UFO  Calatayud

The 17 of May around 10:00 hours and while there was a Bravo mission underway, the nº40, between Siesta (W-1, radar of Calatayud) and 2 C.5 Sabres from the 102 Squadron, two pilots from the F-86’s sighted a strange object situated over Lérida and it was stationary.

Siesta gave orders to the two F-86’s to approach the object and identify it. The height of the F-86’s was 48.000 feet and the object was at 76.200 feet.

Facing the impossibility of the F-86’s to reach that height and being low in fuel, they ceased the attempt and returned to Base.

At about 11:00 hours, there was a programmed take off of two F-104’s from Torrejon to join the Bravo mission with Siesta and when they were at the head of the runway ready for the take off, the Squadron Chief of Operations from the 104 Squadron arrived with a photographer and placed a camera on each aircraft and at the same time he notified them to establish contact con Siesta on channel 10.

The take off took place at 9.55 Z (international time) and at 10.05 Z contact with Siesta was established, who notified them of the existence of a strange object and the two F-86’s had not been able to get sufficiently close to see it and describe it with certain exactitude.

With direction 070 they went near the object located at about 70 miles, before reaching it they accelerated to Mach 1.5 went up to 45,000 feet and about 15 miles from the object they established visual contact.

At the distance of the first visual contact with the object it looked to them as the point of a lance pointing down or as the body of a squid.

As they got closer, with the brilliant sun the object’s outline was diffused into an indefinite form and very shiny. 

In the first attempt they reached 59,000 feet and even that they had the photo camera installed on the airplane they could not align the aircraft’s axis with the object, due to the object being almost vertical,

and no time they could distinguish its form.

On the second attempt, the commander of the formation separated from his wingman, accelerated and went up to 52,000 feet and as he got closer to the object, it looked to him as the shape of an airplane, like a T-33 with an angle 0f 80 degrees, as it was suspended by the rudder, it was still very bright and although this time he was able to align the F-104 axis with the object to take some photographs with the camera, the film was overexposed, and besides during the climb the afterburner quit followed by the engine also stopping. After loosing altitude, the F-104’s systems finally started functioning and control was recovered.

At the same time, the wingman before separating from his Commander, observed the two fussed superimposed forms and first with a form of a squid and later as an airplane suspended by its rudder, coinciding with the descriptions of his Chief.

The object was apparently motionless keeping itself higher than the F-104. According to Siesta it kept an elevation differential with the F-104 of 20,000 feet.

Almost out of fuel, the two F-104G decided to return to Base.

The F-86’s as the F104’s reached their flight ceilings trying to make contact with the unidentified object.

At the moment of observation, the EVA 1 (other radar) detected two superimposed objects, which agreed with the description given by the two Captains that spoke of “two fused forms”.

The object suddenly disappeared from the screens around 18:00 hours in the afternoon and at a height of 83,000 feet.