Brazilian Pilots Encounter Craft Going ‘18,500 km/h’ During ‘UFO Night’
Fighter jets chased mysterious glowing objects – some of which were 100 meters wide and moving at speeds of 18,500 km/h – during Brazil’s epic ‘UFO Night’.
Five bewildered pilots testified to seeing 21 objects appear and disappear, while hundreds of ground troops also witnessed it – and Air Force chiefs admitted ‘there is no explanation’ .
What happened will be the subject of a hearing on UFOs to be held this week in the Brazilian Senate.
This event comes after Congress held a hearing in response to footage taken by US Navy fighter jets showing mysterious and unexplained objects streaking through the sky – the now famous UFO video [candy-shaped ] “Tick-Tock”.
But the story of what happened one night in Brazil, ten years before these videos were taken, is equally astounding.
For several hours, hundreds of witnesses, including the country’s military elite, saw strange objects that appeared to be moving at terrifying speed.
Pilots have found themselves staring ahead at objects that don’t appear on their plane’s radar – and sometimes the other way around – as the objects play “cat and mouse” with them.
The first signs of something unusual were reported by Brazilian Air Force air traffic controller Sergeant Sergio Mota da Silva on the evening of May 19, 1986.
Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray presents footage of unidentified aerial phenomena during a House Intelligence Committee subcommittee hearing May 17, 2022 in Washington, DC.
He spotted a light in the sky from an airport control tower near the city of Sao Paulo.
“She’s not going up, she’s not going down, she’s not going left or right, she’s just there,” he said.
Mota asked controllers at Sao Paulo International Airport if any planes were heading towards his airfield, to which they replied in the negative.
At one point, he said he dimmed the lights on the airport runway, making the objects come towards the control tower, then when he turned up the brightness, they moved away.
Sergeant Sergio Mota da Silva claims to have spotted a strange light in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo.
“I don’t know if they were trying to interact with me. What I do know is that they behaved intelligently,” he told the BBC.
At around 8 p.m., about 2,000 cadets and officers from an Air Force training school in the same area said they spotted the lights.
Then, an hour later, a plane piloted by the president of aircraft manufacturer Embraer reported several objects in the sky as it landed at the same airport.
The lights in the sky were also seen from two passenger planes, including one that was traveling inside Brazil.
About 2,000 Brazilian Air Force cadets witnessed the strange luminous object near Guarulhos International Airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
The Air Force then sprang into action and got their fighters airborne to intercept the objects, but the task was not easy, as the pilots were confused by what was happening.
“Sometimes the pilots had visual contact with the targets, but the radars didn’t register anything,” Mota said.
“Other times, the radars even detected the presence of objects, but the pilots could not see them. »
Initially, three planes were dispatched, including a Mirage F-103, which took off shortly before 11 p.m. with Captain Armindo Sousa Viriato at the controls.
Quickly, his high-performance warplane reached 1,000 mph, but as he approached the UFO, it accelerated to a speed he calculated to be 15 times the speed of sound. , i.e. 18,500 km/h.
“If there is an aircraft capable of reaching this speed, I don’t know it,” he said in an interview a few years later.
Previously, the first plane to take off, around 10:30 p.m., was an F-5E piloted by Lieutenant Kleber Caldas Marinho.
He described approaching the target “which stopped moving towards me and started climbing”.
“I continued to follow contact until about 10,000 meters, when I lost radar contact and only had visual contact,” he said.
Cat and mouse game
Captain Armindo Sousa Viriato claims he pushed the plane 1000mph, but that wasn’t enough to get close to the bright UFO.
Brazilian UFO researcher Ademar José Gevaerd believes extraterrestrial technology “tremendously superior to ours” was on display that night.
“At no time did they try to attack us. They played ‘cat and mouse’ with us,” he said.
Meanwhile, the incredible events unfolding in the sky had not gone unnoticed on the ground.
Photographer Adenir Britto was working at night in the offices of his newspaper when he was informed of the presence of a “flying saucer” above his head.
At first believing it was a prank, he went out with a reporter and, to his surprise, saw the objects and began taking pictures.
Brazil’s UFO Hearings
Brazil’s unprecedented Senate hearing will see experts from around the world address politicians in a country that is a UFO hotspot.
For decades, the subject remained on the sidelines until the Pentagon sensationally released a series of videos showing mysterious objects spotted by US Navy fighter jets.
Brazilian Senate demands to know more about mysterious UFO sightings.
The pilots’ testimony of what they saw in the now legendary “Tic-Tac” videos has raised national security concerns, putting UFOs in the crosshairs of politicians.
In response, the US Congress called a day-long hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – to give UFOs their official title.
Today, Brazil goes further and invites UFO experts from around the world to testify.
Among them is Luis Elizondo, who ran the Pentagon’s secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).
“The hearings in Brazil should be a wake-up call for other countries,” he told Sun Online.
“Brazil has always been one of the most open countries when it comes to advanced aerospace threat identification programs and has been considered a hotspot for many years.
“He added that the fact that the Brazilian government “takes this matter seriously, as does the United States, is an indicator of the serious nature of this subject”.
Mr. Elizondo said he had “the privilege of addressing the Brazilian Congress and I applaud their sense of courage and their tenacity regarding the subject of UAPs”.
“Maybe the United Nations and other international governing bodies will see what Brazil is doing and follow their lead,” he said.
“I am both encouraged and humbled by Brazil and its desire to elevate this subject to the level it deserves – a subject not of stigma and taboo, but a subject of scientific and academic pursuit. »
“It was a unique experience in my career. I never saw anything like it again,” he said.
“Until then, I didn’t care whether or not I believed in UFOs. »
“But I came to have a different view of this mysterious world. It was impossible for me not to change my mind, after all I had the privilege of being an eye and photographic witness. »
In a new twist, two Air Force officers accompanied by American UFO researcher James J. Hurtak, reported to the newspaper about a month later.
They demanded that the editor show them the negatives of the photos on the pretext that they wanted them analyzed by NASA. They have never been seen since
It didn’t take long for the incredible events to spread and receive wide media coverage.
This prompted the Air Force Minister, Brigadier Octávio Júlio Moreira Lima, to hold an unprecedented press conference in which the pilots described what had happened.
“I was notified by ground control that there were several contacts ahead of me about thirty kilometers away,” said one.
“I was also warned of contacts approaching from behind and they followed one another until they were three kilometers behind me. I had to dive in and as I did the contacts started to come up. »
No explanation
Ground controllers told another pilot that thirteen UFOs were pursuing him, six on one side of him and seven on the other, says another.
But Octávio Moreira Lima had to admit: “We have no explanation. »
In 2009, an Air Force report on “Night of UFOs” concluded that its top brass “are of the opinion that the phenomena are robust and reflect, in some way, intelligence.”
This was due “to the ability to follow and maintain a distance from observers, as well as to fly in formation”.
Famous UFO incidents
“UFO Night” is one of many unexplained encounters with strange objects in the sky that have occurred over the years.
Perhaps most striking is the video known as “Tic-Tac”, which shows an unidentified object being chased by fighter jets.
In 2004, while flying off California, two pilots of the USS Nimitz, on a routine training mission, spotted an object “in the shape of a 12-meter Tic Tac candy”.
Then, in 2005, a veteran pilot of an F/A-18 fighter jet witnessed a series of strange objects in the sky during a training exercise off the coast of Florida.
The US Department of Defense documented the most famous case of “unidentified aerial phenomena” in 2004.
Both videos were sensationally released by the Pentagon in 2017.
Tragically, the pursuit of UFOs also cost lives, including that of US Air Force Captain Thomas Mantell.
He died after being sent in pursuit of a mysterious object in his fighter plane in 1948.
Other Air Force encounters include the claim that UFOs disabled weapons at a nuclear base.
Captain Robert Salas said the bizarre incident took place in 1967 when he was the duty commander of a secret underground launch control facility at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.
US forces based in Britain also encountered a strange glow in the sky in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk.
Two airmen, Sergeant Jim Penniston and Airman John Burroughs, claim to have approached a triangular craft to the point of touching it.
Earlier this year, US military documents were released showing how a warship was tracked by two “ball of light” UFOs, adding to the mystery surrounding the case.
British UFO expert Gary Heseltine, who is vice-president of the International Coalition for Extraterrestrial Research, is due to testify at the hearing.
“There is no doubt that the investigation will focus on the UFO night,” said Heseltine, a former police inspector.
“What is impressive is that the whole incident lasted several hours from the first sightings and that fighter jets were sent from several airports.
“And these things just played cat and mouse. How many times can you find yourself in a situation where you put jet planes in dogfights with things they can’t even get close to. »
“When you have testimony from multiple pilots, supported by audio, visual and radar data, you have to take it seriously. »
“These people are trained to the highest degree. We trust them with our lives to fight in a war, so why not trust them when they say they have encountered these things. »
