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Was it a plane? Still no official explanation for 'mysterious missile' off California coast
By David Gardner
Last updated at 12:16 PM on 10th November 2010
- Internet experts insist 'launch' was an optical illusion created by clear skies and a conventional aircraft vapour trail
The initial thought was that it must have been fired from a U.S. Navy vessel, but the Pentagon said that was not the case. Indeed, spokesmen from all strands of the US armed forces denied responsibility for the phenomenon. Foreign aggressors and private ballistics firms were also ruled out. It lead to speculation among aerospace experts on the internet that the trail could have been the result of an optical illusion
Mysterious: Authorities have been left baffled as to what the phenomenon was off the Southern California yesterday. It certainly looked like a missile launch
Trail's gone cold: The Pentagon said today that none of the military or Department of Defense agencies have said 'they were involved in this'
Amazing image: The contrail was seen from Los Angeles and miles around but no ownership has yet been made to the launch, which lit up the sky yesterday
Spokesmen for the Navy, Air Force, the Defence Department and North American Aerospace Defence Command all said they were in the dark. Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said: ‘Nobody within the Department of Defense that we’ve reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is and where it came from. 'So far, we’ve come up empty with an explanation,’ he added.
Off the coast: The location of the missile was said to be west of Los Angeles, north of Catalina Island, and approximately 35 miles out to sea
Military officials said it was possible a private company may have been behind the incident. Judging from the images, the rocket looked to be within sight of a passenger jet flying out of nearby Los Angeles Airport. Colonel Lapan said an official missile test would usually involve air space being closed off and a notification to all shipping in the area. But there was no advance notice of the event.
Not ours: Vandenberg Air Force based confirmed they launched a Delta II rocket on Friday but was not responsible for yesterday's missile
He added: ‘At this point, until we know more information about what it may have been, there is not alarm. But that could change depending on what we find out.' He said it was ‘implausible’ that the test could be carried out so near to the airport. The video was captured on Monday evening about 5pm by a news helicopter flying over Los Angeles.
Plane crazy: The missile launch appeared to get close to an aircraft from nearby LAX airport. But many now believe it was the result of a rare optical illusion
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The contrail was about 35 miles out to sea, just north of Catalina, a small island about 20 miles from the mainland. The initial thought was that it must have been fired from a US Navy vessel offshore, but the Pentagon said that was not the case. Nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base confirmed it fired a Delta II rocket carrying a satellite last Friday, but had not authorised or carried out any launches since then.
Robert Ellsworth, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and a former Deputy Secretary of Defence, said after seeing the video: ‘It’s spectacular. It takes the breath away.’ He called it a ‘big missile’, larger than a Tomahawk missile, which can be fireed from a submerged submarine. With President Obama currently on a 10-day tour of Asia, he speculated it may have been the US military showing off their muscle to Far Eastern leaders.
He said: 'It could be a test firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from an underwater submarine to demonstrate, mainly to Asia, that we can do that.' But he was quick to point out that this was just a theory. He also revealed that a test missile was fired over the Atlantic to demonstrate America's power to the Soviets when there was a Soviet Union, but doesn't believe it has ever been done over the Pacific.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, issued a statement jointly with the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, saying that the contrail was not the result of a foreign military launching a missile. It provided no further details. The statement said: 'We can confirm that there is no threat to our nation, and from all indications this was not a launch by a foreign military. We will provide more information as it becomes available.' But John Pike, a defence and aerospace expert who runs website GlobalSecurity.org, was convinced the phenomenon was a simple trick of the eye.
He said: 'This thing is so obviously an airplane contrail... There's a reason that they're called rockets.' He said the object was moving too slow to be a missile, and footage showed light of varying intensity coming from the object, which suggested reflected light from the sun rather than light generated from an engine. It looked like a missile launch, he said, because of an optical illusion that made the contrail appear as though it started on the ground and zoomed straight up.
In reality, he said, the contrail began on the horizon and ran parallel to the ground. 'It was an unusually clear day, so what looked like a missile launch 35 miles off the coast of Los Angeles was actually the contrail of a jet that stretched 300 miles into the distance.' He did not agree with theories that it was an unannounced missile test, adding: 'If it were secret, we'd do it at night in Alaska.'
Perhaps no one had a better view of the alleged rocket than KCBS-TV Channel 2 cameraman Gil Leyvas. He was aboard the station's helicopter shooting footage of sunset over the ocean at 5.15pm when he noticed a spiral-shaped vapor trail and zoomed in to get a better look. The on-board camera showed a plume twisting up from the horizon and narrowing as it climbed into the sky northwest of Santa Catalina Island, he said.
'Whatever it was, it was spinning up into the sky kind of like a spiral,' he said. 'It was quite a sight to see. It was spectacular.' And he wasn't the only one to see it. When Kelly Spear looked out the back window of her San Pedro home to see a rising orange line on the horizon, she thought it might be a rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base. She said: 'I told myself it was just a plane, but I really had no idea. We have a pretty expansive view, and I've never seen anything like that before.'
