Shag Harbour UFO Incident - Alleged Military Search Near Shelburne

Alleged Military Search Near Shelburne

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. 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.

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. 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.