At the time of the event, Cdr Fravor was the Commanding Officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41, flying the newest aircraft in the U.S Navy, the F/A-18F Super Hornet. Commander Fravor had 16 years of experience flying tactical aircraft for the Navy with over 3,500 flight hours and was a graduate of the Navy Fighter Weapons School, better known as TOPGUN.
On November 14th, 2004, CDR Fravor and his WSO were flying with another Super Hornet from VFA-41 on a routine training mission that was focusing on Air Defense of the carrier battle group. The weather was clear, sunny and a beautiful southern CA day.
Soon after the two aircraft joined together as a flight, CDR Fravor was told that the training event was going to be suspended and that real world tasking would take precedence. The flight of 2 Super Hornets were to investigate an unknown aerial contact. The contact was one of many that had been descending from above 80,000 feet and hovering around 20,000 ft during the previous 2 weeks. This was the first time that the contacts were seen with aircraft airborne.
An aircraft that launched just prior to CDR Fravor’s aircraft landing aboard USS Nimitz managed to obtain video footage of the object. That footage is FLIR1, which was previously released by To The Stars Academy and verified as official USG footage by NYT.
Read further analysis, including a written report from the other fighter pilot flying alongside CDR Fravor the day of the Nimitz on our community of interest.
