HMAS Hobart and the DMZ "Mystery Helicopters"

June 1968. The war pressed hard against the 17th parallel. Offshore, US and Australian warships worked the gunline near Tiger Island, the small island of Cồn Cỏ, and Cap Lay. US Navy swift boats patrolled the coast.

Late on 15 June, the III Marine Amphibious Force logged something strange. "During the late evening hours of 15 June approximately 15 unidentified aircraft, believed to be enemy helicopters, were reportedly sighted in the DMZ area." The command chronology went on. Since then there had been "numerous sightings, both visual and by radar, of unidentified, slow-moving UFO's in the DMZ area and seaward toward Tiger Island."

Just past midnight on 16 June, PCF-19 radioed that it was under attack by "enemy helicopters". North Vietnam was not known to use combat helicopters. According to a later account citing an AP dispatch, PCF-12 under Lieutenant Pete Snyder closed in. Its crew reportedly saw "two circular bright lights immersed in a 'strange glow' hovering over PCF-19's position." One light "emitted a bright flash of light, after which PCF-19 exploded in a cascade of water and flying debris."

Two wounded survivors said the objects had trailed them for miles. The lights hovered about 300 yards away, 100 feet above the water. One had "a rounded front like an observation helo" with "two crewman sitting side by side". PCF-12's gunfire had no effect. F-4 Phantoms chased the lights out to sea. PCF-19 was lost. Her skipper, Lt(jg) John Davis, survived. Four American sailors and a South Vietnamese petty officer did not.

The next night, HMAS Hobart sailed at the rear of her task unit, between Tiger Island and the North Vietnamese coast. USS Boston had warned that enemy helicopters were resupplying the island's garrison. Lt Harry Daish was on watch in the operations room. "At about 0315 a fast moving aircraft was detected leaving the coast in the vicinity of the DMZ heading seawards before turning towards the TU. It approached our starboard quarter and then all hell broke loose."

A missile struck amidships at 03:14. On a second pass at 03:16, two more hit. Ordinary Seaman Raymond John Butterworth, a lookout, was killed. So was Chief Electrician Raymond Henry Hunt. Accounts of the wounded range from three to eleven. Shrapnel struck USS Boston, and USS Edson reported incoming fire.

The missile fragments were identified as AIM-7 Sparrows, fired by USAF F-4 Phantoms of the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing. The crews thought they were firing on low-flying helicopters. A court of inquiry found that the jets could not distinguish the radar signature of surface ships from airborne helicopters. Daish never saw the findings. "The incident was essentially covered up."

The court blamed PCF-19's loss on friendly fire too. A US Navy historian at the Naval History and Heritage Command later disagreed, writing that "the preponderance of reliable evidence suggests that the court of inquiry got it wrong." Real North Vietnamese aircraft remain possible. Yet RAN News reported that no evidence of enemy helicopter operations near the DMZ was ever found.

October 1973. UFOs were in the headlines again. General George S. Brown, then USAF Chief of Staff, looked back. "They weren't called UFOs. They were called enemy helicopters. And they were only seen at night and they were only seen in certain places." An Australian destroyer took a hit, he said, and "we never found any enemy, we only found ourselves when this had been all sorted out." The same thing, he added, happened at Pleiku in 1969.

No one has ever alleged a hoax. The deaths and the damage are fully documented, and friendly fire is the accepted answer for Hobart, Boston and Edson. Later retellings grew the contacts to 30 floating lights. The primary record says about 15. What the Marines tracked over the DMZ, and what the swift boat crews saw over the water, was never settled.