Jim Slaight, call sign “Clean”, was the Weapon Systems Officer in David Fravor’s back seat during the 2004 USS Nimitz UAP encounter.1 He had a reputation as an experienced and effective Weapon Systems Officer, known as the “warheads on foreheads” guy for the precision with which he dropped his bombs.2
During the encounter, Slaight saw the giant Tic Tac craft from above.3 According to Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs, all four pilots noticed a bizarre object darting back and forth over the whitecaps, about 15 metres above the water.4 As Fravor and Slaight closed on the object, David Fravor said it disappeared over the horizon in a split second, a type of performance neither pilot had previously encountered.5
Slaight described the craft as having defined edges but with a fuzzy-looking border around it,6 likening the border to heat waves rising off a hot paved road, comparable to the way a carrier deck looks when viewed across it in the Persian Gulf.7 He watched it complete a tight circle around Fravor’s aircraft, then stop, hover for a couple of seconds, and shoot off.8 Slaight said it rifled out of sight in a split second, as though fired from a rifle, with no gradual acceleration or spooling-up period, and said no human could have withstood that kind of acceleration.9
Slaight and his pilot initially suspected the ocean disturbance beneath the object was a submarine taking part in the exercise, a possibility later ruled out by the USS Nimitz (CVN-68)’s intelligence officer during a post-flight debriefing.10 The Tic Tac appeared to know the intended combat air patrol rendezvous point of the two F/A-18 Hornets, a point sixty miles away, and reached it within seconds of leaving Fravor and Slaight.11 According to Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs, both Chad Underwood and Fravor and Slaight reported the craft’s instant disappearance over the horizon.12