Subject: Unidentified Flying Objects

Sighted in Antarctica

The next document and other information, showing UFO activity preceding the events of 3 July, were provided by Timothy Good:

On 2 June 1965 an unusual object was sighted by a meteorologist and four other witnesses at the British Bravo Base. The sighting lasted for fifteen to twenty minutes. The object moved rapidly and was of a brilliant color, solid-appearing, and noiseless. On 20 June the Commander of the Chilean Aquirre Cerda Base, Juan Barrera, together with Chilean Air Force pilot Lieutenant Benavidez, a meteorologist, and seven other witnesses, observed a UFO which maneuvered rapidly on an oscillating course for twenty-five minutes. But the most interesting sightings took place on 3 July at the Chilean base, as the following official summary shows:

ON THREE JULY AT ONE NINE TWO ZERO HOURS THE METEOROLOGIST AND EIGHT OTHER PERSONS AT THE CHILEAN BASE AQUIRRE CERDA OBSERVED DURING TWO ZERO MIN (CLEAR NIGHT, TWO EIGHTHS STRATOCUMULUS AND STARRY SKY, MOON FOURTH QUARTER) AN OBJECT APPEARING AS A STATIONARY LIGHT AT TIMES AND OF SOLID APPEARANCE LIKE A CELESTIAL BODY, NOISELESS, WHITE COLOR WITH BORDERS LIKE A BRILLIANT STAR, MOVING EAST TO WEST TRAJECTORY WITH OSCILLATIONS, DISAPPEARING IN THE CLOUDS, ELEVATION FOUR DASH FOUR FIVE DEGREES OVER THE HORIZON. ON THREE JULY AT ONE NINE FOUR TWO HOURS METEOROLOGIST AND SIX PERSONS FROM THIS BASE OBSERVED BY NAKED EYE, BINOCULARS, AND THEODOLITE FOR A PERIOD OF ONE HOUR AND TWO MINUTES (CLEAR NIGHT, TWO EIGHTHS STRATUS, ONE EIGHTH CIRRUS, STARRY SKY, MOON FOURTH QUARTER) AN OBJECT DESCRIBED AS MORE BRILLIANT THAN A STAR OF THE FIRST MAGNITUDE WHICH WAS STATIONARY AT TIMES WITH FLASHING BRILLIANCE (APPEARING j AND DISAPPEARING), MOVING ABOVE THE STRATUS AND BELOW THE CIRRUS AT TIMES, OF A SOLID APPEARANCE AND NOISELESS, ITS CENTER COLORED RED, BORDERS CHANGING FROM YELLOW TO GREEN TO ORANGE TO BLUE TO WHITE, AND LIKE A BRILLIANT IRIDESCENT STAR, SMALL TRAJECTORY VARIATION, SIZE COMPARABLE TO THE HEAD OF HALF INCH NAIL HEAD, FINALLY DISAPPEARING IN ALTITUDE AND DISTANCE. FORM WAS ROUND AND OVAL SHAPED. DIRECTION OBSERVED NORTH NORTHWEST APPROXIMATELY THREE THREE FIVE DEGREES FROM TRUE NORTH AND THREE ZERO DEGREES ABOVE THE HORIZON, APPROXIMATELY AT A DISTANCE OF ONE ZERO TO ONE FIVE KILOMETERS. SOME PHOTOGRAPHY TAKEN OF THIS SIGHTING. . . . TWO VARIOMETERS WORKING AFFECTED BY MAGNETIC FIELD DISTURBANCE DURING THE TIME OBJECT SIGHTED.

Newspaper articles, forwarded to the DIA by the US Air Attache in Santiago, Chile, contained additional information. The photographs­ about ten in all­were taken by Corporal U. D. Martinez, but proved to be of little value owing to the distance of the object. The magnetic traces, however, recorded on a magnetovariometer, were considered highly evidential. The Air Attache, while hypothesizing that a satellite may have been responsible for some of the sightings, nevertheless concluded in his report: "Some credence must be given to the existence or the occurrence of some type of phenomenon in as much as reports emanated from such widely reported locations as to rule out mass hysteria or collusion."

The Argentine Navy published an official communique on the sighting, based on the statements of the Argentine, Chilean, and British witnesses. The Secretariat of the Argentine Navy also confirmed that the occurrence had been witnessed by scientists of the three naval bases and that the facts described by these people were in complete agreement.8 The Commandant of the Chilean Air Force Antarctic Base, Don Mario Juan Bar-rera, commented:

It is rash to say that we all saw a flying saucer, like those in science fiction. But nevertheless it was something real, an object traveling at a staggering speed, that performed evolutions and . . . caused interference in the instruments of the Argentinian base lying on an island that is near to and right opposite our base . . . what we observed was no hallucination or collective psychosis. ... As far as I am concerned it is a celestial object that I am unable to identify. That it could be an aircraft constructed on this earth, I do not believe possible.

Commandant Daniel Perisse of the Argentine base backed up this statement by declaring that the appearance of the object was no hallucination or mirage, and his description of the object's performance tallied precisely with Barrera's.9

The sightings of UFOs on 3 July 1965 were not the first in Antarctica. In 1950 Commander Augusto Vars Onega of the Chilean Navy reported that UFOs had circled his base. "During the bright Antarctic night," he said, "we saw flying saucers, one above the other, turning at tremendous speeds. We have photographs to prove what we saw." The pictures were 1,200 feet of color movie film, but when Major Donald Keyhoe attempted to obtain a copy from the Chilean Embassy in Washington in 1956 he was informed that the film was classified and could not therefore be made available.10 In May 1972 officers of the Chilean Air Force and Army had two sightings of UFOs which caused a weakening of radio signals in the 3,200 kilocycle waveband.11

Source: ABOVE TOP SECRET, Timothy Good, pages 308-310