to preface: i decided to view Google earth and try to find weird looking islands or see if there was an unmarked island with buildings on it for fun. while i was searching in below the coast of South Africa, i noticed a strange looking pair of islands. upon inspection of the islands i noticed a large research station on the southernmost island and decided to look into it. upon reading up on it i learned about a particular 1979 Vela Hotel satellite detection that was downplayed and lied about. i decided to do my own research on the Marion Research Station and the event that took place.
Prince Edwards Islands (my paragraphs contain sections of info from here.)
on September 22nd, 1971, an American Vela Hotel satellite on Marion Island inside of Marion Research Station detected a double flash of light off the coast of South Africa. officially, nobody knows what created the light, the majority of 'experts' said a bomb was the cause with multiple independent groups investigating the event not long after, almost all of which omitted to review certain specific documentation that pretty much all but confirmed the detonation of a nuclear device.
there were other devices that measured corresponding datasets providing more evidence to the idea of a nuclear detonation; however, as mentioned previously this was not what most 'experts' at the time would agree took place. the DOD, for instance, claimed that it was either;
A.) A bomb blast,
or B.) a combination of natural phenomenon such as a lightning strike, meteor or a glint from the sun.
The NSC initially reported that there was a "high likelihood" of a nuclear detonation in the region, but they later changed their position on the matter to "inconclusive evidence" due to no radioactive debris found and there were, quote, "no corroborating seismic data or hydro-acoustic data". however, a comment given out after this revision stated that if it were a nuclear test, "...responsibility should be ascribed to the South African weapons programme."
Jimmy Carter was president at the time, and he asked the Office of Science and Technology Policy to re-evaluate the data from the Vela Hotel satellite to determine if it was legitimately a nuclear detonation or natural phenomenon. he used this as a political talking piece and also connected it to his wish to cull the proliferation of nuclear weapons taking place all over the world.
the panel that President Carter had assigned to the evaluation stated in 1980 that; "There were some key differences in the detected optical signature from that of an actual nuclear explosion, particularly the ratio of intensities measured by the two detectors on the satellite." conveniently however, only one of the satellites constructed at Marion actually detected the signal. (this is proven false through a declassified CIA document.)
the rest were obscured for one reason or another, due to the weather conditions or their orientation.
they had previously detected numerous other nuclear tests carried out by other countries such as France and China, each of those nuclear tests being confirmed in one way or another after the detonation was recorded.
one may ask, did they even bother to see if nuclear fallout was present?
well, they actually did. there was radioactive fallout present in multiple sheep's thyroid glands all the way out in Australia which was only discovered a month later when the animals were butchered.
following wind patterns and other weather predictions it was clear where the fallout traveled. given the timeframe there was only one place it could have come from.
many experts did not seriously consider a study done by the Naval Research Laboratory that concluded 'strong signals detected by three Ascension Island MILS hydrophones supported a near surface nuclear blast that could be associated with the observed double flash.'
the study was done using French testing in the Pacific in the vicinity of the Prince Edwards Islands. scientists at the site continued to support the claim that their devices were functioning and calibrated properly.
this is all the clean and sanitized information that you can find easily online with no effort whatsoever.
as you can see, it makes absolutely no sense and you can see why most independent researchers believe that the 'different powers that be' who are dictating the truth of this incident are lying.
now you might be wondering, if it was a nuclear bomb... who was the one responsible for detonating it?
i'll probe you; who do you think it was? given the facts laid out now, i doubt you can accurately guess.
well, the lists of suspects goes as follows;
Israel, South Africa, the U.S.S.R., India, Pakistan or France.
for numerous reasons that pretty much boil down to "they can't afford it, they wouldn't risk it, or they signed the LTBT that limited the testing of nuclear devices to underground or otherwise non-atmospheric", almost all of these suspects can be omitted.
France was considered because relatively close to the Prince Edwards Islands lies a French owned group of islands called the "Kerguelen Islands" and that they "could have tested a small neutron bomb or other small tactical nuclear bomb". as you can imagine this one was thrown out pretty quick.
Pakistan was considered because of a theory that had been crafted in the past that "analyzed the possibility of Pakistan wanting to prove it's nuclear explosive technology in private". now, you might think that sounds kind of retarded, but it's actually not as stupid as you'd imagine and it's what most people agree in general is the reasoning behind the bomb no matter who detonated it; whoever it was wants to announce that they have an arsenal and have entered the nuclear theatre.
India was considered because of a nuclear test carried out in 1974 codenamed Smiling Buddha, the idea being that the geographical location fits the bill for India and they had done a nuclear test before; however, they had signed the treaty with the US to not detonate nuclear bombs in atmosphere, thus it was considered "impractical and unnecessary".
The Soviet Union was considered for obvious reasons given the time period, also because some people wanted an excuse to attack the U.S.S.R., such as using the excuse that they violated the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. they weren't completely thrown off the table right away unlike the others.
South Africa was one of two major suspected players in the event. They had a clandestine nuclear program at the time despite agreeing to the same PTBT that the Soviet Union had signed and they had the perfect geographical location for it. however, some financial evidence showed that it was very unlikely that South Africa could have created a nuclear bomb until - at minimum - 2 months later in November.
funnily enough, the CIA publicly stated back in 1980, that; "In sum, State/INR finds the arguments that South Africa conducted a nuclear test on 22 September inconclusive, even though, if a nuclear explosion occurred on that date, South Africa is the most likely candidate for responsibility".
furthermore, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that all possible South African nuclear bombs had been accounted for.
an American journalist and author by the name of Sasha Polakow-Suransky wrote in 1979 that; "South Africa was not yet advanced enough to test a nuclear device. By the first week of October, the State Department had realized that South Africa was probably not the guilty party, Israel was a more likely candidate".
all of this info is what was available around the time of the incident, there was plenty of info that came out after the fact as well.
now, this leaves all but one left...
Israel!
Israel was considered to be the perpetrator due to numerous findings and theories. one of which being that multiple American intelligence agencies had determined that Israel probably already possessed their own nuclear arsenal. according to a journalist named Seymour Hersh, the double flash recording was actually the THIRD joint Israeli-South African nuclear test in the region and Israel had sent two IDF ships and "a contingent of Israeli military men and nuclear experts" for the test. author Richard Rhodes concluded that the US wanted to avoid involvement in the issue to avoid complicating the relationships with South Africa and Israel by deliberately obscuring the data. a professor by the name of Avner Cohen concluded that; "in hindsight, the existence of a cover-up by the United States is unambiguous because there were at least three independent scientific pieces of evidence unrelated to a satellite that confirm the existence of the explosion".
Jimmy Carter was found to also believe that Israel was responsible. as found in his 2010 book "White House Diary" (self explanatory) he wrote: "If the 1979 flash was caused by a test, most experts agree that it was probably an Israeli test." months later he also said: "We have a growing belief among our scientists that the Israelis did indeed conduct a nuclear test explosion in the ocean near the southern end of Africa."
a man by the name of Thomas C. Reed believed that the Vela incident was an Israeli neutron bomb test and that they had specifically chosen a window of time in which no active satellites would be monitoring the region. however, the satellite that detected the blast was officially considered "retired" by the United States and likely was not considered by the Israeli military.
so far we have not a lot of hard evidence still to support that it was Israel, but almost everything points to them regardless
however in February 1994, a convicted Soviet spy by the name of Commodore Dieter Gerhardt who was commander of South Africa's Simon's Town naval base at the time of the incident stated that; "Although I was not directly involved in planning or carrying out the operation, I learned unofficially that the flash was produced by an Israeli-South African test, code-named Operation Phenix. The explosion was clean and was not supposed to be detected. But they were not as smart as they thought, and the weather changed—so the Americans were able to pick it up."
on April 20th, 1997, an Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted the South African president apparently confirming the double flash as being from a nuclear test, as well as cited reports that Israel had purchased over 500 tons worth of uranium from South Africa for its own nuclear weapons plant in Dimona and in exchange gave South Africa design information and nuclear material to bolster their nuclear arsenal.
over the years, multiple US sources continued to parrot the same story from years prior, all essentially stating that "There is no hard evidence for a nuclear detonation, and if there was we don't know or we blame South Africa."
in 2006 a former CIA service officer Tyler Drumheller said: "We had operational successes, most importantly regarding Pretoria's nuclear capability. My sources collectively provided incontrovertible evidence that the apartheid government had in fact tested a nuclear bomb in the South Atlantic in 1979, and that they had developed a delivery system with assistance from the Israelis."
now you may ask, what evidence? what sources? what could he be referring to?
well, that's where declassified documents enter the picture. i definitely haven't found anywhere near all of the declassified documents and articles on the topic, but have discovered quite a few that all have significantly more information on the incident. two of which being Washington Post articles, the first dating back to 1981 and the second to 1985. i believe these articles were used as reference. the first one is titled "Last December's 'Flash' "
i'm not going to put the entire article here, just summarizing it.
"Last December's 'Flash' " talks about the incident and what was known to the public at the time, mentioning things such as; "There is no consensus as to the guilty party, with this exception: it probably is not the Soviet Union." as well as offering some wild explanations for how it could have been the Soviets, claiming they could have "lofted the low-yield weapons on balloons from a submarine or trawler and fired them simply to test if American verification devices were competent enough to pick up the small blasts." however, they do mention the alleged Israel-South Africa connection stating that it could signal their entry into the "nuclear club" much like i mentioned earlier. the article also mentions all of the countries previously mentioned.
4 years later, on the 26th of April 1985, the Washington Post put out another article on the topic titled: "U.S. knew in advance of mystery blast". the article briefly mentions the original incident and how the White House officially said it was not a nuclear explosion and that the CIA disagreed and had many reasons to. it mentions that in a secret testimony to Congress, the CIA believed it was Israel behind the detonation with South Africa as the "runner up."
In June 1980, another secret CIA letter to the NSC stated that the explosion was likely a tactical two to three kiloton weapon detonated by Israel or South Africa, with a new potential involved member: Taiwan... somehow.
The CIA also determined from land, sea and air surveillance that Israel and South Africa had been working on bomb together as early as 1966, and funnily enough in 1977 they were tipped off by Soviets that South Africa was going to launch a nuclear test in the Kalahari Desert, which caused diplomatic outcry and they eventually backed off of the test entirely. it's believed that this was the same nuclear device used in the Vela Incident. in spite of this, the CIA kept close watch on South Africa and noticed a steady stream of Israeli nuclear scientists, techs and defense officials visiting the country.
two years later in Antarctica, a US Navy official revealed that two U.S. spy planes had tried to enter the airspace but were turned back by the South African military and had to secretly land in Australia. the official refused to be named. the final mention in the article was the radioactive material discovered in Australian sheep a month after the incident.
in a dossier i found titled "The 22 September 1979 Event" we find information that is heavily redacted going into much further detail on specifics involving the political state of South Africa at the time as well as Israeli connections, among a myriad of other information. entire pages are censored and on some pages multiple paragraphs.
i will continue to update this post with more info as i study it. this is not my main forum so forgive me if the updates are slow. i will provide the declassified documents if requested.
Prince Edwards Islands (my paragraphs contain sections of info from here.)
on September 22nd, 1971, an American Vela Hotel satellite on Marion Island inside of Marion Research Station detected a double flash of light off the coast of South Africa. officially, nobody knows what created the light, the majority of 'experts' said a bomb was the cause with multiple independent groups investigating the event not long after, almost all of which omitted to review certain specific documentation that pretty much all but confirmed the detonation of a nuclear device.
there were other devices that measured corresponding datasets providing more evidence to the idea of a nuclear detonation; however, as mentioned previously this was not what most 'experts' at the time would agree took place. the DOD, for instance, claimed that it was either;
A.) A bomb blast,
or B.) a combination of natural phenomenon such as a lightning strike, meteor or a glint from the sun.
The NSC initially reported that there was a "high likelihood" of a nuclear detonation in the region, but they later changed their position on the matter to "inconclusive evidence" due to no radioactive debris found and there were, quote, "no corroborating seismic data or hydro-acoustic data". however, a comment given out after this revision stated that if it were a nuclear test, "...responsibility should be ascribed to the South African weapons programme."
Jimmy Carter was president at the time, and he asked the Office of Science and Technology Policy to re-evaluate the data from the Vela Hotel satellite to determine if it was legitimately a nuclear detonation or natural phenomenon. he used this as a political talking piece and also connected it to his wish to cull the proliferation of nuclear weapons taking place all over the world.
the panel that President Carter had assigned to the evaluation stated in 1980 that; "There were some key differences in the detected optical signature from that of an actual nuclear explosion, particularly the ratio of intensities measured by the two detectors on the satellite." conveniently however, only one of the satellites constructed at Marion actually detected the signal. (this is proven false through a declassified CIA document.)
the rest were obscured for one reason or another, due to the weather conditions or their orientation.
they had previously detected numerous other nuclear tests carried out by other countries such as France and China, each of those nuclear tests being confirmed in one way or another after the detonation was recorded.
one may ask, did they even bother to see if nuclear fallout was present?
well, they actually did. there was radioactive fallout present in multiple sheep's thyroid glands all the way out in Australia which was only discovered a month later when the animals were butchered.
following wind patterns and other weather predictions it was clear where the fallout traveled. given the timeframe there was only one place it could have come from.
many experts did not seriously consider a study done by the Naval Research Laboratory that concluded 'strong signals detected by three Ascension Island MILS hydrophones supported a near surface nuclear blast that could be associated with the observed double flash.'
the study was done using French testing in the Pacific in the vicinity of the Prince Edwards Islands. scientists at the site continued to support the claim that their devices were functioning and calibrated properly.
this is all the clean and sanitized information that you can find easily online with no effort whatsoever.
as you can see, it makes absolutely no sense and you can see why most independent researchers believe that the 'different powers that be' who are dictating the truth of this incident are lying.
now you might be wondering, if it was a nuclear bomb... who was the one responsible for detonating it?
i'll probe you; who do you think it was? given the facts laid out now, i doubt you can accurately guess.
well, the lists of suspects goes as follows;
Israel, South Africa, the U.S.S.R., India, Pakistan or France.
for numerous reasons that pretty much boil down to "they can't afford it, they wouldn't risk it, or they signed the LTBT that limited the testing of nuclear devices to underground or otherwise non-atmospheric", almost all of these suspects can be omitted.
France was considered because relatively close to the Prince Edwards Islands lies a French owned group of islands called the "Kerguelen Islands" and that they "could have tested a small neutron bomb or other small tactical nuclear bomb". as you can imagine this one was thrown out pretty quick.
Pakistan was considered because of a theory that had been crafted in the past that "analyzed the possibility of Pakistan wanting to prove it's nuclear explosive technology in private". now, you might think that sounds kind of retarded, but it's actually not as stupid as you'd imagine and it's what most people agree in general is the reasoning behind the bomb no matter who detonated it; whoever it was wants to announce that they have an arsenal and have entered the nuclear theatre.
India was considered because of a nuclear test carried out in 1974 codenamed Smiling Buddha, the idea being that the geographical location fits the bill for India and they had done a nuclear test before; however, they had signed the treaty with the US to not detonate nuclear bombs in atmosphere, thus it was considered "impractical and unnecessary".
The Soviet Union was considered for obvious reasons given the time period, also because some people wanted an excuse to attack the U.S.S.R., such as using the excuse that they violated the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. they weren't completely thrown off the table right away unlike the others.
South Africa was one of two major suspected players in the event. They had a clandestine nuclear program at the time despite agreeing to the same PTBT that the Soviet Union had signed and they had the perfect geographical location for it. however, some financial evidence showed that it was very unlikely that South Africa could have created a nuclear bomb until - at minimum - 2 months later in November.
funnily enough, the CIA publicly stated back in 1980, that; "In sum, State/INR finds the arguments that South Africa conducted a nuclear test on 22 September inconclusive, even though, if a nuclear explosion occurred on that date, South Africa is the most likely candidate for responsibility".
furthermore, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that all possible South African nuclear bombs had been accounted for.
an American journalist and author by the name of Sasha Polakow-Suransky wrote in 1979 that; "South Africa was not yet advanced enough to test a nuclear device. By the first week of October, the State Department had realized that South Africa was probably not the guilty party, Israel was a more likely candidate".
all of this info is what was available around the time of the incident, there was plenty of info that came out after the fact as well.
now, this leaves all but one left...
Israel!
Israel was considered to be the perpetrator due to numerous findings and theories. one of which being that multiple American intelligence agencies had determined that Israel probably already possessed their own nuclear arsenal. according to a journalist named Seymour Hersh, the double flash recording was actually the THIRD joint Israeli-South African nuclear test in the region and Israel had sent two IDF ships and "a contingent of Israeli military men and nuclear experts" for the test. author Richard Rhodes concluded that the US wanted to avoid involvement in the issue to avoid complicating the relationships with South Africa and Israel by deliberately obscuring the data. a professor by the name of Avner Cohen concluded that; "in hindsight, the existence of a cover-up by the United States is unambiguous because there were at least three independent scientific pieces of evidence unrelated to a satellite that confirm the existence of the explosion".
Jimmy Carter was found to also believe that Israel was responsible. as found in his 2010 book "White House Diary" (self explanatory) he wrote: "If the 1979 flash was caused by a test, most experts agree that it was probably an Israeli test." months later he also said: "We have a growing belief among our scientists that the Israelis did indeed conduct a nuclear test explosion in the ocean near the southern end of Africa."
a man by the name of Thomas C. Reed believed that the Vela incident was an Israeli neutron bomb test and that they had specifically chosen a window of time in which no active satellites would be monitoring the region. however, the satellite that detected the blast was officially considered "retired" by the United States and likely was not considered by the Israeli military.
so far we have not a lot of hard evidence still to support that it was Israel, but almost everything points to them regardless
however in February 1994, a convicted Soviet spy by the name of Commodore Dieter Gerhardt who was commander of South Africa's Simon's Town naval base at the time of the incident stated that; "Although I was not directly involved in planning or carrying out the operation, I learned unofficially that the flash was produced by an Israeli-South African test, code-named Operation Phenix. The explosion was clean and was not supposed to be detected. But they were not as smart as they thought, and the weather changed—so the Americans were able to pick it up."
on April 20th, 1997, an Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted the South African president apparently confirming the double flash as being from a nuclear test, as well as cited reports that Israel had purchased over 500 tons worth of uranium from South Africa for its own nuclear weapons plant in Dimona and in exchange gave South Africa design information and nuclear material to bolster their nuclear arsenal.
over the years, multiple US sources continued to parrot the same story from years prior, all essentially stating that "There is no hard evidence for a nuclear detonation, and if there was we don't know or we blame South Africa."
in 2006 a former CIA service officer Tyler Drumheller said: "We had operational successes, most importantly regarding Pretoria's nuclear capability. My sources collectively provided incontrovertible evidence that the apartheid government had in fact tested a nuclear bomb in the South Atlantic in 1979, and that they had developed a delivery system with assistance from the Israelis."
now you may ask, what evidence? what sources? what could he be referring to?
well, that's where declassified documents enter the picture. i definitely haven't found anywhere near all of the declassified documents and articles on the topic, but have discovered quite a few that all have significantly more information on the incident. two of which being Washington Post articles, the first dating back to 1981 and the second to 1985. i believe these articles were used as reference. the first one is titled "Last December's 'Flash' "
i'm not going to put the entire article here, just summarizing it.
"Last December's 'Flash' " talks about the incident and what was known to the public at the time, mentioning things such as; "There is no consensus as to the guilty party, with this exception: it probably is not the Soviet Union." as well as offering some wild explanations for how it could have been the Soviets, claiming they could have "lofted the low-yield weapons on balloons from a submarine or trawler and fired them simply to test if American verification devices were competent enough to pick up the small blasts." however, they do mention the alleged Israel-South Africa connection stating that it could signal their entry into the "nuclear club" much like i mentioned earlier. the article also mentions all of the countries previously mentioned.
4 years later, on the 26th of April 1985, the Washington Post put out another article on the topic titled: "U.S. knew in advance of mystery blast". the article briefly mentions the original incident and how the White House officially said it was not a nuclear explosion and that the CIA disagreed and had many reasons to. it mentions that in a secret testimony to Congress, the CIA believed it was Israel behind the detonation with South Africa as the "runner up."
In June 1980, another secret CIA letter to the NSC stated that the explosion was likely a tactical two to three kiloton weapon detonated by Israel or South Africa, with a new potential involved member: Taiwan... somehow.
The CIA also determined from land, sea and air surveillance that Israel and South Africa had been working on bomb together as early as 1966, and funnily enough in 1977 they were tipped off by Soviets that South Africa was going to launch a nuclear test in the Kalahari Desert, which caused diplomatic outcry and they eventually backed off of the test entirely. it's believed that this was the same nuclear device used in the Vela Incident. in spite of this, the CIA kept close watch on South Africa and noticed a steady stream of Israeli nuclear scientists, techs and defense officials visiting the country.
two years later in Antarctica, a US Navy official revealed that two U.S. spy planes had tried to enter the airspace but were turned back by the South African military and had to secretly land in Australia. the official refused to be named. the final mention in the article was the radioactive material discovered in Australian sheep a month after the incident.
in a dossier i found titled "The 22 September 1979 Event" we find information that is heavily redacted going into much further detail on specifics involving the political state of South Africa at the time as well as Israeli connections, among a myriad of other information. entire pages are censored and on some pages multiple paragraphs.
i will continue to update this post with more info as i study it. this is not my main forum so forgive me if the updates are slow. i will provide the declassified documents if requested.
![170px-Vela5b[1].jpg](/data/attachments/3/3372-cbb70e935788d579f62d97abdb7712ab.jpg)
![250px-Orthographic_projection_centered_on_the_Prince_Edward_Island_(Vela_Incident)[1].png](/data/attachments/3/3373-07206a41750286218832dc28f1da65ee.jpg)
