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Vela Incident of 1979. An unsolved mystery.

Discussion in 'Free Fire Zone' started by syscom3, Jan 23, 2013.

  1. syscom3

    syscom3 Member

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    File this under the "you learn something new everyday category"

    Vela Incident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    The Vela Incident — sometimes referred to as the South Atlantic Flash — was an unidentified "double flash" of light that was detected by an American Vela Hotel satellite on September 22, 1979 near the Prince Edward Islands or Antarctica. There is uncertainty as to the true nature of the flash though it is widely believed to have been the result of a nuclear detonation.

    While a "double flash" signal is characteristic of a nuclear weapons test, the signal might have been a spurious electronic signal that was generated by an aging detector in an old satellite or a meteoroid hitting the Vela satellite. No corroboration of an explosion, such as the presence of nuclear byproducts in the air, was ever publicly acknowledged, even though there were numerous passes in the area by U.S. Air Force planes that were specifically designed to detect airborne radioactive dust. Other examiners of the data, including the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), and defense contractors, have come to the conclusion that the flash was a result of a nuclear detonation. Much of the information relating to the event remains classified.

    The most widespread theory among those who believe that the flash was of nuclear origins was that it resulted from a joint South African and Israeli nuclear test The topic remains highly disputed today.

    Go to the wiki article for the full story.

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  2. urqh

    urqh Tea drinking surrender monkey

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    Errrr....Yep...Denied to this day, yet I was woken up and taken to my little room to onward relay stuff on SA nuke explosion while serving in intcell HQ2ATAF. I believe what I saw on paper to this day that SA exploded a bomb.
     

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