Person
Kevin Day
- Senior Chief Operations Specialist, USS Princeton (radar)
Kevin Day was the senior chief operations specialist in the Combat Information Center of the cruiser USS Princeton in November 2004, responsible for the air picture around the Nimitz strike group. "My job was to man the radars and ID everything that flew in the skies," he says. He is the radar operator at the start of the "Tic Tac" story.
He says that from about 10 November 2004, near San Clemente Island off San Diego, the Princeton's new SPY-1B radar showed groups of five to ten closely spaced objects at 28,000 feet, moving slowly south at about 100 knots, tracks that did not match any known aircraft. After the returns had persisted for days, he persuaded his commanding officer to send aircraft to intercept them on 14 November, during a scheduled exercise. That decision put David Fravor's flight onto the object, and Underwood's later sortie filmed it.
He has told the story in the documentary The Nimitz Encounters, where he says the object dropped 28,000 feet in 0.78 seconds as Fravor arrived and that about a hundred objects appeared over the week, and to Popular Mechanics. He says he wrote a short story about it years before the 2017 revelations, and describes personal after-effects. The Princeton's raw radar data has never been released. Fravor, who confirms the controller's reports of two weeks of tracking, has disputed some of the other enlisted witnesses' claims about what happened afterwards.
Sources: Popular Mechanics (2019) · Lex Fridman Podcast #122 (Fravor) · Nimitz incident record
Facts and claims
- claimed “My job was to man the radars and ID everything that flew in the skies.” — Kevin Day Source: popularmechanics.com (archived)
- claimed He says that around 10 November 2004, about 100 miles off San Diego near San Clemente Island, he began seeing strange radar tracks “in groups of five to 10 at a time”, closely spaced, at 28,000 feet, going 100 knots and tracking south. — Kevin Day Source: popularmechanics.com (archived)
- claimed By Popular Mechanics' account, after the returns had appeared for close to a week, Day convinced his commanding officer to let him direct aircraft to intercept them on 14 November, which led to David Fravor's encounter. Source: popularmechanics.com (archived)
- claimed David Fravor says the Princeton's controller told his flight they had been tracking the contacts for about two weeks, and vectored them in until “merge plot”. — David Fravor Source: David Fravor: UFOs, Aliens, Fighter Jets, and Aerospace Engineering | Lex Fridman Podcast #122 at 1:16:31
- claimed Interviewed for The Nimitz Encounters (2019), he said he had “a little over 18 years actual sea time on Aegis type ships”, that the ship's systems “failed utterly to identify these things”, and that after a radar reset he had “the highest spy track quality possible” on them. — Kevin Day Source: Tic Tac witness Kevin Day: interview for The Nimitz Encounters (2019) at 4:53
- claimed He says that as Fravor's flight reached merge plot the object dropped from 28,000 feet to 50 feet in 0.78 seconds, which he measured the next day from the Cooperative Engagement Capability recording, with no sonic booms; by his account it then did “a barrel roll” around Fravor, a detail Fravor does not give. — Kevin Day Source: Tic Tac witness Kevin Day: interview for The Nimitz Encounters (2019) at 10:37
- claimed He says that through the bridge's “big eyes” binoculars he saw, about 40 miles away, “a boring white light in the sky”, and counted about a hundred objects between 10 and 16 November; asked what they were: “I do not have a clue.” — Kevin Day Source: Tic Tac witness Kevin Day: interview for The Nimitz Encounters (2019) at 19:06
Connected files
Claims
People
- Gary Voorhis (served with) — Both served aboard the cruiser USS Princeton in November 2004
- David Fravor (sent to intercept) — Day's decision put Fravor's flight onto the object
- P.J. Hughes (fellow witness) — Hughes says he secured the E-2 recorders Day had first used to try to intercept the objects
Incidents
- USS Nimitz “Tic Tac” encounter (witness)
Videos
- Tic Tac witness Gary Voorhis: interview for The Nimitz Encounters (2019) (related to)
- Tic Tac witness Kevin Day: interview for The Nimitz Encounters (2019) (appears in)
- UFOs and the Military: A Combat Pilot's Experience with the Unknown — Alex Dietrich (American Veterans Center, 2025) (discussed in)
- David Fravor: UFOs, Aliens, Fighter Jets, and Aerospace Engineering | Lex Fridman Podcast #122 (discussed in)