.
THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP SIGHTINGS REPORT
1966: The Vanished Slide of Subic Bay Naval Station, Philippines
On a Sunday in July 1966, a sailor aboard the USS Holder at Subic Bay Naval Station photographed two jet fighters climbing nearly straight up on full afterburner directly over his ship — and saw nothing else at the time. Only six years later, in 1972, projecting the slide onto a wall for the first time, did he notice two small, distinct round white dots positioned high above the jets, seemingly right where the aircraft were headed.
Date: July 1966, a Sunday (specific date undocumented)
Sighting Time: Undocumented — daytime
Day/Night: Day
Location: Subic Bay Naval Station, Zambales, Philippines — aboard the USS Holder (DD-819), pierside
Urban or Rural: Naval installation — corrected/filled from the original blank field
No. of Entity(‘s): Undocumented
Entity Type: Not Applicable — no entity described
Entity Description: Not Applicable
Hynek Classification: DD (Daylight Disc) as originally filed. This should be read with an important qualifier: the two round objects were never seen in real time by the witness or anyone else aboard — they were noticed only in a photograph reviewed six years after the fact. See Researcher’s Notes.
Duration: Not applicable in the usual sense — the objects exist only in a single photographic frame; no real-time observed duration is possible since no one saw them as the picture was taken
No. of Object(s): 2 round white dots, appearing in the photograph directly above and in line with two separate, conventional jet fighter aircraft (which are not themselves part of the UFO claim)
Description of the Object(s): Two distinctive round white dots, appearing in a single 35mm color slide directly above two jet fighters that had been photographed in a steep, nearly vertical climb with full afterburners engaged. The jets appeared to be “vectored exactly” at the two dots. Neither dot was visible to the naked eye at the time the photo was taken; both were noticed only when the developed slide was projected onto a large screen six years later, in 1972.
Shape of Object(s): Round
Size of Object(s): Undocumented — appeared as small dots in the photograph, with no scale reference given
Color of Object(s): White
Distance to Object(s): Undocumented. The witness estimated the two jets themselves were at roughly 15,000 feet based on their small size in the photo, and placed the two white dots higher still, at an estimated 35,000-40,000 feet — both figures are the witness’s visual impression from a projected slide, not measured values.
Height & Speed: The two jets were in a steep, nearly vertical climb on full afterburner; the two white dots showed no motion, being visible only in a single still photograph, so no speed or independent movement can be assessed for them.
Number of Witnesses: 1 — the reporting sailor. He did not notice the two dots at the time; they were discovered only years later during a private slide-viewing session, and no one else is described as having seen them in real time. Friends he later showed the developed slide to could not explain the dots but likewise never witnessed the original event.
Special Features/Characteristics: The witness recalls this was the only occasion in four months at Subic Bay that any aircraft passed directly over his ship. A nuclear attack submarine was tied up pierside alongside his own ship, which carried nuclear-capable ASROC anti-submarine rockets — offered as period context by the witness, not as a claimed connection to the sighting. When friends later viewed the slide, some suggested a lens reflection or a film defect as an explanation; the witness notes all his other 35 shots from the same roll showed no similar defect. The original slides were later destroyed by water damage in storage and no longer exist.
Case Status: Insufficient Data — a single-witness account whose sole evidence was a photograph discovered six years after the event, never independently examined by any photo analyst, and since destroyed; a specific and well-supported mundane candidate exists (see Researcher’s Notes)
Source: Reported to Think AboutIt
Summary/Description: I was on board the USS Holder (DD-819) and we had traveled from Norfolk, Virginia through the Panama Canal on to Pearl Harbor and finally to our temporary home port in the Philippines, Subic Bay Naval Station.
For the next 4 months we were in and out of Subic Bay several times. In these 4 months there was only one time that any aircraft came directly over our ship, and that was on a Sunday in July when we first arrived at the base.
I had just purchased a 35mm German-made Agfa camera and had loaded it with 36-shot color slide film. I recall distinctly that it happened on a Sunday because we were in our dress white uniforms, and I wanted to get pictures of all my shipmates.
As I walked around deck snapping pictures, 2 jet fighter aircraft appeared directly overhead and were in a steep climb, nearly straight up, with full afterburners kicked in. I took my camera and aimed it at the 2 jets and snapped one picture; I saw nothing other than the 2 jets. The noise from the jet fighters was deafening, and for the next 4 months there was never any plane that came over the top of our ship at pierside.
Tied up pierside with us was a nuclear attack submarine, and our ship was equipped with nuclear anti-submarine rockets, ASROC.
When the slides were developed, I looked at them, and the ones of the 2 fighter airplanes were very small — they must have been at 15,000 feet high or more. I put the slides away, and 6 years later, Christmas 1972, a friend gave me a slide projector.
Soon I had a 5-foot square picture screen, actually a white-painted wall, to look at my slides on. When I came to the slides of the 2 jets over Subic Bay in 1966, straight above these jets at maybe 35,000-40,000 feet were 2 distinctive round white dots, and the jets were vectored exactly at them. I showed the slides to several friends and they could not believe what they were seeing. Some suggested reflection in the lens or maybe a defect in the film. All the other shots were perfect and nothing to suggest a malfunction of the camera.
I put the slides away and stored them for many years in the basement; when I went to get them, water had wiped them all away, so regrettably I do not have the slides anymore.
Clark Air Force Base was nearby, and maybe a reader of yours that was a radar operator could comment on this event from 38 years ago. Best wishes.
Related Cases: 1963-1964: Clark AFB Philippines Air Police Large Object Picked Up On Radar — the witness himself explicitly references nearby Clark Air Force Base and invites comment from radar operators, connecting this report to the broader cluster of unexplained detections in this same region and era
Detailed Report
This account, like several others in this archive, is a photographic discovery rather than a witnessed event. In July 1966, a sailor aboard the USS Holder photographed two jet fighters climbing almost vertically on afterburner directly over his ship at Subic Bay — a rare occurrence, by his own account the only time in four months that aircraft passed directly overhead. He saw nothing unusual at the time; the sighting, such as it is, exists entirely in a single 35mm color slide that sat unviewed for six years until a borrowed projector in Christmas 1972 let him see it enlarged for the first time. Only then did he notice two small, round white dots positioned directly above the climbing jets, seemingly aligned with their flight path. Friends who later viewed the slide were unable to explain it, though some specifically proposed a lens reflection or a film processing defect — explanations the witness pushes back against only by noting his other 35 exposures from the same roll showed no comparable anomaly. No independent photographic or optical analysis of the slide is cited anywhere in the account, and the question is now permanently unresolvable: the witness reports the original slides were later destroyed by water damage in storage. What remains is a secondhand description of a photograph that no longer exists, examined only informally by the witness and unnamed friends, never by anyone with relevant technical expertise.
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
The Vanished Slide — Subic Bay 1966 and a Case for Lens Reflection
- Classification Assessment: DD (Daylight Disc) is retained as filed, but with the same important caveat noted on this site’s other photo-discovery cases: nothing here was actually seen by human eyes at the time. The witness is explicit that he “saw nothing other than the 2 jets” when the photo was taken. This is a retrospective photographic anomaly, not a witnessed daylight disc sighting, and the classification should travel with that distinction rather than imply real-time visual confirmation.
- Source Chain Assessment: The account is a single, decades-later written recollection with no photograph now available for any kind of review, since the witness reports the slides were destroyed by water damage. No named friend, ship’s log, or independent record corroborates any part of the story beyond the witness’s own memory of a memory — a recollection, in 2004 or later (based on his own “38 years ago” reference), of a viewing that took place in 1972, of a photograph taken in 1966.
- Evidentiary Weight: With the original slide destroyed, there is nothing left to examine. The specific presentation described here — two round white dots appearing in perfect vertical alignment directly above an extremely bright light source (jet afterburners in full climb, among the brightest possible subjects a camera lens could encounter) — is a strong match for internal lens reflection (“ghosting”), a well-documented optical artifact in which a bright point source produces one or more secondary reflected images elsewhere in the frame, typically aligned with the original source exactly as described here. This would also explain why the anomaly appeared only on this one frame: the afterburner plumes were almost certainly the single brightest subject photographed anywhere on that roll of shipmate portraits.
- Pattern and Comparative Context: “UFOs” that appear only in a photograph and were never seen by the photographer at the time are a recurring category across this archive and in UFO literature broadly, and lens flare/reflection ghosting from a bright in-frame light source is one of the most common, well-understood causes of exactly this kind of retrospective “discovery.” The friends who viewed the slide in 1972 independently proposed the same explanation, which is worth taking seriously rather than treating as a dismissal to be argued past.
- Geographic and Historical Context: Subic Bay Naval Station in Zambales province was a major US Navy installation in the Philippines until its closure in 1992, following the Mount Pinatubo eruption. The witness’s own reference to nearby Clark Air Force Base ties this account to the same regional cluster of Philippine military UFO reports as the 1963-64 Clark AFB radar case elsewhere in this archive, though the two involve entirely different evidentiary types (an unconfirmed radar contact versus a now-lost photograph) and should not be treated as corroborating one another.
What’s left of this case is a memory of a photograph of an afterburner climb, examined informally once in 1972 and never again, its only physical evidence destroyed by water damage years later. The alignment of the two dots directly above the brightest light source in the frame points toward a straightforward lens reflection rather than anything stranger — an explanation the witness’s own friends reached independently at the time. With nothing left to examine, the case stands as Insufficient Data.
“Some suggested reflection in the lens or maybe a defect in the film.”
