Flying Saucers UFO Reports

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

Janeiro, special representative for APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Organization) was among the many persons who became interested in the photos. Typical of the conscientious work done by researchists and investigators for APRO, Dr. Fontes went to the Navy Ministry, was shown the four photos, plus a fifth which he learned later had been taken by another photographer at an earlier sighting in the same area.

In his characteristically well documented report to APRO (later published in the January, March and May, 1960, APRO Bulletins, and incorporated in The Great Flying Saucer Hoax, by Coral E. Lorenzen, co-founder of APRO), Dr. Fontes revealed some startling and hitherto unpublished information. There had been six previous sightings in the Trindade area before the filmed sequence taken aboard the Almirante Saldanha; one in November, two in December and four in early January. It was the sixth of these, an incident on January 6, that held the attention of Dr. Fontes.

On that date a weather balloon, equipped with a full instrument load to be jettisoned some 14,000 feet up over Trindade, was being tracked from the ground when its signals suddenly became faint and its transmitter finally silent. The balloon was still climbing and nearing the cumulus cloud head when it appeared to be sucked into a cloud and disappeared from sight. Ten minutes later it reappeared, traveling so fast that it was apparent the instrument load was gone. Somehow the balloon had entered the cloud with the full instrument load and reappeared ten minutes later without it. The instruments were never found; never seen coming down. Then from Coral Lorenzen's account; based on Dr. Fontes' report: "... soon after the balloon reappeared another object left the cloud. A silvery object, the color of polished aluminum, came slowly from behind the cloud, moving in a south-west to east direction . . . it appeared to have the shape of a half-moon, and it altered its course finally, moving from east to west."

In the seventh sighting, occurring just a few days before Barauna filmed his shots, witnesses described the object they saw hovering over Desejado peak as a "highly polished flattened spheroid," encircled by a rapidly spinning ring. It appeared to be intelligently controlled. A photo of this is the one Dr. Fontes believes to have been the fifth photo shown him by the Navy Ministry.

It is in her book that Coral Lorenzen brings several items to the attention of UFOlogists: (1) The unidentified objects were sighted at the scene of and only after a former war base was reactivated and supplied with men and equipment. (2) One and possibly two of these objects were photographed and the one set of photos that was subjected to extensive investigation and analysis by objective agents, was declared genuine and without evidence of trickery or falsification. (3) Indication of interference with a weather balloon by an unidentified object that may have absconded with meteorological instrumentation equipment. (4) Only pressure from the press and public brought about publication of the photos which had been treated with utmost secrecy by the Brazilian Navy.

In NICAP's The UFO Evidence, for which ratings are provided for photographs of unidentified objects according to their acceptability as authentic, the Barauna sequence is given an $ ^{*} $ (considered strongest evidence of UFOs.)