Short summary by the NICAP.Case summary by the NICAP.Case in "Invisible Residents" by Yvan Sanderson (This page).References.Yvan T. Sanderson, in "Invisible Residents", Albin Michel pages 49-50 for the French version, gives essentially the same report as NICAP, adding some other references and pointing out the lack of precision about the date (March, or summer).
1945, March (or summer?)
AT SEA, near the Aleoutian Islands.
14 members of the USAT Delarof crew saw a dark spherical object come out of the water. The object made a turn in the air and circled the ship before flying away in the distance. (Marcel J. Lefèvre - 1968 - Bruxelles)
The event is mentionned with a dating of summer 1945, then again with a datinf of March 1945 by: Janet and Colin Bord: "Modern Mysteries of the World" - Guild Publishing London 1989, p. 169, 306.
1945, summer: At sea, near Adak. The incident was observed by members of crew of the USAT Delarof, loaded with ammunition and material for Alaska. The witness, author of the report, recently interviewed, was Robert S. Crawford, now a geology consultant at the Indiana Soil Testing Laboratory at Griffith, Indiana.
Crawford is graduated from the University of North-Dakota and, when he was studing there, he told of his sighting to Professor N.N. Kohanowski, department of geology, and also a NICAP consultant...
The incident of Delarof occurred during the summer 1945 when Crawford was on military duty as radio operator. The ship, on the way back to Seattle, was near Adak. The sun was setting down and Crawford was at port side, close to the radio cabin, when he heard the shouting of crewmen. He turned over and saw a large round object which had just emerged from the sea.
The unknown craft, showing darkly against the setting sun, climbed almost straight up for a few moments, then it arced into level flight, and began to circle the ship. All the observers were convinced it was a large object. Comparing it with the width of a finger held out at arm's length, Crawford estimated the UFO to be 150 to 250 feet in diameter.
The UFO circled the vessel two or three times, moving smoothly and with no audible sound. All the witnesses felt it was self-propelled; otherwise, the strong winds would have visibly affected its movements. As it circled the Delarof, the flying object was in easy range of the ship's guns. But the gun crews held their fire, though on tight alert for any sign of hostility.
After several minutes, the flying object disappeared towards the south or the south-south-west. Suddenly the crew saw three flashes of light coming from the place where it had disappeared.
