What happened
On the evening of 29 November 1989, people around Eupen in eastern Belgium, police officers among them, reported a large, flat, triangular craft with lights beneath it, flying low and slowly. Over the next weeks the civilian group SOBEPS collected more than a hundred reports from that first night and thousands across the following months, many describing the same slow, silent triangle. The wave peaked on the night of 30-31 March 1990. Ground observers and gendarmes reported lights in a triangular arrangement near Wavre; the Glons control centre and Semmerzake radar picked up unidentified returns, and two Belgian Air Force F-16s were scrambled from Beauvechain. Over about an hour they attempted nine interceptions and on three occasions briefly achieved radar lock, as targets appeared to change speed and altitude dramatically, but the pilots never saw anything. Unusually, the Belgian Air Force released a report and its operations chief, Colonel Wilfried De Brouwer, briefed the press.
The official explanation
Skeptics, including Marc Hallet and later Brian Dunning, argue that the wave was largely a psychosocial phenomenon: reports, they say, came after media appeals by SOBEPS rather than spontaneously, and the original Eupen object may have been a helicopter. Dunning reports that analysis showed the F-16 lock-ons were on each other, and that other contacts were caused by a known atmospheric radar effect called Bragg scattering, which can create fast-moving false targets. Researchers including Renaud Leclet proposed that helicopters explain many sightings. De Brouwer himself initially suspected experimental American aircraft, but US authorities said no stealth aircraft were operating there.
The anomalous case
Police officers and air traffic controllers were among those who confirmed sightings, and witness after witness described the same large, low, slow triangle making little or no noise, not the profile of a helicopter. On 30-31 March, ground radar, gendarmes on the ground and the Glons control centre were all engaged, and Jean-Pierre Petit, a former French Air Force radar controller who saw the F-16 recordings, said the targets repeatedly dropped below radar coverage and reappeared as the jets closed, with three lock-ons lasting several seconds. The Belgian Air Force took the unusual step of publishing its findings and opening its radar recordings to researchers; De Brouwer, later a major general, first suspected secret American aircraft, but the US denied any stealth flights. The UK National Archives notes radar reportedly tracked an unknown object and it was never identified.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Sources
- Belgian UFO wave Wikipedia
- UFO reports The National Archives (UK)
- The Belgium UFO wave 1989-1993: information on one of the F-16 radar traces Patrick Gross, UFOs at Close Sight
Witness reports elsewhere
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