2009-03-06 - North Augusta, SC - Oval

Shiny, silver object - looked like flying submarine; No noise, markings, or wings; Fireball/Sonic Boom 2 wks later in same area.

On Friday afternoon, March 6, 2009 at about 4:05 PM EST, myself and both my parents witnessed an object flying through the sky from the NW to the NE. We were sitting outside at our picnic table, because it was such a nice day outside - the sun was shining and there weren't any clouds in the sky. I looked up in the sky and saw a trail running vertically between the NW and NE portions of the sky, which we see often when outside. I pointed the trail out to my parents, and not but two seconds later I saw the object come flying out from behind the top portion of a pine tree, seemingly out of nowhere. It moved fairly quickly, I'd say quicker than airplanes that we always see flying by. The area of the sky that we saw the object in is the same area that we always see airplanes and helicopters flying in the same direction.

The object was silver and shiny; we noted after seeing it that it was the same color as a silver chain-link fence. We did not see any wings at all and it made absolutely no noise. I'm not sure if you would classify it as cylinder, cigar, or oval shaped, but we described it as looking like a submarine. It was flat looking on the top and bottom and rounded on each end, just like a submarine. It was flying lower than the airplanes we normally see flying by (and we see lots of airplanes going over where we live and they are extremely noisy), and it was low enough that if it had writing on the sides, we'd be able to read it (but there was no writing on it). It was obvious to us it wasn't an airplane or a helicopter, and it was low enough that if it were a blimp, we'd be able to tell. It literally looked like a flying submarine.

I would estimate that the object took about 6-8 seconds to get out of our viewing and get behind some more pine trees where we couldn't see it anymore. About 5 seconds later, a commercial airplane (the kind we always see flying over) came flying from the same direction, NW, flying towards the same direction that the object went, NE. The object didn’t have any lights that we could see (though it was the daytime and sunny, so we couldn’t tell for sure) and it didn’t leave any kind of trail behind.

My father told me to report it here that very day, but I wanted to wait and see if anyone else saw something and then I forgot about it. But then, on March 20, 2009 at around 2:45 AM EST, we heard an extremely loud boom come out of nowhere. It sounded almost like a tree splitting in two or a really loud cracking sound. Later on in the day on the local news, they reported that everyone in the area had heard the noise and they think it was some kind of a sonic boom. People who were outside said they saw a fireball in the sky, including some police officers. The electricity also went out at about the same time at one of the hospitals in the area. After hearing that noise, I thought I'd better report what we saw earlier this month, in case there is some kind of connection with that sort of thing.

Here are some links to some of our local news organizations that reported on the sonic boom/fireball incident to give you more information on what happened:

WJBF News Channel 6 -

http://www.wjbf.com/jbf/news/state_regional/south_carolina/article/talk_around_the_csra_is_the_big_boom_in_the_night/11997/

http://www.wjbf.com/jbf/news/state_regional/georgia/article/breaking_news_mysterious_boom_rattles_csra/11990/ WRDW Channel 12 - http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/41580572.html The Augusta Chronicle - http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2009/03/21/met_515443.shtml