Strait of Juan de Fuca laser incident

On 4 April 1997, a Canadian Armed Forces helicopter was allegedly illuminated by a laser while observing the Russian merchant ship and suspected spy vessel Kapitan Man, which was in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in U.S. territorial waters near Port Angeles, Washington.

The Canadian Air Force pilot and the U.S. Navy passenger, who was taking photographs of the ship, reportedly suffered eye pain and injuries consistent with laser exposure.

Lt. Daly was the Navy's foreign-intelligence liaison officer in Esquimalt, British Columbia, heading a joint U.S.-Canadian helicopter-surveillance operation against Russian, Chinese, and other spy ships operating in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which separates the Canadian province of British Columbia from the U.S. state of Washington, and in Puget Sound, the site of major U.S. nuclear ballistic missile submarine and aircraft carrier bases with the Royal Canadian Navy Pacific Fleet Headquarters in Esquimalt Harbour near Victoria, B.C.

[6][7] In September 2004, the Chief of Naval Operations denied an Inspector General's recommendation that Daly be awarded the Purple Heart (for wounds sustained by opposing forces).

The researchers[9] noted the photographer's (Daly's) case history: A retina specialist found 3 tiny (10- to 20-μm) RPE window defects in one eye on a fluorescein angiogram and ascribed them to laser injury.

The photographer had not been diagnosed previously as having reactive arthritis (Reiter syndrome), which can produce small RPE defects... No evidence of laser injury was found in the years after the incident by 17 other ophthalmologists, including 5 neuro-ophthalmalogists and 8 retina specialists.

A trial was held five years after the incident in which the retina specialist who made the initial diagnosis steadfastly maintained all the photographer's symptoms were due to retinal laser injury.