The Boing
For fifty years, sonar operators heard a sound in the Pacific like a cartoon spring: a pulse, then a long metallic 'boing'.
What was reported
From the 1950s, US Navy submarine crews listening on sonar in the North Pacific kept hearing a strange sound: a short pulse followed by a long, twanging, metallic 'boing', like something from a cartoon. It came mostly in winter and spring. No one knew what made it, and sonar operators nicknamed it the boing.
Suggestions ranged from secret Soviet technology to unknown animals. The sound was eventually recorded on underwater microphones off Kauai, in Hawaii, many times.
Explanations offered
In 2002, researchers on a survey ship off Hawaii heard the boing at the same time as they spotted a minke whale, a small and secretive species. In 2005, NOAA scientists confirmed that the call belongs to North Pacific minke whales. Why they make it, perhaps as a mating call, is still unknown.
- When
- Heard since the 1950s; identified in 2005
- Where
- The Pacific Ocean off Kauai, Hawaii, USA
- Witnesses
- Submarine sonar operators, then NOAA scientists
- Status
- Explained
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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