UFOs Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (16 page)

And I can’t doubt what happened. It wasn’t only me. The pilot in my backseat, the two pilots in the first aircraft, the men in the tower, people from headquarters, General Yousefi who was on duty in the Air Force command post—they all saw it. Many people were concerned about us on the ground. And we also captured it on radar from our cockpit. Nobody can say I imagined it. The radar was locked on the object and could determine its size, because we practice refueling 707 tankers, and the return of the UFO on radar indicated they were about the same size.

I have two regrets: One is that we did not have a camera in the plane to get a picture of the UFO; second, that because I was excited and sometimes frightened, I didn’t think to try and call them on the radio, and ask, “Who are you? Please communicate with us!” Later on I wished I had done this. In any case, I hope someday we develop that technology here so we can travel easily to other planets and poke around, too.

CHAPTER 10

Close Combat with a UFO

by Comandante Oscar Santa María Huertas (Ret.), Peruvian Air Force

O
n April 11, 1980,
¹
at 7:15 a.m., a Friday morning, I was stationed at the La Joya Air Force Base in the Arequipa region of Peru. It was like any other day. There were approximately 1,800 military personnel and civilians at the base, and we were beginning to get ready for our daily exercises.

Even though I was only a twenty-three-year-old lieutenant, I already had eight years of military flying experience. I was quite precocious as a military pilot. By nineteen I was flying combat missions, and at twenty I was selected to test-fly Peru’s newest supersonic Sukhoi jet. Having won quite a few trophies as a pilot, I was also known as a top aerial marksman with great skill at shooting from the air.

Little did I know that this expertise would lead to my being selected for a highly unusual and unexpected mission on that routine morning. Along with my air squadron, I was ready at that moment for instant takeoff, as we always are. A chief of service arrived in a van and got out to tell us there was an object that looked like some kind of balloon suspended in the air toward the end of the runway. We stepped outside to see it, and then we knew what we had to do. Four of us pilots stood outside observing the object. The second commander of the unit, Commander FAP Carlos Vasquez Zegarra, ordered that one of the members of the air squad take off and bring the object down. Our chief turned to me and said, “Oscar, you be the one to go.”

The round object was about three miles (five kilometers) away from us, hanging at an altitude of about 2,000 feet (600 meters) above the ground. Since the sky was absolutely clear, the object shone due to the reflection of the sun.

This “balloon” was in restricted air space without authorization, representing a grave challenge to national sovereignty. All civilian and military pilots use aerial charts on which highly protected airspace, such as that over our base, is clearly marked. They all know where these restricted areas are located, and no one ever flies in them, under any circumstances. This thing had not only appeared in such an area, but it was not replying to communications sent on universally recognized frequencies, and it was moving toward the base. It had to come down. La Joya was one of the few bases in South America that possessed Soviet-made warfare equipment, and we were concerned about espionage.

Back in 1980, Peru did not have any aerostatic balloons of any type, such as weather balloons, or passenger balloons. We knew that this was therefore something strange, and it wasn’t from our country. We were familiar with meteorological balloons, but they had antennae and cables and flew only above 45,000 feet. This was lower. We had no idea where it was from, and it was coming closer. We had no option but to destroy it.

The squad commander, Captain Oscar Alegre Valdez, ordered me to take off in my Sukhoi-22 fighter jet to intercept the balloon before it got any closer to our base. I immediately headed over to my jet, without taking my eyes off the thing in the sky, and went over in my mind each step I had to take for this mission. Since the object was within the perimeter of the base and my plane was armed with 30 mm shells, I decided to attack from the northeast to the southeast. This way, the sun would be to my left and I could avoid impacting the base with my weapons.

After takeoff, I made a turn to the right and reached an altitude of 8,000 feet (2,500 meters). I then positioned myself for the attack. Zeroing in on the balloon, I reached the necessary distance and shot a burst of sixty-four 30 mm shells, which created a cone-shaped “wall of fire” that would normally obliterate anything in its path. Some of the projectiles deviated from the target, falling to the ground, and others hit it with precision. I thought that the balloon would then be torn open and gases would start pouring out of it. But nothing happened. It seemed as if the huge bullets were absorbed by the balloon, and it wasn’t damaged at all. Then suddenly the object began to ascend very rapidly and head away from the base.

“What is going on here?” I thought to myself. “I have to get closer to it.”

So I headed up. I initiated a chase by activating the afterburner of my plane, and reported to the control tower that I intended to follow procedures and continue the task of bringing down the object. Since I knew that this was an extremely unusual mission, I asked that they make sure the tape recorders were working so that anything taking place from that moment on would be on record. Then, an amazing series of events unfolded.

My jet flew at a speed of 600 mph (950 km/hr) and the “balloon” remained about 1,600 feet (500 meters) in front of me. As we got farther from the base, I reported to the control tower information such as “I am at three thousand meters of altitude and twenty kilometers from the base … I am at six thousand meters of altitude and forty kilometers from the base …” and so on. By this time I was over the city of Camana, which was about fifty-two miles (eighty-four kilometers) from the base, flying at 36,000 feet (11,000 meters).

I was in full pursuit of the object, when it came to a sudden stop and forced me to veer to the side. I made a turn upward to the right and tried to position myself for another shot. Once I obtained the desired position to fire, which was approximately 3,000 feet (1,000 meters) from the object, I began closing in on it until I had it in perfect sight. I locked on the target and was ready to shoot. But just at that moment, the object made another fast climb, evading the attack. I was left underneath it; it “broke the attack.”

I attempted this same attack maneuver two more times. Each time, I had the object on target when it was stationary. And each time, the object escaped by ascending vertically seconds before I started to fire. It eluded my attack three times, each time at the very last moment.

Throughout this time I was very focused on trying to achieve my window of about 1,300 to 2,300 feet (400 to 700 meters) distance, which was where I had to position my plane in order to shoot. As this became less possible, I was very surprised and kept asking myself what was going on. Then it became a personal thing for me. I
had
to get it. But I couldn’t because it would always ascend. I was committed to this mission, and felt I must succeed. This was all that mattered, and I felt confident knowing I had an outstanding airplane.

Eventually, as a result of this series of rapid movements upward, the object ended up at an altitude of 46,000 feet (14,000 meters). I had to think of something else to do! I decided to make a bold ascent with my plane so that this time I would be
above
the object, and then I would come down on it vertically and initiate an attack from above. This way, if the object began to ascend as in the previous three attempts, it would not leave my target range and it would be easier for me to fire. I was not concerned about any collision because of the agility and maneuverability of my plane.

So I accelerated my plane at supersonic speed and went back to where the “balloon” was, by this time traveling at a speed of Mach 1.6, which is approximately 1,150 mph (1,850 km/hr). I calculated the distance between the object and myself as I began to make the ascent. As I went higher, I saw that the object was in fact under me and I thought I would be able to gain the necessary altitude to pull off the maneuver as planned, and succeed in the attack. But to my surprise, the object ascended once again at a high speed and placed itself next to me in parallel formation! This left me without any possibility of attack.

Flying at Mach 1.2, I continued with my ascent, still hoping to pass above it in order to initiate the attack I had planned. But I couldn’t. We reached an altitude of 63,000 feet (19,200 meters or 19 kilometers), and suddenly the thing completely stopped and remained stationary. I adjusted the wings of my plane to 30 degrees and extended its slats so that the plane would be able to maneuver at that height, and I thought I could still attempt to target the object in order to fire. But it was impossible. I could not remain as still as this “balloon.”

At that moment the warning light for low fuel went off, indicating that I had just enough to get back to the base. Under those conditions, I could not continue the attack, so I flew closer to the hovering object to observe it and try to determine what it was. The Su-22s had no on-board radar, but the sighting equipment had well-marked gradations that communicated the distance from a target and its diameter. This technology was based on the use of laser beams.

I got as close as about 300 feet (100 meters) from it. I was startled to see that the “balloon” was not a balloon at all. It was an object that measured about 35 feet (10 meters) in diameter with a shiny dome on top that was cream-colored, similar to a light bulb cut in half. The bottom was a wider circular base, a silver color, and looked like some kind of metal. It lacked all the typical components of aircraft. It had no wings, propulsion jets, exhausts, windows, antennae, and so forth. It had no visible propulsion system.

At that moment, I realized this was not a spying device but a UFO, something totally unknown. I was almost out of fuel, so I couldn’t attack or maneuver my plane, or make a high-speed escape. Suddenly, I was afraid. I thought I might be finished.

After recovering from the impact of seeing this, I began my return to the air base and explained to the control tower exactly what I had seen. When I had calmed down, I radioed for another plane to come and continue the attack, trying to hide my fear. They said no, it’s too high, just come back. I had to glide partway down due to lack of fuel, zigzagging to make my plane harder to hit, always with my eyes on the rearview mirrors, hoping it wouldn’t chase me. It didn’t. I had been flying for twenty-two minutes.

As I was touching down, I was very excited and couldn’t wait to tell my people about the extraordinary thing I had flown against. It was so fascinating that I had really wanted someone else to come up and take a look. I had described this object as flying, even though it had no visible equipment for that—nothing to make it fly!

When I stepped out of my plane, my squadron was waiting and asked me lots of questions. The maintenance person was there and checked the shell cartridges and said, “Captain, it’s clear you’ve done some shooting.” Others came by, and there were many inquiries and conversations.

Right after my landing, all the personnel involved in the incident gathered for a briefing—this meant operations personnel, air defense, base defense, and the general who was the aerial wing commander. Due to the threat established by this “balloon,” our base had activated its defense system and all systems were on alert. Everyone gave reports. We learned that the object was never registered on radar, even though the radar operators could see it in the sky, as could the people who had observed the object early on when it was stationary. They also described it as round and metallic. We were told that what happened at the meeting was to remain there only, and we were not to divulge it at any time.

After this briefing, I met with intelligence personnel and we went over all the catalogues available with pictures of different types of aircraft or air devices employed for espionage, but we found nothing that could maneuver in the way I described without any type of propulsion system. The object was consequently catalogued as an unidentified flying object. It remained in the same place where I left it for two more hours, visible to everyone on the base while it reflected the sun.

I never saw any U.S. government officials at the base discussing this case, and they never interviewed me. Nonetheless, a document of the Defense Department of the United States dated June 3, 1980, titled “UFO Sighted in Peru,” describes the incident and states that the object remains of unknown origin.

In conclusion, I can say that in 1980 I had a combat experience with an unidentified flying object that flew and maneuvered in the air without any recognizable features of aircraft, features that even today are necessary parts of any flying machine. This object performed maneuvers that defied the laws of aerodynamics. After thorough investigation of all available data regarding aircrafts, our military experts were not able to find any artifact or machine that could have done what this object did.

Many years later, I have learned of similar cases in which military planes have chased unidentified flying objects without being able to successfully launch their weapons due to the fact that their systems were blocked prior to firing. I have discussed this with experts from around the world, including those at the National Press Club event in Washington, D.C., in November 2007. Both the Iranian case of 1976 and another similar case in Brazil involved the shutting down of
electronic
equipment—the control screens went out. My equipment was mechanical, and perhaps that’s the reason it could not be shut down, so instead, the object had to jump away at the last minute.

I find myself in the unique position, at least for the moment, and as far as I know, of being the only military pilot in the world who has actually fired a weapon and struck a UFO.