What happened
In the dark of the Antarctic winter of 1965, men at the military research stations crowded onto Deception Island reported a lens-shaped light that refused to behave like a star. On the night of 3 July, under an unusually clear sky with a waning moon, crews at the Argentine naval detachment and the Chilean base facing it watched an object glowing reddish-yellow and shifting through green, yellow and orange. It zigzagged at speed, then stopped and hung motionless for about twenty minutes while observers grabbed binoculars and telescopes. Chilean commander Mario Jahn Barrera, an air force officer, radioed his defence ministry that it was real, fast and unlike any aircraft he knew. Argentina's Navy issued a formal communiqué quoting Lieutenant Daniel Perissé and confirming electromagnetic interference at its base. Colour photographs were taken but could not be developed until relief arrived months later. The reports made world headlines and were later found among declassified CIA files.
The official explanation
No official body published a conventional explanation. Contemporary press noted that the polar winter produces auroras, bright planets and stars distorted by cold air layers, and ufologist Patrick Gross observes that the press accounts of that season rarely allow observers' spacecraft to be separated from aurora and other phenomena. A bright star or planet scintillating near the horizon can appear to change colour and dart, which is the usual skeptical reading of similar multi-colour reports.
The anomalous case
This is one of the few cases where two governments' military personnel, at separate bases, reported the same object on the same night and their navy put its verdict in writing. Lieutenant Perissé's communiqué, issued by the Argentine Navy, stated the object's characteristics and movement ruled out a balloon, a star or an aircraft. Commander Jahn, a trained air force officer, said its shape, speed and manoeuvrability matched nothing he knew, and that it moved too rapidly and continuously to be a star. Both sides reported electromagnetic interference with instruments at the Argentine station, a physical effect a twinkling star cannot produce. The observers were seasoned Antarctic personnel used to auroras, and the sky that night was clear. The episode was significant enough that a record of the sightings appears among CIA documents later declassified, according to Argentina's Crónica.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- Antarctic 'Saucer' Sighting Reported (AP, Boston Globe, 9 July 1965) newspaper, ufology.patrickgross.org
Sources
- Antarctic 'Saucer' Sighting Reported (Boston Globe, 9 July 1965, AP) Patrick Gross, UFOs at close sight (press archive)
- Deception Island, Antarctic, 1965 Patrick Gross, UFOs at close sight
- La CIA investigó casos de OVNIS en Argentina Crónica (Argentina)
Witness reports elsewhere
These archives can't be republished here, so we link to them instead.