UFOs - Leslie Kean [51]
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