REPORT: UFO INCIDENTS
UFO OBSERVATIONS BY AERONAUTICAL PILOTS
After collecting, over the years, more than 1,500 UFO cases starring aeronautical professionals, our collaborator exclusively summarizes, for EOC, the best UFO cases starring the “perfect” witnesses. Unpublished cases, exclusive testimonials, and a never-before-published report on the psychology of pilot perception.
On February 10, 2009 all the European press agencies echoed the news. The pilot of flight 226 of the Greek company Olympic Airways had starred in an encounter with a flying object of unknown origin. In addition to the pilot, personnel from the Athens airport and a nearby Air Force base confirmed the sighting, which was later reported by two more pilots. “It looked like a large star that was moving without a fixed direction and constantly changing shape,” the witnesses reported. Faced with the alarm generated by the intruder in Greek airspace, two F-16 fighters took off on a “scramble” (intercept) mission to try to locate the object, which disappeared before it could be identified. The Greek authorities classified the incident as confidential.
This is the last encounter between pilots and an Unidentified Object that violates national security with impunity, and the airspace of a European country. But despite the secrecy and confidentiality in which the pilots maintain their UFO experiences, EOC has not only had access to hundreds of cases around the world, but has also subjected UFO testimonies of pilots, better known in ufology, to a critical analysis Spanish. Are their stories really reliable?
Pilots and UFO phenomenon
On June 24, 1947, it was precisely a pilot in flight, Kenneth Arnold, the first person in history who used the expression “flying saucer”, and with his sighting begins what we call the UFO phenomenon. After him, many other pilots have starred in the most important UFO incidents in history, such as Thomas Mantell, Frederick Valentich, etc. Why?
Anastasio Povedano, Secretary of the Air Traffic Incident Investigation Commission, kindly received us in his office at the General Directorate of Civil Aviation in Madrid. Povedano explains that the blind UFOs do not reach that commission, despite being incidents in Air Traffic, but go directly to Defense. And he is skeptical that pilots could mistake a probe balloon, venus, or other natural phenomena for UFOs. “It is not just that their training includes meteorological knowledge, evidently necessary for their flight, and astronomical knowledge, they must know how to orient themselves in case of failure of the navigation instruments; it is that their psychological balance is also constantly verified. They are professionals subjected to great pressure, and responsible for the lives of its passenger and crew. “ Commercial pilots must undergo refresher courses and medical and psychological examinations for 6 months.
Povedano also explains that the old questionnaires to report incidents in flight were replaced by the others, at the European level, with different characteristics. “But it is unlikely that a pilot would report something like a UFO sighting there … it would make life difficult.”
Povedano puts his finger on the problem. The bad image that the UFO phenomenon presents in the media makes it increasingly difficult for a pilot to publicly acknowledge having seen a UFO, since he has nothing to gain, and much to lose. As a button shows. In his day the mother and brother of Commander Javier Lerdo de Tejada, protagonist of the famous “Incident in Manises” (an emergency landing in Valencia due to a UFO), asked us for a copy of the “black box” of the main plane of the most famous UFO episode in Spain, for sentimental reasons: they had no recording of their son’s voice while he was alive.
And they took the opportunity to tell us that his ex-wife used in the divorce process “that her husband saw Martians”, to discredit her image at the trial. Javier Armentia, president of one of the organizations of the MEO (Organized Skeptic Movement), even suggested that the whole case had been invented by Lerdo de Tejada to facilitate the escape from prison of his brother, implicated in the “Atocha massacre” … (!)
Definitely, pilots who publicly acknowledge having seen a UFO, can only aspire to discredit and personal attacks of all kinds … and without the number of pilots, both civilian and military, who admit to having seen UFOs is enormous. So why do they do it?
An intense emotional experience
We traveled to Lisbon to meet with Commander Castel Branco. Pilot of the Mozambican airlines. Castel Branco not only saw a UFO, but he was so fascinated by the subject that he spent years gathering experiences starring other pilots on different airlines, which he compiled in a book: “UFOs in Africa”. “If an experience like this has a significant emotional impact on you, you are not ashamed to tell about it.”
For Castel Branco the volume of air professionals who have starred in UFO experiences around the world is incalculable. And also difficult to quantify since many pilots had their experience in the airspace of a country that is not theirs, and therefore local researchers hardly get to know this casuistry.
An example. Precisely in Lisbon we took the opportunity to speak with General Lemos Ferreira, former Commander-in-Chief of the Portuguese Air Force. On September 4, 1957, the then Captain Lemos Ferreira commanded a patrol of 4 F-84 aircraft that carried out a night navigation exercise between Spain and Portugal. The mission reached the vertical of Córdoba, turned and began the return. But on the vertical of Cáceres, they found an unknown object. According to a small dossier provided to me by the Information and Public Relations Service of the Ministry of National Defense of Portugal on this and two other Portuguese cases of pilots and UFOs, General Lemos Ferreira and his fellow patrols described the phenomenon as “a source of light spherical that changed successively from green to yellow-orange to red … The object came to pass under and behind the formation “. Which the General confirmed to me personally. In other words, the first case of a UFO sighted in Spain by pilots in flight, was not carried out by a Spanish pilot, but by the future Commander-in-Chief of the Portuguese Air Force … However, from that day on, they have Hundreds of Spanish pilots have staged more or less spectacular encounters with UFOs.
An international phenomenon
Commander Javier Arraiza, Iberia’s Crew Chief, received us at the offices of the famous airline in Madrid, with great collaboration in this investigation. Perhaps because he himself starred in a UFO incident during a transoceanic flight, and had never discussed the subject. However, he was aware that many colleagues, both in Iberia and in other airlines, have been involved in UFO incidents. “Sometimes — he says — experiences of great tension, since you do not know what it is that you are seeing, if it is friend or enemy, and your main concern is the lives of the passengers and the crew that you carry on the plane.”
For this reason, many pilots take years to confess their experiences, despite having been involved in cases that achieved great media coverage in their day. As happened to Commander Javier Badolato, who on July 22, 1976 was flying between Lanzarote and Tenerife when he could see with his own eyes the huge sphere that came out of the sea under his plane. That day, and at that time, the famous “Gáldar Case” took place on the island of Las Palmas. But that of Commander Badolato is a testimony of the case that had never come to light.
On exceptional occasions the pilot’s testimony is accompanied by many other pieces of evidence. According to a first study carried out by the author, with a universe of 643 cases, in up to 22.8% of the cases the sighting was confirmed by radar detection.
In many other cases, the pilot’s sighting is confirmed by witnesses on the ground (airport workers, air traffic controllers, etc.). And there are even cases in which surveillance planes, cartographic service planes, etc., are those that detect the phenomenon, offering us photographs or filming of objects of an unknown nature. For example the famous and unexplained photo of 9/4/71 in Costa Rica. The image of the “flying saucer” has withstood the most critical analysis of experts such as Haines or Vallee, who defined it as a “high quality UFO image”.
So far it has not been possible to satisfactorily explain the origin of this image. Richard Haines, precisely, is the world’s greatest authority on UFO cases involving pilots. He has compiled hundreds of cases from North America, and from the rest of the world.
The same has been done in France by Dominique Weinstein, or in Italy by Marco Orlandi, with whom we exchanged information and reflections on the testimonies of pilots for years. Such is the volume of UFO casuistry starring highly qualified professional witnesses that it is overwhelming. Only the most ignorant can maintain although there are no UFO testimonies from leading aeronautical experts. But among that vast casuistic universe, Haines, Weinstein, Orlandi and even a server, we agree on one thing. The most extraordinary and irrefutable cases are those carried out by the combat pilots. But they are also the most inaccessible.
Fighter pilots: the perfect cases
The tragic death, on January 20, 2009, of Captain JJ Carbonell, Lieutenant RC Álvarez, and Captain F. Negrete, during aerial maneuvers at the Los Llanos base (Albacete) demonstrate that the combat pilots, or perhaps their flight instruments, obsolete aircraft, etc., are not perfect. The Official Gazette of the Ministry of Defense (BOD, of January 27, recorded the sudden dismissal of Colonel Orlando Fernández, Chief of the Los Llanos Base, at the hands of Defense Minister Carme Chacón, and the replacement in command of the base of the Colonel Francisco Javier López. But nothing will bring the three fallen pilots back to life, as nothing will bring Benigno Mayo, Manuel Alonso, Juan Manuel Palau, David Martínez, Manuel Rivera, and so many other Spanish pilots, who died during the strict maneuvers of training at the controls of a fighter plane The fighter does not admit failures.
The Hunting Attack courses in Talavera la Real (Extremadura), for example, are only accessed by the best. Other pilots, so brilliant and expert, stay in transport planes, helicopters, etc. But to access the controls of a fighter, physical and psychological characteristics are required, which are not available to everyone. And only two chances to pass the demanding exams. “They put a hood in the cockpit to fly blind — explains a student from Talavera la Real — they instruct us in night operations, aerobatics. You have to learn to make the right decision in fractions of a second, for example flying at 600 km / At ground level, you can’t make mistakes. In old planes you flew with balls, now you fly with your head”.
Psychological controls for fighter pilots are the strictest. His impeccable astronomical, aeronautical, meteorological and mathematical training. The controls of a plane like the modern Eurofighter, valued at more than 65 million euros, are not entrusted to just anyone … Combat pilots may not be perfect witnesses … but they are the closest thing. If a fighter pilot in flight, with access to radar, with the possibility of approaching the object, with the supervision of controllers and technicians on the ground, and with the best aeronautical training that a human can receive, he is not able to identify that UFO It seems that we are facing a solid case. And almost 100 Spanish fighter pilots have been involved in UFO incidents.
“It was incredible, but it was static and when we arrived, it shot vertically,” explains Mirage F-1 Captain Francisco Serrano, who chased a UFO in Seville. “We could not do that, turn 90 degrees, and we had to ascend in bow. We had it in front of us again and it crossed in front of us surrounding us. It is impossible for a ship to have that maneuverability … “.
What most anguished Captain Serrano, given the infinite superiority of that Unidentified Object, was that from the ground his command gave him the order to open fire …
The also Capital of F-1 Fernando Cámara, fighter pilot who chased the UFO that originated the “Incident in Manises” through Spain, and whom he located after much effort, now a Colonel of the Air Force, used almost the same words that Highlander. And he added “that object did not generate heat.” His Mirage’s weapons systems, built to locate the heat sources of the enemy plane’s engines, were detecting nothing …
“That was not a balloon, nor was it an airplane. I cannot say what it was, but without a doubt it was a completely different artifact from what we know”, -concluded Colonel Juan Sáez-Benito, the other leading fighter pilot. of the extraordinary incident of November 4, 1970. In addition to Sáez-Benito, Captain Luis Carvalho’s “Sabre” (see Table) tried in vain to identify that “metallic egg, with windows” that in broad daylight flew over the Zaragoza military base, while it appeared on 2 military radar screens. All useless.
Sáez-Benito continued his career as a pilot in the army. Carvalho however went on to civilian life as an Air Europa pilot. And this is a fundamental detail. Until not many years ago, the high cost of flight hours and training as a commercial pilot, many combat pilots took a leave of absence from the army, passing into civilian life as commercial pilots. For this reason, the vast majority of the commercial pilots included in this study had previously been military pilots. With the training, experiences and capacity that this implies.
THE TESTIMONIES OF PILOTS UNDER CRITICAL EXAMINATION
The international ufological community has designed different systems for evaluating the credibility of UFO witnesses where academic training, psychological balance, meteorological, astronomical, aeronautical knowledge, etc., supposed a higher score in terms of credibility percentage. Pilots are obviously the most valued professionals. However, from the legal point of view it is known that some witnesses tend to enrich their account with the passage. This is the case of a subject who claims to have seen a 2 m UFO. in diameter, 100 m. away, for about 20 seconds. Interviewed 5 years later, he describes a UFO of about 4 m., About 50 m. away, for a couple of minutes. 10 years later, he describes a 10 m ship. in diameter, to one 20 m. away for 10 minutes … Does this tendency to “enrich” the experience affect the pilots, or is his testimony true, precise and exact?
To evaluate this never-before-discussed aspect of pilots’ psychology of perception, he had to select a group of cases, old enough and well-known, so that there were abundant descriptions of the incident, made by the same witness, throughout. of the years. Once selected, I collected all the books, magazines or radio or television interviews, in which these pilots had described their experience, and we added between one and three personal interviews with all of them. With this volume of information it was already possible to establish comparative tables in which to contrast the data on distance, duration of the sighting, characteristics, etc. that the pilots had described over the years. The result is obvious. Except for very exceptional cases, the contrasting of his testimonies, despite the years that have passed, leaves no doubt about the degree of reliability in his accounts (see tables).
CASE 1: The friend of the King of Spain “spoke” with a UFO
Commander Juan Ignacio Lorenzo Torres
Incident date: 4 November 1968
A classmate of the King of Spain at the Air Academy, Commander Lorenzo was flying from London to Alicante when a UFO came to stand, according to his testimony, 10 meters from the cockpit of his plane: “It was shaped like a balloon, with two side balloons, with a kind of veins through which liquid ran. It looked like something alive. We were in physical fear … I picked up the radio and tried to communicate with him in English and Spanish without success. So I improvised a code turning on and off the cockpit lights and that answered me “.
His crew, also interviewed by the author, do not share Lorenzo’s description of the incident, but recently the Commander wrote a complete book about his experience, which has not yet been published.
CASE 2: A solid “cloud” 3 kilometers in size
Commander Carlos García Bermúdez
Incident Date: March 11, 1979
Lenticular clouds are an atmospheric phenomenon well known to pilots. All receive meteorological training. That is why it is extraordinary that on the same day, at the same time, the planes commanded by Martín L. Sedó, Alfonso Barrena or García Bermúdez, among others, report the same anomalous lenticular “cloud”. “It was not a cloud, but something like three superimposed and compact lenticular clouds, which also moved against the wind. It was about 3 kilometers long and we all decided to avoid it instead of crossing, as is done with any cloud. That is the best test that we all agreed that it was solid. I’m sure that if we tried to cross it, we would have crashed … “.
CASE 3: A “mother ship” at Barajas airport
Commander José Antonio Silva
Incident Date: March 10, 1979
Writer, TV presenter and pilot of Iberia, with more than 14,000 flight hours, Comandante Silva, unfortunately now deceased, has been one of the most famous pilots in Spain. His UFO encounter of his was in broad daylight:… and an exceptionally good day. We were coming from Bilbao, and making the approach to Barajas, at about 1,500 meters we heard that Control was asking another pilot, who was in front of us, if he saw an Unidentified that they had on radar. We saw it. He was opaque, and about the size of a jumbo jet. He accompanied us until we almost reached the airport. Later the controller explained to us that the object had turned following an airway until it stabilized in Yebra, and that three smaller objects came out of it. Then, according to the radar, he ascended towards the north, at about 10 times the speed of sound… “.
CASE 4: A gigantic “ship” in the sky
Commander Saturnino Rodríguez Prieto
Incident Date: September 26, 1976
40 minutes before, in the airspace of the Canary Islands, a Varig plane and another from Iberia had already sighted the same phenomenon, “… but we were going from Madrid to Seville when my second yelled at me, come this way! It was a light It grew rapidly in size, until it became a huge ship that took up 2/3 of the plane’s windshield. At the rear it had a series of smaller lights. It was impressive. “
CASE 5: A “manned” sphere on a collision course
Commander Gregorio Ramos
Incident date: November 11, 1980
Up to 17 aircrews simultaneously reported UFO presence that day when Commander Ramos was piloting an Iberia 727 between Asturias and Barcelona, just one year after the famous Manises incident. At 110 miles from the Prat “a green sphere appeared that was coming towards us on a collision course. We asked Barcelona control about that traffic but they didn’t know anything, and it got closer and closer. It was like a green soap bubble, with a kind of of shadow inside, like a figure. To avoid the collision I had to dive, about 300 or 400 meters. That disappeared at a speed 3 or 4 times higher than a commercial plane … “.
CASE 6: The UFO lit up the passenger cabin
Commander Julián Rodríguez Bustamante
Incident Date: September 17, 1968
It is unusual, and extremely dangerous, for an Unidentified to approach an airliner so closely as to stand alongside the wing and illuminate the passenger cabin. This describes Comandante Rodriguez, that moonless night when he was flying from Tenerife to Las Palmas, with the entire island’s soccer team among his passage: “It was something very unpleasant. That was placed to our left and I saw such danger of collision That I stay without reacting. He was flying with us for a very long minutes, lighting the cabin and the passenger area. Suddenly he hit a kick and went in the same direction he came. The passenger began to worry, asking what was happening, and I I said it was a storm. The tower told us they had seen it too. Defense forbade us to talk about it. “
CASE 7: The best UFO case in Spanish ufology
Commander Luis Carvalho Olivares
Incident Date: November 4, 1970
During joint maneuvers with the USAF, in broad daylight, two Spanish fighter pilots starred in, perhaps, the best UFO case in our history. When the military radar detected an unidentified echo, it asked Captain Carvalho, today the Commander of Air Europa, and Captain Sáez Benito, who would later become a Colonel of the Air Force, to try to identify the object. “It was impossible for us. That metallic-looking” egg “had an aeronautical capacity far superior to our Sabers. When we tried to put our nose towards it, it would shoot us behind us. It was impossible to take off. And two radars confirmed its presence.” The official file on this case, “disappeared” mysteriously from the archives of the Spanish Air Force.
Published by Manuel Carballal in The Critical Eye EOC nº 62
The lost files
THESE ARE UNDECLASSIFIED UFO DOCUMENTS
So far we have argued that a lot of official UFO documentation has not been declassified. Now, after new information arrived at our newsroom in recent weeks, and thanks to the testimonies of those who have been able to see the original files in their jobs or inside military bases, we can enunciate, for the first time, and in Exclusive to EOC, what are and where are those UFO documents not declassified by the Spanish Air Force …
Reality always surpasses fiction, and in this of the flying saucers, even more so. After having made the most crazy pranks to access the testimony of politicians, generals or heads of the secret services, in search of any clue about the UFO phenomenon, sometimes the universe conspires in your favor, and the most valuable information comes from the less suspected places.
My friend Pedro, obviously his name is fictitious, he did his military service in Seville. As every recruit he aspired to a position as quiet as possible to complete the “military” as comfortably as possible, and his administrative knowledge ended up placing him in the office of a high command of the Army in the General Staff. There, my friend Pedro, and on this stone I will build this article, among other things I made photocopies. Thousands of photocopies every day. And top-secret reports, files, and documents passed through his hands constantly. Documents on the relations of the Spanish army with the North American commanders of the Morón or Rota bases, reports on troop mobilizations in North Africa, budgets on weapons, etc.
But one day his immediate command put in his hands a series of reports on UFO sightings in Andalusia that had to be sent to Madrid, and Pedro, who is a better friend than a military man, decided to take the risk and made 2 copies instead of a. This is how, at the beginning of the 90s, some photocopies of UFO files from the army came to my hands, taken directly from the original, and not from the version declassified by the Air Operational Command, starting in 1992. And this is how some civilian researchers We could find out data that, with good judgment, the army decided to censor in the declassified files, such as the names of witnesses or reporting judges, etc. So far everything is correct.
I now reveal this information for two reasons: the first because Pedro graduated from the army many years ago, and the second because now, other “pedros” have put us on the concrete and precise track of a whole series of official documents on the UFO phenomenon. that are not in the declassified version. And some of those absences are, to say the least, suspicious …
Lost documents
At this point, and in the most benevolent of cases, when some self-described researcher affirms that the declassification process of the Spanish air force has released all the existing documents on UFOs, we can say that such a statement is incorrect. On this occasion I will not enter into prosecuting the causes, probably varied, that some fragments of files, or internal files, internal notes, communiqués, reports, etc., related to the UFO phenomenon still today, 15 years after the declassification was announced, do not are accessible to the public. But today I am in a position to list, with concrete references, many of those official documents that, knowing that they exist, have not been declassified.
Up to 240 folders, contained in three filing cabinets, filled with trades, internal reports, notes, accounts, etc., on the UFO declassification process still remain in the MACOM archives. These documents, according to my sources, include information, mostly negative, about some well-known Spanish ufologists. Hasn’t that documentation been declassified to avoid hurting the sensitivity of these researchers? Unlikely.
Some of these documents, which do not officially exist, are of merely circumstantial and purely historical interest. For example, there is an internal “Explanatory Note” from the Air Force, explaining that originally the files 681112, 681206–09, 681207, 681209, 681211a and 681211B were compiled in a single file, and that they were later broken down for an analysis individual of each incident. It seems reasonable to assume that this document was not declassified due to a mere bureaucratic error.
In the case of brief Rfa №2926–5, which should have been included in file 690402, about the sighting that occurred in Becerrea (Lugo), declassified on April 30, 1993, this document was not declassified at the request of the MOA Chief Commander , Tte. Gral. Alfredo Chamorro, as said report was not included in the documentation of the case file. Chamorro possibly wanted to avoid uncomfortable explanations a posteriori if a document not listed in the summary of the file appeared. It is reasonable.
It is also possible that mere bureaucratic oversights, absent mindedness or simple incompetence of the military personnel on duty, justify the absences of some, quite a few, documents that should have been attached at the time to files that were already declassified, and that nevertheless still remain classified. For example, a brief letter that accompanied file 651116, on UFO sighted at the San Javier air base (Murcia), sent to the superiority.
Nor has a brief internal correspondence dossier been declassified on the sighting that occurred on January 15, 1997 on the 10th Air Surveillance Squadron of Barbanza (La Coruña). Nor have the civil guard reports on the case that occurred in that same place years before been declassified yet, despite the fact that a server has already disclosed them.
Annotations that are “dematerialized”
In some cases the original case file, according to my sources, presented handwritten notes, presumably made by the reporting judge, which however have disappeared in the declassified version.
In the original file of the famous case that occurred on November 4, 1968, and which was declassified just 24 years later, starring Commander Juan Ignacio Lorenzo Torres, the upper margin of the first page, which collects the transcripts of the plane’s conversation piloted by Lorenzo Torres with the control center, a handwritten note is included that says verbatim “Commander Lorenzo, watch out!” In the declassified version this annotation has disappeared. What did they mean by that annotation?
The same happened with file 680917, where a very interesting handwritten note that appears in the original report, disappears in the declassified version. And there are also a series of handwritten annotations in pencil, about the sighting of June 26, 1969 at Asturias Airport, which are not included in the declassified file, and which point to a possible aerostatic origin of the incident.
The handwritten note: “Facilitated to J. J. Benítez”, which appears in the file of the famous Canarian case of November 24, 1974, declassified twenty years later, has also disappeared. Only with that note disappeared a seven-page document entitled: “Extract on the report of an aerial phenomenon observed on November 24, 1974 on the island of Gran Canaria”, which accompanied the original file.
The missing reports
But what is really more suspicious is the absence of reports, or entire files, on UFO cases that we consider of great value. For example, it has not been declassified, perhaps because those responsible for the MOA considered it insufficient information, a report on an ancient sighting, without a specified date or place, of a “span of 80 meters; length 47 meters; width 7 meters. ; speed 900 km per hour; the height at which he was was 1500 meters; the appearance was at 20:30 hours; place the fourteenth portal, where he was seen … “.
The same can be said of another case, also without an exact date (although possibly December 1968), sighted in Santurce: “Time: 21`03L; height: ascent; duration: little; direction: vertical; distance: does not indicate; sound : -; color: metallic; mobility: very fast; observations; circular luminous object with blue flashes metallic shine.- Appeared after Punta Galea.- Dizzying ascent leaving a luminous spiral trail / not observed from P. Galea observatory … “.
There are two identical versions of the controversial record of the UFO quasi landing at the Bardenas Reales firing range (Zaragoza), on January 2, 1975. One was typed and the other typewritten. The first remains un-declassified, presumably because the person responsible forgot to include it in the case dossier.
There is, although not officially, an expert report carried out by an expert air traffic controller, belonging to the Central Command and Control Group of the Torrejón air base (Madrid), analyzing the case of the incident that occurred at the Talavera la Real base (Badajoz) , on January 14, 1975, which does not appear in the official file of the case that was declassified on October 13, 1993.
What there is no way to take is that entire files, on cases of a high degree of strangeness, simply do not exist -officially- in the archives of the Air Force. For example, the reference to what, perhaps, is the most extraordinary UFO case in the history of Spanish “military” ufology. A chase, in broad daylight, between an unidentified object with a “metallic” aspect and several fighters of the Spanish air force, which was picked up on several radars … But this is another story …
This writing in its entirety has been provided and authorized for MEDIUM by its author Manuel Carballal
José A. Galán April 20, 2021
