Argentina: Saucers Over Antarctica? (1991)

Source: El Fuego del Dragón and Planeta UFO
Date: 04.11.10

Argentina: Saucers Over Antarctica? (1991)
By Miguel Amaya

I am an officer in the Argentinean Air Force, still on active duty. I perform my duties at the Resistencia Airport, specializing in Meteorology, subspecializing as a Weather Observer and Radiosonde Operator. I am someone who is able to distinguish atmospheric phenomena and aircraft from any other thing that is suspended in the air.

I shall endeavor to make my story brief. This occurred at the General San Martin base in the Argentinean Antarctic, more or less in April or May 1991. I don’t remember very well, but I know that it was at the start of the polar night. The base’s crew complement was 20, both scientists and military.

The main protagonists were the three civilians on base, who were in another shack not far from our own and had their laboratory within. As scientists, their job was to study the layers of the upper atmosphere (ionosphere) and that is where they kept their measuring instruments. The engineer is a very good, open-minded person – a resident of Mar del Plata, called XXXX and is an electronic engineer by profession.

The only phone on the base rang that evening at around 01:15. It connected the laboratory to the weather station. It was the engineer, asking if the radio operators had their gear connected and broadcasting to the continent. When I advised him that I was the only one awake at the time, and no one else was around, he hung up immediately without explanation. I continued to make my weather observations without further developments. Outside, it kept snowing. We had some six or seven days of constant snow. Clouds were between 30 and 60 meters (low stratus), visibility was restricted to 200-300 meters and temperatures at the time were between –20 to –25 centigrade. My shift ended without any developments and I went to bed after being relieved from duty.

I woke up at around 17:00 hours. I remember not eating anything, but I felt a great urge to go outside ( may I remind you that we were on a very small island). I went outside, walked around the base, and climbed to a height above the house where there was a small grotto containing a statue of the Virgin Mary. I sat on a rock – the view was extraordinary – and I saw that another member of the base had arrived: a radio operator from the Argentinean Army, who I recognized when he took off his goggles. It wouldn’t ‘ve surprised me to see another comrade, but this fellow was prone to the cold and never left the baste. At that time, temperatures were more or less –25 C, which was startling. When I asked him what he was doing outside, he replied that he felt the need to go outside. We stayed there around 15 minutes and went back to avoid freezing. Everyting was normal up to that point.

At dinnertime, my place at the table was next to the engineer who had phoned me in the evening. I asked him why he’d called, and he gave me a look indicating that he didn’t know what to say. I looked back, and all the base personnel went quiet. I didn’t understand what was happening. He then asked whether I lived inside a thermos bottle. I repeated that I had no idea what was going on, and that’s when he told me.

At approximately 01:00 hours, they were about to go to bed when an item of equipment (I belived it’s called a Ryometer) began to issue an alarm, indicating that a signal was being measured or picked up. They connected another unit of equipment that was more or less an amplifier with a three-armed register system (something like a seismograph). The unit began to operate normaly, but after five minutes, the three needles started to make the same repeteated marks – an impossibility, according to the engineer, because according to the example he gave me, it was sort of like the clocks on a car’s dashboard – one measures engine temperature, another measures oil pressure, and still another measures the battery. This was impossible. At intervals, these “signals” were interrupted and everything became normal. It would start up again in ten to fifteen minute intervals, sometimes with such force that they would fly off the chart.

He told me that around 03:00 hours, three of them went outside with flashlights to see if there was a UFO stationed above them, as such marks could have only been made “if the “USS Kitty Hawk” had been anchored 10 meters away from the house with its nuclear engines at full power, or a city the size of Buenos Aires suspended 100 meters over the surface with all of its lights on.” (A literal quote).

The signals ended around 05:30 hours that morning. It was a Friday and at around 08:00, the engineer contacted the Dirección General del Antártico (General Office of the Antarctic) to report to his superior (Engineer XXXX). When he began to tell him about the intensity of the signals, of an intensity recorded nowhere else in the world, his boss interrupted him, saying “that could never be”, which caused our companion to reply that he had 40 meters of chart roll as evidence, which were received over four and a half hours of recording. The superior replied: “Well, Engineer XXX, there are some subjects that cannot be discussed over the wireless, so when I visit the base in February aboard the Q5 (the icebreaker Almirante Iznar) you’ll hand over that chart roll personally. From this day on you’ll carry it on you (figuratively) and don’t send it along in any flight. Let’s not discuss the subject further and move on to something else.”

It didn’t end thre. After dinner I went to take a look at the roll. At around 22:00 hours I returned to the Meteorological Station, where one of the three members of the lab stopped by to retrieve his coat, saying goodnight early, as he hadn’t had much sleep the night before. Five minutes later, the phone rang I and heard the voice of [name withheld] excitedly asking me to go to thelab. Upon reaching it, I noticed that he was very nervous. He said that after leaving my office, walking some 15 meters from the main residence, he felt the urge to look skyward (although it was still snowing and the clouds were low) and saw an enormous circle of light, dimmed by the clouds, flying overhead. Even so it was still visible, and it headed out slowly to sea without making a sound.

(Translation (c) 2010, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Carlos Iurchuk of “El Fuego del Dragón” and Guillermo Giménez]