What happened
On 5 March 2004 a Mexican Air Force crew on a routine anti-drug-smuggling patrol over southern Campeche recorded a cluster of bright points, eleven in all, on their aircraft's infrared camera while flying at roughly 11,500 feet. The lights were invisible to the naked eye but showed clearly on the thermal display, and at times seemed to move and regroup around the plane. In May, Mexico's Defence Secretariat released a press statement and the videotape, and Defence Secretary Gen. Ricardo Vega García said the military had not yet decided what the crew had filmed. Journalist Jaime Maussan, who obtained the footage, called it historic proof backed by a nation's armed forces. In interviews, radar operator Lt. Germán Marín admitted he had been a little afraid, and infrared operator Lt. Mario Adrián Vázquez insisted the images could not have been altered. The release made world headlines, as it was one of the first times a national military had openly handed over its own UFO footage.
The official explanation
Aerospace engineer James C. Smith, building on a suggestion by Mexican pilot Alejandro Franz, matched the infrared lights to gas burn-off flares on the Cantarell oil platforms in the Bay of Campeche (Akal-C, Akal-J and Nohoch-A), using Landsat data and the camera's recorded pointing direction. Physicist Julio Herrera of UNAM suggested atmospheric electrical discharges, while others floated ball lightning or meteor fragments. Michael Shermer noted that accounts of the event grew more dramatic with each retelling.
The anomalous case
This is military footage, released by the Mexican government itself, from trained aircrew using professional sensors. Mexico's Defence Secretary publicly declined to explain it. Crew members described objects that appeared to follow the aircraft, and the plane's captain, Maj. Magdaleno Castañón, said he believed the objects sensed they were being pursued; an AP report said at least one crew member testified the lights surrounded the jet. Vázquez stressed that the recording could not have been altered. Proponents also note that early explanations, from atmospheric plasma to meteors, were offered quickly and conflicted with each other, and argue the oil-flare match relies on old satellite data and an assumed camera alignment rather than a confirmed reconstruction. As one of the earliest state-released UAP videos, it set a precedent that the US Navy's own releases later followed.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Sources
- The Mexican Air Force UFO Affair (eSkeptic, 24 July 2004) Skeptic magazine, James C. Smith
- UFO sightings in Mexico Wikipedia
- Arizona Republic / AP report, 13 May 2004 (archived copy) Patrick Gross UFO archive
Witness reports elsewhere
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