The Southland Encounter: The night an 800 foot long USO shut down the HMNZS Southland. Sonar operator David Barnett talks about what happened that night

David Barnett

You are listening to the UFO Talker podcast. Come with us as we explore UFOs from the past and the present. With insightful discussions, interviews and reviews, we will add our voice to the mysteries that have been seen in our skies and oceans for all of human history. Now here is our host, Michael Ryan.

Michael Ryan

Welcome everybody, to the podcast. This is season four, episode 35, coming to you from Studio 7H overlooking the beautiful Trent river here in Ontario, Canada.

Christine Scott

And I'm Christine Scott, coming to you from Studio 9B in the beautiful warehouse district in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Michael Ryan

And on today's show, I interview David Burnett who, who in 1987 was the sonar operator aboard the New Zealand warship the Southland. He talks about a very famous incident where an 800 foot long USO came underneath the ship causing all power to cease immediately. So this is not. This case is not so well known in North America. But hang on to your seats because this is an amazing encounter. Wow. Now, in honor of the summer just being around the corner right now I'm having a non alcohol mint julep, which I think is probably the best drink in the world. Probably.

Christine Scott

Well, I do declare, tulips are yummy.

Michael Ryan

Oh yeah. And Christine, what are you having?

Christine Scott

Well, I am having a little sniff of my local bushwhackers bruise their own sarsaparilla.

Michael Ryan

Wow.

Christine Scott

Which is amazing. And so I just brought a little bit home. If you've never had sarsaparilla, it's like root beer.

Michael Ryan

Yeah, I've never had sarsaparilla. I mean that's one of those names that you hear from old western movies.

Christine Scott

Oh, it's delicious. See, there's another thing I wish I could send you. I don't think it would travel well, but it's. It's so yummy.

Michael Ryan

Wow. Sarsaparilla. Yeah, who would have, Who'd have thought? Now, as we mentioned last week, in about three weeks from now or somewhere about there, we're going to be having our YouTube channel will be released to the world. And of course, no, you don't have to worry because the audio podcast, it will be released just like always on all of your favorite audio podcast platforms. But this will be like an addition to, there'll be also a YouTube video of the same broadcast. Now also this is on our YouTube channel we'll be introducing, which I mentioned last week, this new 10 to 15 minute segment which is a standalone thing, not part of the podcast. And it's going to be called that Human Said. What? I just like saying that for some reason. And these segments will continue throughout the summer. So you don't have to worry about. For the people who don't want to listen to the reruns, because in the summer we go on hiatus and they want to look for some new. They don't want to be without this new sound of our voices. That is something to look forward to. Now. We're going to do a couple of UFO shows and conferences. Now this Thursday, and this will be this Thursday through Saturday, May 14th through the 16th, they're gonna hold the 26th annual McMinimous UFO Festival. And they're gonna be parties, live music, film screenings. There's gonna be a lot of smaller UFO films, like current. Oh, yeah, current UFO films made by a lot of independent people. And they're going to have also speakers now. They have a pretty. They have a slate of some pretty good speakers to listen to among all the festivities. They're going to have George Knapp, Jeremy Corbell, Jason Martel, and James Clarkson, to name a few. And James Clarkson, we've actually interviewed on the show a couple of times. He's the retired police detective that wrote a couple of interesting. And they're also going to screen Jeremy Corbell's new film, which he has been promoting heavily everywhere you can think of. So this is one of those festivals that I think combine the best of two worlds. Like, you're gonna have lots of things to do like eating and drinking and that kind of stuff. And then there are the serious parts with the speakers. So it caters to a little bit of everybody. Now, the second thing we're going to announce is a very. This is the one for people who just want to be serious and not have any of the festival parts. And this is going to be put on by the Society for Scientific Exploration, and they're presenting evidence and encounters, two paths to exploring the unexplained. And this is going to be held from June 17th, 21st, at the Marriott Westminster Hotel in Westminster, Colorado. And here's the thing. There's so many speakers, and each of them has a description, a title of what they're going to talk about, and so much information. We would be here the rest of the show if I was just to go through a few of them. But I can tell you, if you are interested in a serious look at a lot of serious questions in ufology, this would be something, because there's probably about seven or eight things on there that I would love to go and sit and listen to because they just sound very fascinating. But I will, of course, I will put as always, a link to these in the show notes. And I would say look at them because you don't want to miss them for sure. So now we're going to discuss something which is just a buzz all over the UFO Internet and that is the US government's secret files dump, which happened a few days ago. And basically it, to Summarize it, it's 162 declassified, 28 videos and 14 images. Now the dump, as a lot of people are calling it, is made up of military pilot reports, FBI memos, NASA and Apollo mission records, and reports going back to the mid-40s, which was kind of interesting. Now some of the most talked about parts of the file dump are the pictures from the Apollo missions and all the strange lights that the astronauts were seeing. One that particularly caught my attention was a three, three white lights that were in a triangle formation that they took pictures of. Now a lot of scientists have already jumped all over this and they have given explanations on what a lot of these weird glowing things were seen on the moon. But the one that looks like a triangle with the three lights, white lights in each corner, that is interesting because, you know, I don't think that just happens. You know, things that are, they're saying that there could be things floating in the atmosphere, floating before the lens, like dust or whatever, but I don't know, it looks, it doesn't look like things just magically lined up into this triangle looking light pattern. But that had me interested. Now there's also a lot of modern military files, mainly from 2023 to 2024, and there's a lot of glowing orbs, objects seen over restricted military zones. One thing that again I have to comment on is it was a lot of footage taken from, you know, fighter jets and aircraft and looked very much like the Tic Tac footage with which we're all familiar with. Now the one comment I would make is to see this properly, you would have to see this on TV or on your computer and have a person who is familiar with the technology that captured this. And they would have to be explaining what you're seeing because to the untrained eye, which is most of us, and we're looking at these, it could literally be anything. I don't even know what I'm looking at. Like, it's just a kind of a black and white or grayscale image, a little blip and it's on who knows what it like? It could literally be anything. Like I don't know what I'm looking at. So that's my criticism of that. You really need a technical specialist kind of going over with you to make any sense. And that would be my. My criticism of it. Now, there's also something. And when I saw this, I perked right up. There was some documents from World War II that centered around Foo Fighters, which I just love reading about those. And if you are interested in Foo Fighters or you don't know what they are and want to learn a lot more about it, I can recommend a book. And we actually interviewed the author and Christine actually reviewed the book. And it was an extremely well researched look into Foo Fighters written by Keith Chester. And his book was called Strange Company, which was published by Anomalous books back in 2007. But it is definitely the gold standard of anything that you want to learn about Foo Fighters during World War II. And it will completely change your opinion of Foo Fighters from like, I thought I knew a lot about Foo Fighters, and I thought they were just balls of light that were just off the wingtips of planes, and that's about it. But when you read about what really happened, and these are from all the official documents of that era, they were seeing craft with portholes and UFOs bigger than the bombers that were flying during that time, like the B17. Very, very interesting. Now, they have promised more files to be coming out. And I think there's something that you want to mention that I think has been overlooked a lot. Christine, in this file dump.

Christine Scott

Yeah, on page 61 of the file dump. And again, I don't think this is, you know, not necessarily misinformation. Maybe it was just filed. There is a supposed photo of an alien, page 61, that was exposed as a hoax in 1950. And I remember seeing this photo a long time ago. If you haven't seen the photo, it's like a very small being being led by each hand by a person on either side of them. And then there's a woman kind of staring at him in the background. And I remember seeing this photo in UFO books. I remember seeing it everywhere and people. Greg, is this a real photo of a captured alien? Well, no. It was a famous hoax from 1950. It was published in a German magazine called if My German Is Poor. So I hope this is good. New Illustrator as an April Fool's joke, the alien in the middle was a shaved monkey. That poor monkey, though. Yeah, that was. That was posed between two men for the camera. The magazine even admitted it was a prank.

Michael Ryan

Wow.

Christine Scott

But the photo has been circulating for decades, and there's still, people, when I was looking at this, people on Reddit are going, oh man, that photo, it's got to be real. No.

Michael Ryan

And there was surprisingly a lot of these documents that were released. They were pretty light in any kind of real information, you know, because it, like we said, there's about 162 documents, but I'm going to say half of those documents, wow, they were pretty light, pretty lightweight. Like, they haven't, they wouldn't have changed anyone's opinion on anything. And that is also another criticism I have of the secret dump is there's no smoking gun in there. And that is for sure. If you have spent any time at all investigating UFOs over the last 20 or 30 years, there's just some interesting things in there. Definitely worth reading. But yeah, it's a little bit of a nothing burger, really.

Christine Scott

Yeah. People are calling this. The nicest term I've heard is Project Nothing Burger. But the other thing is, I mean, we've been reading declassified RCMP documents.

Michael Ryan

Yes, yes.

Christine Scott

On the show. So you're thinking, looking at the dates on some of these, like we're reading declassified documents. Shouldn't these been, some of these been declassified by virtue of being 50 years old?

Michael Ryan

Now, here's the, here's the other thing is like we have done, I don't know, 10 or 20 RCMP documents from the 70s and 80s, and they are way more substantial than almost everything that was in the document dump from the US And I always think, you know, all of this stuff is hiding in plain sight. You know, it's like it makes you think, who else is out or what else is out there. Also, just to put it in perspective, you know, they said we're releasing 162 files. Well, I've heard people say that the US government has millions of UFO documents that have never been released. So, yeah, there's a lot of stuff left in there. And I get the feeling that, you know, because they talk about people in the Pentagon and these other secret agencies that those people, most of them, they're there for long periods of time, like presidents come and go, but they've been there for 20, 30 years or more. And I get the feeling there's people in these groups, they really control what's going to come out and what's not going to come out. So. But we shall see. I mean, you never know. There could be, in one of these next releases, there could be something really major and interesting. We can always, we can always hope.

Christine Scott

Well, I think. Or it could be you know, like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the big warehouse where the Ark of the Government goes. Yes, that's. There's probably something like that, full of UFO files.

Michael Ryan

Well, what you just said is probably absolutely true, because let's say from just the 50s, there's a million documents that haven't been looked at in 50 or 60 years, then no one even knows they're there to be discovered. Because all the people who wrote those documents, they're probably not even with us anymore and never haven't been in the government for many decades.

Christine Scott

A lot of archives aren't digitized. They're still sitting in paper files.

Michael Ryan

Right. And they're probably just lost, not because someone's trying to hide it, but because, you know, it's just lost.

Christine Scott

Yeah.

Michael Ryan

But we will definitely be keeping on this and bringing you up to date when we hear more on this. Also, because this is something that's not going to go away anytime soon.

Christine Scott

No, this will be ongoing, I'm pretty darn sure.

Narrator

Yeah.

Michael Ryan

So now we're going to do our shout out to a small town or city where we have listeners. And this week we are going to do sail, which is in the Trafford district of England, and it has a population of 62,550 people. And sale lies on the south bank of the River Mersey, and it is 8km southwest of Manchester, which I have heard of. Manchester, England, that's a fairly big place. And it is in the northeast part of England. And I have as normal, I have watched several videos and I think most every town in England looks quaint and beautiful and all those things. But one thing I really noticed in Sale is they have something that appears to be like a main street, but it has been totally closed off to automotive traffic. And it's just foot traffic for quite an extended length. And it has, you know, park benches and trees, and there's stores on either side. Boy, it looks really, really inviting to go up and down something like that. And there's. There's a canal also nearby. And that looks. That looks really interesting. Christine, what have you gathered from Sail England?

Christine Scott

Well, their background is really interesting. The name of Sale is actually Anglo Saxon, which means the town was probably founded in the seventh or eighth century.

Michael Ryan

Wow.

Christine Scott

Yeah. It's based on an old English word that means at the sallow tree. But something else very interesting, they found a flint arrowhead suggesting that there was a prehistoric human presence at the location. But they didn't find anything until the Roman period. But then they found a 4th century hoard of 46 Roman coins there, which is pretty big.

Michael Ryan

Yes.

Christine Scott

If you're a movie fan. Robert Bolt, the playwright, he wrote the screenplays for Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago and man for All Seasons is from there.

Michael Ryan

Wow. Wow. Just those three would be enough to put you in the Hollywood hall of Fame forever.

Christine Scott

Yeah.

Michael Ryan

So now we're going to talk about the bakery and all. All places on earth have a bakery, I've come to find out. And they have many of them. We have two chosen. Gail's Bakery. And it is a fine. Looks like a stone building. I don't know. It's very unique, but they make a lot of stuff I am not familiar with. And Christina's told me about this off air. So they make a malted chocolate and

Christine Scott

stout cake, which if you were a chocolate chocoholics, you would love this. Bushwackers. My local makes a stout cake and basically it's a chocolate cake with stout in it. And the stout deepens the chocolate flavor. And you would not believe the intensity of the chocolate in these cakes and how moist they are. And I said to Mike, it's really too bad I can't mail some to you because you'd love.

Michael Ryan

Sounds very, very good. The. They also have something called a chocolate tahini bite, and that is filled with chocolate chips and topped with a sesame seed and chocolate sauce.

Christine Scott

Yum.

Michael Ryan

Yeah. And then they have a pecan crumb cake, which sounds really good. And they also have something that I have never tasted this before. They have a drink, it's called a turmeric latte. And that's turmeric and ginger juice spiced with ground cinnamon and ground peppercorn.

Christine Scott

Yum. Wow, that'd be so healthy. Because turmeric, if you have arthritis or inflammatory conditions, is very good for you.

Michael Ryan

My only problem is whenever my eyes go over the word peppercorn, I'm immediately thinking barbecued steak. Yeah, that is. That has ruined it for me because I see that and I thought, wow, barbecued steak in a glass. What would that be like?

Christine Scott

Well, there. There is. There is a cocktail that uses beef English cocktails. A lot of them used to use beef bullion in the cocktails. I think there's one called a bullshot. Yes, that's. That's beef based.

Michael Ryan

And they make another drink. And again, not familiar with it. Again, it's the elderflower iced matcha.

Christine Scott

I've had matcha. I'm not a big fan, which is really weird because I tend to like everything. Have you had matcha before?

Michael Ryan

No, I don't believe I have.

David Barnett

It is.

Christine Scott

It's a type of tea, it's a Japanese green stone tea and they make into a, a fine powder and it's very good for you but it actually does have a bit of caffeine in it and I like matcha but like, if you're a green tea drinker, you would like it. It's just very strong, the flavor. I've had matcha ice cream which is really good, but it, because it needs, to me, it just needs a bit of sweetness in it which you don't always get in the matcha drinks, but that's the only thing about it. It's very healthy and very tasty.

Michael Ryan

Well, that was our shout out for this week and we will be right back after this message.

Narrator

It was a cool morning as Rex kissed his wife goodbye as he headed off to work. August 3, 1965 started off as just another Southern California, California summer day. Rex Heflin didn't know it then, but before this day was over, he would have taken four of the most credible pictures in UFO history. Heflin was an Orange county highway maintenance engineer. It was just after 12 when he pulled his service truck off to the side of the road. This part of Myford Road was surrounded by fields. There were some tree branches that were covering a street sign and Heflin was about to take some photos of the obstruction. As predicted, it was a hot, dry day, 81 degrees Fahrenheit. Heflin had rolled the windows down in the cab of his service truck, hoping to catch a breeze. He tried to radio his supervisor, Herm Kimmel, but the radio was oddly dead. As he was sitting in the driver's seat, he caught a flash of something bright out of the corner. At first he thought the flash had come from a low flying crop dusting plane. But as he looked at the object, it didn't look like any other plane he had ever seen. Heflin picked up his Polaroid Model 101 camera and began taking the pictures. He was able to snap off four before the object disappeared off into the horizon. Within weeks, these photographs were in newspapers and magazines from around the world. Heflin never copyrighted the photos and never made any money from their publication. Rex Heflin passed away in October 2005. He never did change his story. He didn't care if anyone believed him or the photographs he took. To this day, Rex Heflin's photos are some of the most credible pictures ever taken of a ufo.

Michael Ryan

My next guest is David Barnett. David served in the New Zealand Navy for four years and today we're going to talk about an incident that happened on the ship HMNZS Southland while it was off the north island of New Zealand in 1987. David, welcome to the podcast.

David Barnett

Mike, it's great to be here. Thank you for the opportunity to share this fascinating story with you all.

Michael Ryan

Now I just want to mention a couple of things. First, so the Southland was an anti submarine frigate and during the time of the incident that we're going to talk about, the captain was J.G. leonard. And I guess my first question is what kind of captain was Captain Leonard?

David Barnett

Well originally when I joined the Southland in the beginning of 87 he was actually a commander, which is a three striper. It wasn't until about, I think early February that he gained the rank of captain. But as a character he was a very quiet and a very gentle type of individual which seems to go sort of go against the type of character you would think of a captain of a warship. But it was interesting because it was the Executive officer, Richard Cass who was the noisy one, whereas John was much more sedate and relaxed. And I would actually classify him as quite introvert. The few times that he sort of made his presence known to the ship's company were, as I say, my memory of him was that he was just a very quiet man but he was a likable individual. And as I said it just seemed that his character was sort of out of place to that of being the commanding officer of a, of a warship. However, one can say that the event that we were soon to have I think is where his character really shone because he was able to react and respond to the event in a very military and professional way. So in answer to your question, yeah, quite an introverted and a very quiet individual.

Michael Ryan

And my next question is kind of a two part question. So first off, you know, just on a day to day basis, what was it like being aboard the Southland? And then also during the time that you were on the ship, what were the ship's basic missions like? What did you try and accomplish?

David Barnett

The basic missions? Let me put it this way, the New Zealand had an anti nuclear stance, one of the few militaries in the world that did have that and therefore no, for example US naval vessel was allowed in New Zealand ports or in New Zealand waters because if they were nuclear powered they weren't allowed in. So what that did do was it sort of left the New Zealand Navy rather friendless. So we would actually spend a lot of time sort of excuse the pun, playing with ourselves because nobody else really wanted to have much to do with us. So the closest ally that we would have anything to do with was obviously the Australian Navy. And we would obviously have contact, either our ships going over to their ports or their ships coming over to ours. But mostly our time was spent on coastal patrols. At that time, Russia was still sending their in italics fishing vessels into the New Zealand waters. But of course with all the antennas that were poking out from their superstructure, they were not fishing vessels at all. So we would normally chase them off. Other times we would spot a Russian submarine that was in the New Zealand waters and again, if we encountered them that we would obviously do our best to chase them away. So we spent quite a lot of time on defensive duties rather than an offensive. We were not an offensive navy in any way. We just simply didn't have that sort of resource of ships. So we were classified as a defensive navy. And so we spent a lot of time doing coastal jobs, I should say a hydrographic side of the navy spent a lot of time out at sea doing hydrographic research and detailing which after this particular encounter that I'm going to talk about, I actually found out later that they were actually involved in a lot of more, a lot more secret research using hydrographic technology than we were ever led to believe. But day to day life on the ship was not particularly easy. The Leander class frigate or anti submarine cruiser as it was classified. Classified were older ships. The class was built in between 1959 and 1973. And so by the time the Southland was sold from the British Navy in 1983, she was already quite an old vessel. And life was spent on a daily basis chipping away at the old paint, repainting, keeping her looking good. It was known as ship's husbandary. So we spent life a lot of the time with buckets of paint. But if we were painting then we would go into what is called a state of war and we would be, it was called closed for defense stations or defense action, which means that we would don the anti flash equipment. The ship would go into a roster that was 12 hours on shift, 8 hours off, 8 hours off shift, 12 hours off. And for about a week or two you literally lost track of where you were, what time it was, what day it was because you were in a constantly in a state of being in the operations room, being in the sonar control room and then having a break and rushing up to the canteen and having wolfing down a meal or just getting some sleep and Then going back into it again. So when you were closed for defense stations, you lost track of life, basically. And it was purely 100 military the whole time. No breaks in between, really. So we did a lot of that as well. As I said, we didn't have a lot of other military navies to play with at that time. And so it was very much. We were, you know, quite isolated. So life was. Most important thing that was drummed into us was that our ship was our world and we had to keep our world afloat. So we were constantly doing fire drills, you know how to deal with those. Those were very spontaneous that we were told, okay, you're going to be having a fire drill. So we would rehearse those, you know, regularly. So we, we took pride, I think is the main word I would use. Because we had old ships. Even the technology that we used was still rather antiquated in connection or relation to other modern navies. So we had to keep everything running as smoothly as we could. And that took a lot of time. But so that really, I hope, just sort of paints an everyday picture of what it was like being on a. A warship at that particular time.

Michael Ryan

What was your role on the Southland?

David Barnett

Well, when my. What's called an sq, which was a specialized qualification, I was actually a sonarman. So my job was inside the SCR or the sonar control room, which was, if you know military films and you can see there's an ops room or operations room with lots of people behind scopes and radars, with lights flashing rather dimly lit it with headphones on and mics and so forth. The sonar control was a slightly smaller version in that you could fit about four people in it comfortably behind scopes and so forth. And so my role was as sonar. And I would work predominantly on the two main systems that were housed in the sonar control room, that being the G750 or the Graysby 750 omnidirectional sonar and the even older analog 177M attacker sonar. So my day was spent when we were closed for defense stations. I was based in there, otherwise I was a seamen, which meant that I was part of the ship's company. I looked after the fo' c' sl or the forward part of the ship, or the pointy bit for those who don't know what the folksall means, the pointy bit of the ship. So that was my partnership and I spent most of my days then, yeah, working on that part of the ship, keeping it painted and so forth.

Michael Ryan

I guess now would Be a good time. If you can describe to the listeners, actually describe the event and where the Southland was when the event happened. And if you can remember the. The date in the month I could

David Barnett

give you, the best I can give you is the third week of February 1987. As I said, because we were closed for defense stations. I cannot recollect the exact day of which this happened. But I know it was the third week of February 1987. So forgive me, that's the closest that I can give you at this particular time. So it's important to just add prior to what we call what is now known as the Southland Event or the Southland Encounter, just prior to that, an event occurred which was rather unusual. And this was sort of about the third week or the fourth week even of January of the same year, 1987. And what happened there was that the Ministry of Defense requested or ordered the New Zealand Navy to conduct some very unusual, I suppose, tests. The test was that a ship was to sail out of the Auckland harbor into what is called, there's the Whiter Matter harbor, and then out into the Hierarchy Gulf, which is east of Auckland or east of the north island of New Zealand, but east of Auckland city itself, where the Devonport Naval Base was located. A ship was to sail out not too far, maybe about 20, 30 kilometers, turn around and sail directly back the way the ship had come. But the difference this time was that in the sonar control room, we would turn on all of our sonar systems and report if we detected any submerged objects following us back into the heart the Waitamata Harbor. So the Southland was chosen to do this because at that time the Southland was, of all the warships we had, which we didn't have many, but it had the most sophisticated sonar systems, that being the G750 omnidirectional sonar, which was a digital sonar system instead of the analogs that the other ships were still using, we were using a digital technology in collaboration with what's called an Ador's computer system. So this gave us an advantage of being the most sophisticated ship for anti submarine cruising and detection at that time. So the Southern was chosen. So sure enough, we went out and we did this for about two to three days, you know, just periodically sailing out, turning around and sailing in. And we reported regularly that we had detected roughly seven, maybe seven and a half times out of ten we would detect a minimum of two to three unidentified submerged objects following us back into the Hierarchy Gulf. But there's a part of the Hierarchy Gulf called Rangitoto. Island, which is an extinct volcano. As soon as we sailed past Rangitoto island, the objects would simply disappear off of our scopes. So this was reported back to the Admiralty and that was reported back to the Ministry of Defense. We never knew at that time the significance of what we were actually doing. I just remember when we were the XO came in and said to us in the control room, this is what we want you to do. He said, yes, we do know it's an unusual thing to do to actually turn on sonar systems whilst we were so close to the Auckland region. But we need to do this and we would like you to report back on anything that you detect. So that is just setting a scene of a prelude to what was then to occur almost a month later. So we now go to say third week of February. The ship at that time was closed for what we call defense station. So we had already been for the last few days operating in a state of war. And so all my time was with my other four colleagues spent, if not sleeping and eating, just in the solar control room. Now what I need to do is to sort of paint a two dimensional picture of what the system that we were using looked like. I think everybody does get a, an image of a sonar system or a sonar scope based on the films that they might have seen. Whether it was a, a film that was inside a, a warship or possibly a submarine. They, they look very similar. And you always see that sort of traditional round scope, well, ill eliminated and the chat sitting in front of it with his headphones on and staring in, you know, into onto his scope and reporting any contacts. That was my position. So I was the scope person and it was my job to as the sound wave which I could see leaving the ship's keel. You can actually hear the screaming sound of the sound being electrically produced. And then you hear the pulse booming out from under the keel of the ship as the transducer below is emitting that 360 degree sound wave. And you can see it on the scope, a circle just rippling out. Now if the sound wave comes into contact with anything, it shows up on my screen. My job is to allow that contact to be visible for a few more pulses because sometimes those sorts of things can just evaporate and disappear off the scope. So it's my job to sort of allow it to the sound wave to ping it two to three times before running a little circle which like a cursor appears on the scope. And I have a, what's called a tracker ball on my Right hand side, which is a, like a, a ball, like it's almost like a snooker ball or a billiards ball that is resist into the console to my right and it sticks out halfway and I run my finger over that ball and it brings up onto the scope a little circle which I can then encircle the contact. Once I've done that, I push a button that's called Enable that then lights up. And what that does do, it allows the G750 cellar system to connect and interact with the Adors computer system. And the Adors then starts to give us a lot more information about if we can get size Doppler, which is basically speed, it starts to give us a lot more information. Now sitting to the left of me is a, a person who is sitting there with headphones and most of the time his eyes closed. He hasn't fallen asleep. He's listening to the sounds of the ocean. And it's his job to take away or to remove what we call any potential sound echo return that could be say biologic, meaning it could be a pod of dolphins, a school of fish, a whale, or even what are called reverberations, which are bubbles that rise from the bottom of the ocean and they create columns of bubbles which if there are masses of those columns can actually produce a solid echo return. It's his job, and we're all trained by the way, to do this because we can actually interchange where we sit. But it's his job to listen to those sounds and to verify if what we're listening to has an a man made sound to it. So we're listening to the sounds of propellers. Now the way we can also help to achieve that is, and we're talking old technology here, it's all digital now. But back in those days, sitting in the side of the control room was a test scan reel to reel recorder. And that would record the sounds of the ocean. What we were, what he was hearing. Then what would happen is sonar controller could play that sound back but multiply slower. And what we're doing is we're trying to listen to the sound of if it's a submarine listening to the sounds of the wake of the submarine, but in particular we want to hear the propellers. And the reason we want to hear that is because we want to slow down how many blades the submarine has, because each navy back then used to have different numbers of blades to their propellers. And we would be able to sometimes discover what type of submarine it was based on listening to the sound of the blade Going through the wake of the submarine, it would make a swoosh, swoosh sound. If it was like an American sub, normally they had between five and six blades. You would hear that the, the BL blades going through quite quickly. If it was a submarine that had four or three blades, the, the washing sound would be much slower. So you could identify what type of submarine was based on that. So the guy to the left of me, he's listening to the sounds of the ocean, trying to find out if there's any man made mechanical sound. Now the guy to the right of me is sitting behind what's called a range recorder. And in the older sonars that range recorder would roll out in sort of like a parchment with a stylus that sort of would run across and would leave a little imprint as it would, as the sound wave hit a target, the stylus would burn a little mark in this parchment paper. Now, you know, obviously now is in the digital world you, you know, it's a little bit more sophisticated. But the range recorder guy is determining the distance of the object or any object from the ship itself. So there you have the configuration of the three operators. But in the first instance it would be me that would actually determine if we had an actual contact. So hopefully that paints that particular picture of the configuration of the operators. But sitting behind us an elevated on a platform and sitting in quite a plush chair is the sonar controller and he's in charge of everything. So he's looking down because he's elevated, he can see all of our scopes and he has connection and contact with all of us. And anything he needs to know, which he can then report through to the main ops room which was next to ours, he could ask or see that information and pass it through to the ops room. So what happened? So again, as I said, we were closed for defense stations. It was around about 1am in the morning, so the majority of the ship's company were down below asleep in their mess decks. The complement of a Leander class frigate is about 250 officers and other servicemen, but on duty at that particular time was only round about 15, 16 people. So we had four, four of us in the sonar control room. There would have been three to four on the bridge of the ship and the remainder would have been in the ops room together with the executive officer who was on duty at that particular time. The captain was asleep and the rest of the ship's company, so we're talking about 235 people are below decks all fast asleep. So at around about 0100, a contact came up on my scope. Nothing unusual about that. So I go into my procedure of allowing the sound wave to ping two to three times. And if it remains constant, then of course, I move that tracker ball, put the circle around the contact and push enable. Now, it's very important that I explain something here. The guy to the right of me advised that the contact was approximately 20km astern or behind our ship, following us at relative speed, but keeping a distance of 20 km. Now that is unusual for us to be able to to detect an object that far away because Degreesby or the G750 only actually has a relatively strong signal at around about, at a distance of about 10 kilometers from our ship. After that it starts to get a bit fuzzy. So the perfect range to be in to get as much valuable information is really only about 10 kilometers. However, under certain sea conditions, the G750s sound range can extend to roughly 20 kilometers. But the conditions have to be that the sea itself is very calm, very calm waters. And the temperature of the water has to be fairly warm rather than cold. The reason behind that is because warmer water allows the sound compression wave to move quicker because the molecules are themselves moving faster. So that allows there to be an increase in the speed of the sound pressure. So we were able to extend our range perfectly to a limit of 20 km, which is exactly where this object was situated astern of us. So this was quite unusual. The other thing that's unusual is the fact that we were indeed closed for defense stations. If this had just been another ordinary cruise of us just tattooing around the New Zealand coast on just keeping, as I say, the Russian subs away, we would never have detected it because we would have probably all been asleep. But this was unique because we were closed for defense stations, therefore we were active in our sonars. The conditions of the ocean were perfect and therefore we were able to detect this object. So the object, as I said, was traveling relative to our ship speed, which was roughly about 15 knots at that particular time. So we passed on the information through to the ops room. Now, what was interesting was the guy sitting next to me, as I said, he was listening to the sounds of the ocean. He reported that he could not detect any mechanical man made sound. He was able to eliminate that it was not a biologic. He was able to report it was not reverberations in the ocean. And when the test scab was played back in slow, nobody was able to detect any mechanical sound. Now it sounds like a scene out of the hunt for Red October with the caterpillar drive, it was very similar to that, very similar. We could not detect any mechanical sound, even slowed down. Even in the hunt for Red October, when they slowed it down, they were able to detect a mechanical sound. We could not detect anything.

Michael Ryan

Can I ask you a question here or. Actually, two questions. Is so somewhere, unless it's been erased somewhere, there's a tape of this incident?

David Barnett

Correct. And I will answer your question a little bit later because, yes, I have tried to investigate all of that and I'll explain what. What came about from that investigation.

Michael Ryan

And my second question is, you know, in your time of being in the sonar room, had you ever run into any other situation like this where you were getting a return, but it didn't have any kind of mechanical noise to it and it wasn't a whale or any of the other things? Is there any other time that you can remember where you got something that was just kind of unexplainable?

Narrator

The.

David Barnett

The short answer is no. No, nothing had ever had come back to us with such an unknown signature to it, as far as I'm actually aware. The events that I'm explaining is a unique situation, but not so much in relation to the area that we were in. And I'm happy just to very, very quickly sort of go into. Because the location is all about location, location. We were sailing within a region known as the K E R M A D E C K Trench, which is one of the deepest trenches on Earth. I think it reaches around about just over 10,000 meters, or nearly 33,000ft. And it's located in the South Pacific Ocean and it stretches roughly about 1200 kilometers from the Louiseville Seamount chain in the north to the Hikarangi Plateau near New Zealand in the south. So it's quite a long trench, but it is incredibly deep. And that is significant in relation to. I was explaining before, the New Zealand Navy's hydrographic ships spent a lot of time in that region. And in particular the HMNZ Tui, which sailed out there with a very sophisticated sonar system which it had upgraded to called the MNS 15, or the Big Ear it was called, and it was a tow array sonar that was in. They used in that region, which is literally listening to the sounds of that region. So the. It was used in the comedic trench. So we were located in that region. And it is fairly well documented that a lot of USOs exist within the region of the Kermadic Trench. Not surprising due to the depths of which, you know, how deep it goes. There's not many submersibles that would go down as far as that. There are a few, I think even James Cameron's submersible can, can go that far down, but not many at that time were able to. So there is a significant link between us sub activity, the comedic trench and the fact that we were actually in that same location. I think. I hope I answered your question. Yes, I can't remember what, I can't remember what it was now, but any. So yeah, so just carrying on then. So we, as I said, once we realized that there was something unusual about this contact based upon range and obviously no significant sounds, this was all reported through to the British. Now it was decided to see if this was a potentially a Russian submarine, in which case what we do is and funnily enough the hunt for in October actually did do this where they do what are called Crazy Ivans which is the vessel in front would suddenly switch from port to starboard to see if, if the object, if there is indeed an object behind or if it changes and follows and shadows. So it was decided up on the bridge that the ship would speed up to run about 20 knots. And they did a turn to port of about 30 degrees. Not unusual. But what happened was we detected that the object stayed relevant at exactly 20km. It sped up to 20 knots and it too changed to port of 30. So it completely followed and tacked with us. So cutting a long story short, the, the bridge officer turned to starboard 30 degrees, sped up 25 knots, slowed down, turn to port. It kept doing that for about 10 minutes. But the object constantly remained at 20 km astern of us and kept relevant to speed and direction at all times. Now the only piece of information, apart from the fact it was following us at the same relevant speeds and directions that we were able to get was at that particular moment its width. So the echo return that came back. And remember sonar systems at that time we could only get what's called like a two dimensional image. Unlike modern submarine technology, sonars technology that gives nowadays a more of a three dimensional image of the contact that it's got. Back then it was very, very much two dimensional. We would only be able to get length and width. We couldn't even get really height at that particular time. But the return that we got gave us an estimate of this object being approximately 150ft in width. Now for those experts in submariners or submarines, there's no submarine at that time that existed that was 150ft wide. Now the largest submarine at the time was the Russian Kula class or the Typhoon designated, which was around about 75ft in width at max, a Nimitz class aircraft carrier, if memory serves, is about 175ft wide, maybe slightly more. So for an object to be giving an echo return of width of 150 meant that this was something very, very unusual. Anyway, around about quarter past one, maybe 20 past one, it was decided to wake the captain up because obviously this was something that we couldn't do deal with at our level. So the skipper had to be woken up and he immediately went up to the bridge and took control. He decided that he was going to try and give us a side profile of the submarine, I call it a submarine of the object. So, and the reason behind that is because as we try to turn, the object itself turns so relevant with us. We were never able to get a significant side profile ping off of it. So we didn't know its length at that time. The way that the captain did it, and this was the, the shock to the ship's company was he turned hard to port. And when I say hard to port, I'm probably talking 80 to 90 degrees to port. Now what that did do is it turned the ship and he obviously he brought us up to about 28 knots, which was pretty much the, the extent of the speed of that particular class of vessel. 28 knots was the maximum speed. And that he turned us to about 80, 90 degrees of port. Now what that did do was it threw everybody out of their bits. So as you can imagine, you've got 250, 230 plus guys suddenly on the floor. And when you're four, four stacks high, that's a long distance to fall out, I can tell you. But what it did do is it forced the object to also turn incredibly hard to port. And by doing it for a split moment, it gave us enough of a side profile that we were able to get a length of the object and it came back as being approximately 800ft in length. So just think of that, 800 by 150ft larger than anything that existed at that time. Now I've spoken over the last 40 years because it's over, it's 40 years ago now this actually happened. Many people have said, you know, this could easily have been a stealth military technology like in the hunt for it October. And I guess that could be classified as being, you know, it could be accurate, but it would have to have been such a technology to do what happened next. And this is what leads us into, you Know parallels of the unknown. Now what happened then is after about half an hour, so we're talking about half past one in the morning, this object suddenly did something that was, we could never have perceived as happening. It suddenly sped up and it went from 20km behind us to being within about 20 to 30 seconds underneath us.

Michael Ryan

Wow.

David Barnett

Now, my dear friend and physicist Kevin Newth, who we spoke about a little bit earlier, was able to do the, the maths of what speed this object was moving at. And he actually created mathematical equations. I'm not going to go into that side of things. I'm going to give you the two relevant speeds that he was able to give. So he said that the USO, these are his words, quote, clearly the USO had to accelerate to close the 20 kilometers distance that it had been maintaining. Here we perform two calculations to estimate the speed and acceleration of the USO. So the first calculation involves estimating a minimum speed of the USO, which if he says, if we assume that the USO instantaneously exhilarates from the original speed of about 20 or whatever, 28 knots. Sorry, at that time, 28 knots. So he basically worked out that 28 knots and 20 kilometers meant that it had to be going at a speed of about 1500 miles per hour. The second calculation though, is based on assuming a minimum exhilaration. But here we assume that the USO accelerates at a constant rate during the maneuver, which gives a top speed of just under 3,000 miles per hour underwater.

Michael Ryan

Wow.

David Barnett

Now he says, in summary, we can safely say that the 800 foot long USO performed a maneuver exhibiting an acceleration of at least 4.5 G's reaching a speed somewhere between 1500 and 3000 miles per hour. Now remember, that's underwater.

Narrator

Yes.

Michael Ryan

Okay, now, now the, the thing that I, so I looked this up and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but like even today, like in today's world, they're saying that the only human made things that go this fast underwater. I think they said there's a Russian torpedo and a. Yes, that's right, Yeah, A German torpedo that is a prototype and they only go about 240 miles per hour underwater.

David Barnett

It's the same as what I was discussing before about the water molecules. That's what will determine the speed of an object, sound, anything. Now for an object to move that fast, and I actually did have a conversation with Kevin about this, we had a sort of a think tank one day. It, the object itself would need to create a, a bubble around itself that comprised of no water molecules at all that it was able to move through the water in essence, like it had a vacuum of space around it the whole time. And it's sort of like if, if for those Star Trek fans of which I'm one of them, this, the Enterprise has a deflector dish which does exactly that. It deflects the, the minute or small particles that exist in the ether ahead of it and it, it moves them aside, it deflects it aside so the Enterprise doesn't bang into them. So it would have. One could assume that this, that this object produced something similar that moved the water molecules away and allowed it to have a clear path and able to accelerate at those speeds. This is very hypothetical. It's the only sort of conclusions that one could come up with at that particular time, because to be honest, we had absolutely no idea how it was able to achieve that speed. Now, the interesting thing is, is that we also, as I said, we had the great, the G750 omnidirectional solar, but we also had as a tool a slightly older analog sonar system known as the 177M, which was a much older sonar system. It had again, a transducer that was lowered from the ship's keel and was housed in what's called a hull outfit. Now, that particular sonar only produced a sound wave that could travel between 2 to 3 kilometers maximum. And it produced a sound wave beam of only about an arc of 45 degrees. So if you imagine shining a torch and you can just see the torchlight going out in a relatively low beam of light, imagine that as a sound wave. So that was the 177N. Now that was also, I remember the sonar control control operator saying, train the 177N. Even though it was not going to give us any information at that time because the object was too far away, we still had it trained and was still creating sound. The interesting thing is, as this object came screaming up behind us, it obviously eventually came into contact with the sound wave of the 177m. Now, the information that was being returned in its echo return was again being transferred onto the range recorder that was recording this object screaming up behind us. Now, as I said, it's an old analog system and it just reeled out or peeled out a parchment paper similar to like a fax machine if you want to. It just rolls out and the stylus, as you can imagine, is moving across, burning a little mark as it hits that object and it burns the mark and then the parchment rolls out further. So the line or the contact moves up and up and up and up. If you can imagine, I hope that paints a picture. And as the object came screaming up behind us, the 177m was this. This parchment was all these stylus was just going crazy, running across from left to right and bouncing back. And actually as it hit, the object would bounce back quicker and quicker to the left, to the left, to the left, to the left, to left, as the object eventually went under the ship's keel. Now, if I can again just paint a picture here as this object is screaming towards us, if you can imagine, we can hear the sound compression wave return, echo. And as it's coming towards us, that sound is getting higher and higher pitched as the sound wave or the distance is getting shorter and shorter and shorter. A bit like when you hear the siren of a police car. As it's heading towards you, it gets higher sound wave. And as it suddenly goes past you, it seems to get lower in pitch. That's because the sound wave, when it's coming towards you, the sound wave is bouncing towards you quicker and quicker and quicker and quicker as it moves away. The sound wave takes longer to reach your ears again as it moves further away. So if you can imagine, in this instance, we're hearing all this sound coming from the G750 Echo return. The 177M Echo return. They're both screaming. There are lights flashing everywhere from the Ador's computer system. The digital readouts in front of us are shortening as this object's coming towards us. It sounds like mayhem. But suddenly this object goes under the ship's keel and the entire ship's power went dead completely. Now, when I say drained of power, which we were, I mean everything. Now, in the event of what I called earlier a ship's steam turbine failure, if that occurs, that's fine, we would be left to drift. But all the backup generators kick in. So all the lights that run on, battery that run through the main drag of the ship, the lights that kicking outside, so you've still got your port, starboard, stern, forward lights, that all comes on and you can still see what you're doing. Minimum power. That didn't work. When I say everything was drained, everything, all backup generators, all the batteries, even the torches that we had, were all drained. We had no power whatsoever. Now, the significance of this is, as I said, you go from mayhem of sound and light in the sonar control room and instantaneously you're in complete black darkness and there's no Sound, nothing. So you can't hear anything and you cannot see anything. So I truly believed that we had died. I really would. Well, because also you see instant, instinctively you take in a. You, you inhale and you hold your breath. I didn't know this at the time, but that's what I did. And the guys next to me did the same thing. So we couldn't even hear each other breathing. There was for what seemed a lifetime, no sound or at all from anybody. And then suddenly the guy next to me exhaled and I realized that we were actually alive. Now it's interesting that I should say this because and this is absolutely true, a person that I know went on to Google Gemini AI, I think it was. And he typed in, and I think this was correct, he typed in tell me about the HMNZ Southland encounter and David Arkenstone Barnett, February 1987. And this is what came back. It explained the event, but then it said very sadly, David Arkenstone Barnett died in this event. Now I'm not making this stuff up. He actually showed me this and I freaked out a little bit because I thought I had died. And here is Gemini AI saying that apparently I did. So I don't quite know what that's about. I've never seen it again. I've typed it in myself. I've never seen that. But he did show it to me and it was rather disconcerting, I think is the correct word to see that, that apparently I died in that event.

Michael Ryan

David, I have a, I have a question here. In the time that. And there was, there's four of you in this sonar room in the time that you first discovered this and then informed the bridge between that time when you're making the maneuvers and all that and you're seeing this thing 20 kilometers away. And then in the moments where everyone was aware that this thing is now coming very, very quickly, like did you think, is it going to crash into the ship? Like what? We don't know what's going to happen as this thing approaches it. A very good clip is. Did you talk amongst yourselves or was there any kind of panic about it being hitting the ship?

David Barnett

There was no discussion because we didn't have time. It was happening, everything was happening so quickly. There wasn't time to discuss is this going to hit us. I don't recollect anybody having a conversation with each other. We were just, I know for myself, I was just staring at his scope. I was looking to the guy to my right because I'm looking at the range recorder and Seeing this thing getting closer and closer. So in answer to your question, no. I don't remember ever thinking, is this going to crash into us? It was simply, I don't understand what's going on here. Nothing seems to make sense. My instruments and the instrumentations are not giving us any clues to what's happening. Nothing makes sense here. I think that was the only thing that went through my mind was based upon the last 30 minutes of what we were going through. Nothing seemed to make sense. I personally was trying to figure out what could this be. So 30 seconds may seem a long time, but when you're in a sonar control room with mayhem occurring and the sound screaming in your ears, no, there was no time to think of anything except basically what the hell's happening? That's the only answer I can give. Yeah.

Michael Ryan

Did you. So you're obviously familiar with hearing the sonar ping off of let's say a Russian submarine. So you can tell that that sound is metal. Like you can tell the difference between a whale and a, a metal submarine.

David Barnett

No, you can't tell the, the actual material of a submarine. You can't detect whether it's a metallic object apart from, as I said, the mechanical sound of the propeller. That's all we're actually identifying with a, what's called, I say, classified as a biologic. You can, can hear obviously if it's a whale, you will hear the distinctive sounds of the whale, which is it's sonar. Of course, if it's the dolphins, it's the clicking. They do make very distinctive sounds in the oceans. And a sonar operator, both on a sub and a ship, we are trained to be able to do, to deficiate or. It's a word I hate, tell the difference between a biologic of reverberation, reverberations, bubbles, make a very distinctive sound, literally as a bubbly sound. And you can hear that, but with a metallic object, no, you can't tell or determine that's a metal, but you can determine if it's a mechanical sound through the propellers or even the miss. The torpedoes which we were using, which were the Mark 44 anti submarine torpedo, they are designed to use acoustic technology and they themselves are homing in on the propeller sound of the submarine. So it's all to do with propellers and the sound that the propellers make that we are able to determine what type of sub it is or if it is indeed a submarine. But otherwise, no, you can't tell the, the metals of it or the alloys of, of any. Not, not then anyway, I Don't know about modern technologies now if whether it's able to do that because it gives a. That the, the acoustics could be different now and it can determine such. The compression wave may be different, but back then, no, we were very two dimensional because, remember, we were still using analog technology as well as the digital technology in the G750 and it was still very, very antiquated back then.

Michael Ryan

So now we've left off where everything. You're in complete darkness. So I know that you all go through a lot of training, but it must have been kind of terrifying to be like that, where there's just nothing, there's no lights, there's no sound, there's no nothing.

David Barnett

Yeah, it was very, very eerie. I just remember the sonar controller just saying very quietly, is everybody okay? And one by one we said yes. And I just remember feeling very grateful to be alive. That's the, the honest feeling that I had. And then suddenly the curtain between the sonar control room and the ops room opened up and the exo, the executive officer leaned in and he said, is everybody okay here? We said, yes. And he said, good. But now we need to get out. We are adrift. We have to get everybody from below decks up and we have to get onto the flight deck because we are adrift and we could potentially hit a reef. So we now need to get everybody from below decks up.

Michael Ryan

Now.

David Barnett

We then obviously that's when we discovered, because we didn't have torches, because each of the control rooms had torches strapped to the sides and none of those worked, that was frightening in on itself. So we had to go through the main drag. We had to literally. It was like the blind leading the blind. We just literally could not see much in front of us because there was no light, natural or artificial at all. So it was just using, you know, people holding on to each other and going up, up the. The stairs into the main drag of the ship. And we were lucky enough, obviously, that a lot of us were smokers and we had lighters, paraffin lighters or. And we were able to light those and then find candles. I mean, you've shown me a modern warship now that has candles in them, but we did back then, so we had to use lighters and candles and we could hear the ship's company below decks calling out, screaming out, what's going on? What's happened? And we had to call to them, go down and call to them, and, you know, one by one, literally, we, we got them up because, you know, obviously you're going up Staircases. It's quite dangerous. It's very dangerous in the pitch black. So we eventually got everybody up onto the flight deck and it was the most surreal experience I've ever had, which is being on the flight deck of a ship in very, very still, calm waters with no light at all. There was no artificial light. The ship was completely dead of power. There was no moon. We were not near the coast, so I couldn't see. We couldn't see any coastal lights. But I remember looking up and looked up at the most extraordinary scene of just billions upon billions of stars. It was just the most extraordinary scene. So there's 250 guys, maybe less, because obviously the engineers were trying desperately to get the engines operational again. But the majority of the crew were on the flight deck. And it took from memory about an hour for the engineers to get one of the steam turbines or one of the boilers operational so that enough steam could be generated to get the one engine operational and get a modicum of power back to the ship. It took about an hour to do that, which was remarkable under the circumstances. And for those of those, those of people who may be questioning, even the ship's companies, of which there were quite a few of us, who had digital watches, the watches were dead as well. And as far as I remember, those with, you know, Timex analog watches, quartz crystal watches and so forth, they were all stuck on roundabout 1-0-135- or 130, something like that, and they didn't move beyond that. So it Literally everything, when I say everything was drained, I'm talking everything completely.

Michael Ryan

Did anybody. Did anybody see. When the power was out and people were moving to the flight deck, did anybody ever report seeing light under the water, under the ship?

David Barnett

No, none whatsoever. It had long gone by the time the. I mean, if we're concluding that the object moved at a minimum speed of 1500 miles per hour kilometers an hour underwater or miles per hour, sorry, it would have long gone before any of us were on the flight deck. It took about, I would imagine, 15 minutes to get everybody from below decks onto the flight deck. So anything would have disappeared completely from that time. So the answer is no. Nothing was seen even on the flight deck. The question has been asked before, did anybody on the. Sorry. On the bridge, did anybody on the bridge see anything heading towards us? The answer was no. That's because the object was. We detected it being at least 100ft below the water line. So it was deep enough that we wouldn't have seen anything if it had any external lightings. That were fairly well illuminated. I would answer that, yes, people on the bridge might have seen it. I have no recollection of any report stating that the. The three to four people on the bridge, including the captain, actually saw anything. But remember, there's information that I'm sharing today which others may not be privy to at all, and they, in turn, may have information that I'm not privy to. So what it's been over the last 40 years is trying to piece together all these different pieces of information which I've been able to do and which has enabled me to expand this story over the decades from what I've basically shared with you just now to incorporating a lot more detail that I've been able to gather over the. The last four decades.

Michael Ryan

David, there's a couple of questions I want to ask you now is one of them is did you know something traveling that fast underwater, did it cause any kind of wake or disturbance in the ocean or the ship rolled or anything like that?

David Barnett

No, not that I'm. It's a very good question, by the way. Nobody's actually had one in 40 years. Now, the answer is, I. I don't rem. Remember if the ship. The ship had a natural sway to it, which was just simply being in the water. So that was always there. I don't recollect there being any amplified motion of the vessel as this object went under us. I don't recollect. I think, personally I was in such a state of shock and, you know, to a point, fear. There's no two ways about it. This was a very scary experience to have. There is no amount of military training that prepares you for such a thing to occur. So I think I was in a state of self survival, self preservation, and all external senses of anything else going on around me seem to diminish enormously as I was just praying in my own way that I was still alive. So in answer to the question, no, I don't recollect there being any wake or any further movement of the vessel as the object went underneath us.

Michael Ryan

So at this point, so now, you know, the object that has left the ship is still basically in darkness. So at this point, there really is Only still about 14 or 15 people who really know what happened.

David Barnett

It's actually even less than that because out of the 1415 people, only a number of us actually know what the contact that we actually were in contact with something significant or even how big it was. Apart from the captain on the bridge, excuse me, the other people who were on the Bridge at that time weren't privileged to that information at all, but they knew that there was a contact. So we're reducing the number of actual people who knew to four in the seminar control room, the EXO in the ops room, and the captain on the bridge. So how many is it? That's six. So out of a crew of 250, 15 were aware that we had a contact of significance, and only six knew what that contact actually was. So it's heavily reduced. And that in itself is significant to what happened then after, in relation to the six people.

Michael Ryan

I've got one other question I want to ask here. So in your professional opinion, could any known 1987 technology perform the movements that you saw that night on your sonar screen?

David Barnett

No, none whatsoever. None whatsoever. I don't even think there's been a movie that's been made that would sort of give us some sort of comparison even at that time to say, yeah, well, it was made into. You know, there was a movie that sort of showed something similar. Hunt for Red October probably is the closest thing. But that wasn't a USO of what we believe is of extraterrestrial origin. That was still man made. No, there was nothing that we knew of. And I've spoken to many people over the years that are like Kevin, as I said, who was in NASA, and he has contacts through the academia world, and he himself has never had any conclusive evidences to technology that existed that was man made at that time.

Michael Ryan

Now, this is something we talked about before the show. How did the office officers and crew react to this event? And I think you mentioned beforehand that some interesting things happened.

David Barnett

Okay, so if I just go back a little bit. So once we were able to. Once the engineers were able to get some power to the ship, we had to sail to Wellington to report to the Admiralty. Now, because we were running on minimal power, it took almost a day to get from where we were located all the way down to Wellington, which is roundabout as the crow flies, about a thousand kilometers, maybe less than that. But it took us a day. And we birthed. I remember we were birthed at Wellington harbor, myself and my colleagues, my three other colleagues, we were taken inside the sonar control room and the executive officer made a sign, NDAs. And we were also told and advised and reminded that we were under the Military Secrecy act and that we had to abide by the secrecy, the Military Secrecy act at all times in relation to this event. So in other words, we were told not to discuss this incident in any way. The Ship's Captain John Leonard then reported to the leading admiral at that time, the Chief of Staff, who was Rear Admiral John Temperaux. And he was a very nice man, I remember him very well, a very, a really lovely guy. And so the captain reported to Rear Admiral John Temperaux, John Temperau advised. And we were able to know, this came through back to us, that he was opening a file or an investigation, a full investigation into this encounter, which was a good thing. It meant that the military was taking this incident very, very seriously. However, and this is on record,

Narrator

Rear

David Barnett

Admiral Temporary in May, which is three months later, suddenly died. And there is actually a copy of his information of his death which is held by the Torpedo Bay Navy Museum, which is based in Auckland, which holds nearly all of the official informations of the New Zealand Navy, including the types of ships, their locations at certain times, all relevant data. Now, if you look up Rear Admiral John Lincoln Temperau, you will see that indeed it says temporary, died suddenly in May of 1987. He was only 57 years old. It was very, I remember this very well. It was very unusual and it does state, being the first Chief of Naval Staff to die in office and he had a full military funeral. He was actually buried at sea with all the trimmings that go with it. So very unusual situation. Here we have a admiral who says, yes, this is a significant event, yes, we are going to investigate it to the full, the fullest of our capacity. And then three months later, out of the blue, suddenly dies and with his death, literally went the death of the investigation as far as we actually overtly know. So that was the first of the unusual circumstances. Then we get to Captain John Leonard himself. He, he left the ship. The ironic, and the strange thing is the Executive Officer, I left the ship in April of 1987. In July of 1987, Richard Cass, the Executive Officer, also left. And then after that, by only a few months, the Captain John Leonard left that ship. So we all left the ship relatively quickly, I would say after that main event occurring now going back to Captain John Leonard, he continued in the navy and rose to the rank of Commodore, which is the naval rank just below Rear Admiral. So he was like second highest rank in the New Zealand Navy at that particular time time. And then in. He retired in 1995 as a naval Commodore of Auckland, which is a very significant position. And then Suddenly, at age 55, he died. And in, in his death notice. And by the way, if you try and look up Captain John Leonard, you will find next to no information about him other than his death notice, he basically doesn't exist outside of that one or two death notices, there's nothing about him. He doesn't exist. There are no photos of him, there is no other information, nothing. And believe you me, I've investigated fully. I even have a contact who has deep connections to the New Zealand government and he isn't able to find any other information apart from the death notices of John Leonard. Now what is significant about that is you can also google this yourselves and you'll be able to get a list of all the high rankings New Zealand naval officers going back from 1941 when the new Zealand Navy first came into fruition, right up to modern times. And this will give you a list of all the commodores, rear admirals, etc. Now John Leonard's name is missing from that list. Now here we have an officer who rose to the rank of Commodore of Auckland, a very significant position and yet his name is omitted from the official list of high ranking commodores and rear admirals of the New Zealand Navy. His death notice, which you can find under the Auckland Council libraries of all places, says under the description, and by the way, there's no photo of him in the description, just says Commodore Leonard died suddenly. Now there's that word again, suddenly. We had the same word with rear Admiral temporary who died suddenly. Here we have Commodore Leonard died suddenly, aged 55 years old and it says John Leonard had served more than 35 years in the navy and that's pretty much all the information you will find about him. So suddenly he died. Then we come to the executive officer Richard Cass. Ironically he joined the Southland as EXO and roundabout November, December of 86. Now normally an executive officer, similarly to a commanding officer normally stays around two years on a, on a naval vessel before moving to new opportunities. So he joined around about November, December of 86, but left shortly after the encounter roundabout that say roundabout due. I left in April. He left roundabout due. So he had really only served round about seven months into what would normally be a two year position. Now the other thing that's of interest is for a rather short space of time, Richard Cass was the commanding officer of the hydrographic survey ship the tui, who I said earlier spent some time out of the comedic trench doing research using the MNS15TOA ray sonar system. So for about three months only. Richard Cass prior to coming to the Southland was in fact the commanding officer of the tui, which is really unusual. He only was there for three months and then suddenly he's on Southland. Suddenly we have this major event and this major encounter and then shortly after that he leaves the Southland as well. Now he did take up other military locations. In fact, he moved to Australia and by the time I was able to locate him, he had actually passed away about a year earlier. So I never had the opportunity to, to have any, a chance to talk to him or investigate him even further. But what is unusual again is that if you research the executive officers of the HMNZ Southland, his name is again omitted from that list. He's not in there. It goes from around about 1986 and then it suddenly jumps to the end of 1987 and there's no XO in between, which would have been him. So his name has been omitted from the executive officers of the Southland, but only at that particular time. So we have the XO that seems to have mysteriously disappeared. We have the commanding officer who is not showing up as ever being the Commodore of Auckland at all. So all these little events, and by the way, anybody can find them. So anybody can research this themselves and they will find the same information that I did. So in fact it actually shows, yes, it was Commander Wilson from 1984 to 1985. And then it jumps to Commander Peck from 1987 to 1989 as the Exos of the Southland. So suddenly, it's that period of time that suddenly is missing from when Richard Cass was the executive officer of the Southland. So members of the crew, high ranking like this, have been removed from their positions on that particular ship. So we have an admiral who has died mysteriously three months later. We have a commodore who has died suddenly at age 55 and is omitted from the list of commodores. And we have the executive officer, whose name is O, as executive officer of the ship, but turns up earlier as the commanding officer of a hydrographic research vessel that just so happened to be researching one of the key areas where USOs sort of migrate to. So it, it was all very significant. Now the question then is what happened to the other members of the sonar control room that I was in? Well, they were really hard to find. Two of them I used to. Well, one of them I actually met years, years later. His name, his name was Jimmy Svensson. He's disappeared off the face of the earth. There's nothing about him whatsoever. And I can't. One of the other gentlemen who was with me actually when I was in New Zealand, he lived about an hour south of me in the South Island. He became a recluse and a drunk and very, very strange personality. So Nobody could sort of connect with him at all. I didn't know where exactly he lived, so I wasn't able to locate him again, not on any social medias, which then made it very difficult to find out exactly where he lived. But I discovered where he was and what happened to him through a mutual military person who knew him and said, he's. This is where he is, is. We don't know where he lives, literally as an address, but I know that he became a recluse and a drunk, and that's pretty much his life. Of all the members of the, the ship's company that actually has any connection to this event, that's me. I'm the only member. Yeah.

Michael Ryan

And you spend a lot of time looking over your shoulder.

David Barnett

Funnily enough, that is a question for that I do get asked as. As you know, Mike, I went into many different areas of research for over the last 40 years which were all triggered by this one event and encounter. The answer is yes. A lot of people said, do you have. Have you had vehicles parked outside your home? The answer is yes, many times. One question I was asked was, do you fear for your life? The answer is no. The question then became why? And I said, because in all reality, I'm one person who's talking about something which really, to the powers that be, could well be very insignificant. I don't believe that I'm a threat to anybody or anything, because at the end of the day, I'm just sharing my story. And that's really what it is, is a story based upon my experiences. Now, yes, other people were part of the event, but I'm the only person who has taken it to the level of lecturing about it, presenting it in any way of any significance. But yes, I have had, as I said, you know, strange vehicles parked outside my home, particularly as I got more involved in latter years, when I left the military, I went into the security industry where I spent over 30 years and worked with some of the big, you know, in management positions with some of the big national security companies and had connection and involvement with military contracts and was able to become involved with and have knowledge in relation to a lot more of the, the UAP side of things, which I was then able to add to my lectures. And I think I sent you some of that. The latest information or the latest work that I've gotten involved with or that I've generated or created myself based on my research, which I think you acknowledge was a little bit more in depth.

Michael Ryan

In depth, yes.

David Barnett

Would that be the Correct word to use.

Michael Ryan

Yes. There's another question I want to ask is so at any time and especially around the, you know, time of the event or since, have you ever been approached by any intelligence officers like then or now or do you know of anyone that had, was approached?

David Barnett

What I just, what I was able to discover through contact is as I said earlier, I have a, A, a friend who, how can I say this, he had a company or has a company that has worked for the New Zealand government in classified ventures and technologies. Now he also has a contact deep within the New Zealand government who I know nothing about. I'm not allowed to know the name of this individual. I don't know whether it was a male or a female. I don't know anything. But this individual has access to informations at the highest secrecy level and that person has shared a small amount of significant information to my contact who in turn has their, has then shared it to me. Now if I might just sort of expand upon that. When we were conducting those going outside of the hierarchy Gulf, turning around and sending back in and so forth, we were actually part of what was called Operation Fast Forward which is what it was classified as being. And you can actually Google this yourself through Google AI and type in. It was actually around about March 1987 and the, it'll, it'll share with you that the HMS NZs Southland conducted exercises in the Haraki Gulfs specifically involving the tracking and attraction of unidentified Submerged Objects. We were actually at that time also working with, in conjunction with an Australian submarine called the Oxley. And the Oxley is classified as an Oberon class submarine, an Oboe, an Oberon class which was originally British Navy submarine class but sold to the Australian Navy and they at that time had about 4o class subs. The Oxley came over to New Zealand. I actually went on board her and the Oxley was involved in just sort of sailing around us at that particular time as we were conducting this exercise. And I remember distinctly that suddenly we lost contact with the Oxley. And I remember it distinctly because I was in the sonar control room when contact was lost with the Oxley and I had to use a very old antiquated type of sonar caused called a 185 underwater telephone which sounds almost comical now but it is exactly that. It is a handheld telephone piece, a receiver that you hold to your ears if you're going to have a normal conversation. But your voice is transmitted through the transducer below the ship and you can be heard in a, from a submarine in a Submarine, your voice can be detected. I had to. We had to use that as a means to contact the Oxley, but we couldn't. Now, as far as I was aware, and what we were told was that it had no issue and that it had sailed back to its home port in Sydney. However, my contact, and this is only going back about a year ago, advised me that this deep. This deep seated person within the government reported that what in fact had happened was Lee Oxley had encountered a USO of significance and it had rendered it inoperable to the point where apparently, although I don't recollect this, that it set off and sent off. The Oxley sent off a red flare, and a red flare means that the sub is in distress. Now, I never knew that. So this was a significant piece of information that was able to be added to my chips. Saw of, Of. Of this, of this particular encounter. It fitted in quite nicely because, as I said, we had lost contact with Oxley. We had tried to contact her. We were then advised that she was fine and that she'd gone back her own way to Sydney. Then to find out years later that she had in fact reported an encounter with a mysterious USO and had had major failures later. Then, to add to the jigsaw, we now bring in the U.S. navy. Again, I wasn't made aware of this until, as I say, Kevin Knuth, the physicist, was being interviewed by a German podcaster who specializes in USOs globally and apparently is a lot of significant information and is a huge resource of information in relation to relations to uso. Now, he wanted to interview Kevin Newth. Kevin, in turn, called me and said, would you be okay if I share the Southland event story with him? To which I said, yes. The interview took place and Kevin called me back shortly after and said, I wonder if this is of significance to you, but apparently the USS Carl Vinson, which is a Nimitz class aircraft carrier, apparently was off the coast of New Zealand, and an hour or more or so before your encounter, it had encountered a very large UAP. It had launched a couple of its F14s to intercept this huge object. The F14s encountered it, chased it, and then this huge object plummeted into the ocean. Now, it seems to be that the Carl Vinson was in the same vicinity as the Southland, and it's quite possible that the object that they encounter was the object that we encountered. Now, I've done some due diligence about the timeline of the Carl Vinson, and In February of 87, the Carl Vinson had just arrived back having been on a major six month deployment. So this, that's the official US Navy's report that the Carl Vinson was at birth at its birth site in Alamena in San Francisco Naval Base. But apparently going by what this expert in USOS has advised is that it left. That it left its home base, traveled to New Zealand waters and had this bizarre encounter. Now, I don't know if that's true. I can see that the information that is available online states that it wasn't in our region. But an aircraft carrier can, at high speed and off stopping, which of course an Imitz class carrier could do, can reach New Zealand from California in roughly 10 to 12 days, steaming around about 35 miles an hour or about, you know, roundabout. It's the, the maximum speed of an aircraft carrier, which is about 30 knots. It can reach New Zealand in 10 to 12 days. I don't have any recollection of that. We weren't able. We were privy to that information and it might have been well outside of our radar and sonar scopes. But what is of interest is years later I came across some information that stated that the New Zealand Security Service was fully aware of these USOs and their locations and that in fact, the Southland was in fact instructed to intercept this USO at that exact location. Now, that changes everything. That means that it was not coincidental that we just so happened to be at that location, and that it wasn't just coincidental that we were operating under defense stations to therefore be using our sonars to detect. But in fact, it looks like possible that the New Zealand military and the government were fully aware of these USOs and that the Southland was instructed to intercept it. Now that then brings us to another level of understanding what this was all about. Particularly because if the Oxley was involved and had an encounter and that the USS Carl Vinson was in the region and encountered possibly this same object. Now, if you create a foundation of information just on what I've just shared here, now you have to go into the new next level of investigation as to what is that all about, what's going on in that particular vicinity? And is it a fact that we have more encounters with USOs and there are more involved in extraterrestrial being here on Earth, but in these trenches, because we do know that we have more encounters with USOs than UAPs, believe it or not, and there's a higher significant connection between contact with USOs and UAPs. So it raises us to a whole new level of investigation.

Michael Ryan

Before we wrap this up. I just want to thank David for being on the podcast today. David, it was absolutely incredible, jam packed with detail and information that I seldom here in the recounting of any kind of observation of a UFO or uap. But I just want to thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

David Barnett

You're very welcome Mike. It's been an absolute pleasure. I hope that your listeners have enjoyed slash inspired by this story. I hope that they investigate this themselves. I'm always happy to hear from people who have discovered something that maybe I not discovered along the line. So if they are, I'm more than happy for them to get in contact with me and let me know. But thank you for the opportunity. It's been really a wonderful time.

Narrator

Here are the Canadian Civil Aviation anomalies for the week of May 4th to May 8th, 2026. On May 4th, during the day at 12 at 12:33 Zulu Time, six nautical miles near Sudbury, Ontario, an Atlas Air Boeing aircraft flying from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Anchorage International Airport encountered a possible weather balloon at FL400 which missed the aircraft by 200 to 300ft. The object was 2 meters to 3 meters wide and was silver and gray in color. Also on May 4th at 11:10 Zulu time, a United States Navy Boeing aircraft and a second United States Air Force Boeing aircraft, both flying from Naval Air Station Whidbey island, operating within active CYR107 restricted airspace, left the lateral confines of the area and entered Class C airspace without air traffic control permission, potentially impacting other aircraft in the area. On May 5, an Air Canada Boeing 7378 flying from Cozumel International Airport to Montreal International Airport reported observing an UN unmanned air vehicle on its right 3 nautical miles from final on Runway 24L. Duplicate AOR deleted after information merge. There was no impact on operations and all flights proceeded to their destinations without further incident.

Michael Ryan

Well, that's our podcast for this week. Please share, subscribe and do all those great things to help spread the word about UFO Talk and Until next time, this is Michael Ryan. Keep watching the skies.

Narrator

You have been listening to the UFO Talker. If you have any questions or comments on this episode, you can email us@ufotalkerl.net or visit our website at ufotalker ca. You can support UFO Talker by using the Buy Me a Coffee app with links on our website and in the show notes. We appreciate every listener. Thank you for your support. This has been a Michael Ryan production.

Michael Ryan

30 that's a wrap.