Source:
Clarin (Argentina)
Date:
July 4, 2015
Argentina:
50th Anniversary of the Argentinean Antarctic UFO Sighting
The UFO
That Paraded Across the Antarctic and Triggered the Argentinean Psychosis
By
Guillermo dos Santos Coelho
It had
all of the ingredients. An exotic locale, experienced witnesses and a season
that was ripe for fostering the imagination, shortly before man’s arrival on
the Moon. It is for this reason that the UFO which paraded across the Antarctic
50 years ago was a landmark that had pride of place in the covers of all of
Argentinian dailies, triggering a collective psychosis that lasted that entire
winter and a little longer.
Tomorrow
will mark half a century since the main sighting. While it was later learned that
previous episodes existed, it was on July 3, 1965 when a small number of
people, the only ones for hundreds of miles around, found themselves staring at
the skies in fascination.
The
Argentinean base – Decepción – held fewer than 20. At 19:40 hours that
Saturday, the night had been clear and peaceful for a good while, and it was
then that the weatherman noticed it. The Navy communiqué would subsequently
speak in terms of a “lenticular mass” – two concave surfaces stuck together,
like a lentil.
This “lentil”,
according to various accounts, moved across the sky changing colors, the
predominant ones being red and green, putting on quite a show: a display of
yellow, blue, green, orange and white hues.
The
weatherman summoned everyone. Except for the radioman, who happened to be on
duty, the entire detachment was able to see the object and follow it with the
detail provided by their binoculars and theodolites. Some 10 to 15 kilometers
distant, the object was traveling in a generally eastward direction, although
it made momentary westward changes at some 45 degrees. Its speed was variable,
according to reports; it made no noise whatsoever, and at times remained
suspended in space. The Navy communiqué indicated that the display lasted some
15 or 20 minutes under excellent visibility conditions. The protagonists would
later state it lasted longer than that.
Civilian
meteorologist Jorge Hugo Stanich reached for his camera and photographed the
object as best he could. Nothing appeared on any of the photos – it was a
low-sensitivity photographic emulsion for the prevailing darkness and he lacked
a tripod. A curious side note to all this was the disruption of geo-magnetic
instrumentation which accompanied the sighting.
A few
days later, the story exploded, commanding the headlines of all domestic
newspapers. Clarín spoke to the commander of the Decepción base – Lt. Cmdr.
Daniel Perissé.
“We have
only seen an unidentified flying object. According to the information in our
possession, this was the same one witnessed by the Chilean and British
detachments. I can add that this curious event was also seen on earlier dates,
and always involved a single object.”
This
information was indeed confirmed by the staff of Great Britain’s “B” base and
the Pedro Aguirre Cerdá, which stands abandoned today. Even there, Corporal
Uladislao Durán Martínez managed to take ten photographs, but months would go
by before they were developed, following the personnel rotation, as no lab
facilities were available. The corporal returned to Santiago in January ’66
with the film, which was forgotten. Either a conspiracy or blank negatives –
you can choose your own adventure.
All this
was followed by an agitated month of July. With the Argentinean delight for
psychoses, UFO accounts appeared throughout the country, each of them
commanding a good number of inches of page space.
First,
seven teenagers near Pilar on a camping trip saw a UFO. Then there was a case
near the Morón air base. Lights were photographed in the sky over Bahía Blanca.
Similar accounts were repeated in Mendoza, Resistencia, Rosario and Mar del
Plata. On August 1, binoculars at the Palermo Racetrack, usually aimed at the
ground, focused on the sky on account of a strange balloon. The whole event
lasted a few minutes, until it was announced over the loudspeakers that “only
five minutes were left for placing bets.” Argentina had become a sort of UFO
garage.
On August
4, the La Plata Observatory soothed the UFO effervescence that had so many
people looking at the sky rather than the ground. After consultations made with
centers specializing in the tracking of artificial satellites, it was explained
that the U.S. Echo II satellite, launched on January of that year from
Vandenberg AFB for communications duty, could have been seen from the Decepción
base at the same day and time as the UFO sighting. [The Echo] was an enormous
aluminized plastic balloon, highly reflective.
The tide
subsided, although more eyewitness accounts took place that year. In August,
officers from the Punta de Vacas squadron in Mendoza reported seeing a UFO
playing in the heavens for some eight minutes. Later, in the capital of La
Rioja, two men reported seeing a UFO fly directly over the car in which they
drove. In early October, at Villa Characato, in the department of Cruz del Eje
(Córdoba), a teacher and a group of female students claimed seeing a 30
centimeter device coming and going in the air at some 400 meters overhead
before vanishing.
One of
the cases appearing in the newspapers during these months occurred in the city.
A child attending the No.9 School saw a light changing colors and making
strange movements. The mother also saw the object and corroborated the story.
The father, somewhat more skeptical, told Clarin with a thin smile: “He’s not a
fantasy-prone boy, but he’s that age.”
And then…
Two years
after the sightings, volcanic activity caused there to be no winter activity on
Decepción Island. UFO sightings were ongoing in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but nothing
came close to the 1965 wave, the Year of the UFO. The experience left a deep
mark on Lt. Cmdr. Daniel Perissé, who went on to become one of the country’s
best-known ufologists, first as a member of the Comisión Permanente de
Investigacion del Fenomeno Ovni (Standing Committee on UFO Research) and later
as a civilian.
[Translation
© 2015, S. Corrales, IHU with thanks to Luis Burgos, Fundación Argentina de
Ovnilogía]
No comments:
Post a Comment