The contact became invisible to the 10 radar, it just disappeared off the scope, but the 48 radar continued to report the contact closing at 100 knots. Fire control radars intermittantly saw then lost the contact. They were unable to get a lock. The men on watch were tense, torpedo boats had attacked U.S. vessels in these waters in the past, the U.S.S. Long Beach had been chased all over the Gulf of Tonkin just a couple of years before.

None of the lookouts was able to report a visible contact, but the radar operator of the air search set continued to report a closing bogie. According to the radar, the contact passed right through the hull of the Truxtun, then continued right out the other side and maintained the same course and speed until it simply vanished. No one on the deck saw anything.

The OOD and JOOD held a whispered conference in the corner of the pilot house, out of ear shot of the rest of the bridge crew.

After their conference was over I approached the OOD, and asked what entry I should make in the Boatswains Mate's deck log, this is the log that records all official incidents which take place during the day and night watch. He told me to make no entry.That nothing had happened.

This is understandable, no junior officer wants his name associated with some sort of flakey entry in the ships log.

There was no official record of what happened that night in the Gulf of Tonkin. The men who were on deck and in the Combat Information Center were there and know that some unexplainable phenomena occurred. One wonders how many other similar things occur every day, and never get reported.