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(image credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Report by Antonio Huneeus
In recent times the Brazilian Air Force has released a large number of UFO documents from various official investigations that include:
* the famous “official UFO night” in May 1986, when five jet fighters were scrambled to chase some 20 objects over Brazilian airspace, a case revealed at the time by the Minister of Aeronautics, Brigadier General Otávio Moreira Lima;
* Operaçao Prato (Operation Saucer) from I COMAR (1º Regional Aerial Command), case files, maps and photos from this scary UFO wave in the northern Amazon state of Para in the 1977-78 period, where many witnesses were injured by objects that came to be known as chupas (Portuguese word for sucker, not to be confused with the chupacabras mystery creature reported in Puerto Rico and elsewhere two decades later);
* Bulletins, case files and illustrations from SIOANI (System of Investigation of Unidentified Aerial Objects), a special bureau set up by the IV COMAR (4º Regional Aerial Command) in Sao Paulo in the late 1960s;
* miscellaneous UFO documents and cases from different parts of Brazil covering a period stretching from 1952 to 1990.
The first UFO case investigated by the Brazilian Air Force in modern times was a famous photographic case in Barra da Tijuca, then a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, in 1952. The Brazilian Air Force files can be downloaded from the website Fenomenum here, but keep in mind that all the contents are in Portuguese, although there are some photos and illustrations. While researching the official files in various Brazilian websites, however, I found a fascinating case from 1846 that has to be considered as the very first official UFO report in Brazilian history since it was written by an important Navy officer and published in the Official Gazette of the Empire of Brazil on November 26, 1846. The case was discovered by Edison Boaventura Júnior, President of the Grupo Ufológico de Guarujá (GUG) and published in his website in an article titled, “UFOs Sighted by Brazilian Military Prior to 1947.” The article also included some World War Two foo fighter cases reported by Brazilian pilots in the Italian theater. Boaventura’s original article in Portuguese can be seen here.
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