Officers on board the HNLMS Tromp, a cruiser belonging to the Royal Netherlands Navy spotted "a large aluminium disc flew towards the ship at tremendous speed. The UFO then circled high above the Dutch vessel for about three to four hours."
"Finally it (the UFO) flew off at an estimated 3,000 to 3,500 miles per hour (4,800 to 5,600 kilometers per hour). The officer on duty was unable to identify it as any known aircraft."
1942: CRUISER ENCOUNTERS A LARGE DISC
Sixty years ago, the Tromp, a cruiser
belonging to the Royal Netherlands Navy, was on a wartime patrol in the Timor
Sea, south of the Dutch East Indies (now the nation of Indonesia--J.T.) when
the vessel had a strange encounter.
February 1942 saw the Allies' fortunes
dwindling fast in the Southwest Pacific theater of war. With the bombing of
Darwin on February 19, 1942, the Japanese had pushed the front line right into
the Gulf of Carpentaria. An invasion of Australia seemed imminent, so the
Allies cobbled together the "ABCD fleet," a motley collection of
American, British, Australian and Dutch warships, and ordered Admiral Thomas
Hart to hold back the Japanese advance.
Which is what the Dutch cruiser Tromp was
doing on the seas southeast of Timor island at 10 p.m. on February 25, 1942.
The Officer of the Deck heard a lookout's
warning cry. "Aircraft, sir!"
Lifting his Zeiss binoculars, the O.D.
scanned the sea's horizon as "a large aluminum disc flew towards the ship
at tremendous speed. The UFO then circled high above the Dutch vessel for about
three to four hours."
"Finally it (the UFO) flew off at an
estimated 3,000 to 3,500 miles per hour (4,800 to 5,600 kilometers per hour).
The officer on duty was unable to identify it as any known aircraft."
The interesting thing about this sighting is
that it took place the same day--February 25, 1942--as two other well-known UFO
events. The first was the "Battle of Los Angeles," in which nine
silvery white UFOs overflew the southern California city (see UFO Roundup,
volume 3, number 8 for February 22, 1998, "1942: Army gunners fire at UFOs
over Los Angeles.") The second was the encounter between a Royal
Australian Air Force Bristol Beaufighter and a bronze UFO over the Bass Strait
south of Melbourne, Australia (see UFO Roundup, volume 3, number 7 for February 15, 1998, "1942: The
Brennan Dogfight.").
That makes three UFO incidents recorded at
different points around the planet Earth on a single day--February 25, 1942.
Who knows? Maybe it was Alien D-Day. (For more on the strange cruise of the
Tromp, see the book The Flying Saucer Story by Brinsley LePoer Trench, Ace
Books Inc., New York, N.Y., 1966, page 69. Also Flying Saucer Review , volume
3, number 6 for November-December 1957, page 8.)
That's it for this week. Join us next time
for more UFO, paranormal and Fortean news from around the planet Earth, brought
to you by "the paper that goes home--UFO Roundup." See you then.
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