The Navy Cut a Beak Out of a Sonar Dome in 1981 — The Last Man Who Kept It Speaks

In 1981, a Navy hull tech cut a hard black object the size of his fist out of a frigate’s sonar dome. The ship had come home from deep water with its sonar dead and its hull raked in long parallel lines. Within days the object vanished, the coating was stripped overnight, and the report called a 46-inch gash “surface abrasion.” He kept one piece they never accounted for — curved, hard as horn, too big to be any beak science can name. If the loudest sound we lower into the deep keeps coming back with something broken off against the hull, what did we think was down there?