Andros Island, Bahamas: Navy technician films disc with beam at AUTEC Site 4, film seized

Between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m., Bob Hyman, a field technician for the US Navy's Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (set up on April 14 on the other side of Andros), was at Site 4 near Gold Cay on Andros Island preparing a theodolite with a high-speed 35mm camera for a scheduled 7:00 a.m. rocket test when the area lit up 'as if the sun came up'. A brilliant white light about 130 feet above a nearby dome structure flooded the dock and focused into a beam on a dog at the end of the dock, about 650 feet away. Hyman filmed about 350 feet of film over roughly 8 minutes and observed a disc-shaped object about 30 feet in diameter hovering less than 100 feet above the surface, flanked by two smaller objects, all emitting blue-green lights that brightened and dimmed rhythmically; the main craft projected an off-white beam downward and showed markings in deep blue. Around 6:30 to 6:45 a.m. personnel found numerous dead barracuda and other fish near the dock, logs indicated that radar systems at Sites 4 and 6 failed simultaneously during the incident, and the scheduled tests were canceled for 'low cloud coverage' although Hyman saw no clouds. After he reported the incident, a helicopter collected the exposed film and a two-star Air Force general escorted him to Site 1, where about a dozen military and civilian officials of several nationalities told him, 'You will forget what you saw'; he was later denied access to the film, a Navy vessel collected local animals for examination three days later, several site personnel were dismissed in mid-June, and Hyman was searched and flown to Nassau. The account rests on a taped interview with Hyman by Ralph Blum in May 1974 and later articles. The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.