“Darken ship,” a defensive maneuver where all lights go dark and the entire crew locks down inside the ship in order to camouflage the ship from enemy attack. The crew was not told if the order to go darkened ship was a drill or an actual threat.
“When I went to open the bulkhead, it was closed so I figured it was no big deal, it would just come out here, so I found my way to the starboard side of the ship and looked around the corner. There was something halfway out of the water. It looked like a huge black triangle.”
Mr. Thomas estimated that it was larger than the Nimitz. “It looked like a huge black triangle. I would estimate it was bigger than the Nimitz and about 200 yards away,” Thomas explained. According to him, the size of the black triangle would be more than 1092 feet (or 333 meters). The object was elevated, static, then it rose about 30 or 40 feet and finally disappeared without emitting any type of turbine or clearance sound.