The Cabo Rojo Incident: F-14 Jets Vanish Near a Giant Triangle

In the late 1980s, south-western Puerto Rico was alive with UFO reports. Writer Scott Corrales would later call the years from 1987 to 1997 Puerto Rico's "incredible decade". Between the towns of Cabo Rojo and Lajas runs Sierra Bermeja, a low range with its own local folklore of a secret UFO base hidden somewhere inside. Nearby lies Laguna Cartagena.

Wednesday, December 28, 1988. Around 6 pm, an object appeared over Sierra Bermeja. In the Betances community of Cabo Rojo, Wilson Sosa watched through binoculars with his wife and children. One French account gives his name as Wilson Rosa.

A large triangle, slightly rounded toward the rear. Grey metal. Many coloured, blinking lights, and a glowing yellow sphere at its centre. Corrales described "a mammoth triangular UFO shaped like a guitar plectrum and with blinking lights". Estimates of its size ranged from a baseball field to a football field. "It was enormous!" Sosa said. "It was blinking and had many coloured lights."

About 7:45 pm. The craft was "seen moving steadily along in the region near the naval air station". Three F-14s intercepted it and apparently tried to force it off course. In Corrales's words, "the giant UFO turned around with uncanny ease as one of the jets blocked its flight path. The massive intruder remained motionless, suspended in mid-air." Sosa found it inconceivable that something so large could hold itself almost motionless like that.

One jet stayed mostly to the right. Another stayed behind, making close approaches. Then the rear jet flew over or under the object. It was not seen again. "I can't say exactly what happened," Sosa said. Through his binoculars, he never saw it reappear behind, above, or anywhere else. Corrales put it plainly: "Whether it collided and disintegrated, or whether it was absorbed or 'captured' by the UFO is unclear."

The object's corners deformed. A great flash burst from the yellow sphere. It split down the middle into two triangular parts, one lit yellow and one red, and each half sped off in a different direction. The third jet fled north on afterburner, witnesses said, chased by red balls of light that came out of the UFO.

The night was not over. According to Jorge Martín, black, unmarked helicopters with their lights off patrolled low from 8:20 pm until midnight. At 8:30 pm, a military Cessna landed at Mayagüez airport with four investigators, as reported by operations supervisor Carlos Racroft. One account adds that at dawn, 17 F-14s flew over in formation with an AWACS aircraft.

Martín contacted the agencies. The FAA office in Puerto Rico knew of no UFO incident but acknowledged military manoeuvres from Roosevelt Roads Naval Station. Roosevelt Roads first denied any flights. The National Guard bases at Muñiz and Camp Santiago in Salinas denied any involvement. An FAA official named Mirabal reportedly spoke of a classified UFO department in Washington. None of this has been corroborated.

The case rests almost entirely on Martín's investigation, which later writers copied. FURA, the police anti-drug radar unit at San Germán, reportedly confirmed intense combat aircraft activity, but no radar data has ever been produced. No photographs of the event exist. In 2014, a man who said he flew F-14s from 1989 to 1996 wrote that there were no loss records: "there is none for that date in Puerto Rico. Not even for 1989." Navy veteran Alan Caviness recalled a shipmate's story of a squadron losing two F-14s at once, but could not name the squadron. No crew names or serial numbers have ever surfaced.

Wilson Sosa presented the case at the 1991 International UFO Conference in Laughlin, Nevada. Timothy Good published it as "US Jets Abducted at Puerto Rico" in The UFO Report. One online account claims Jacques Vallée came to verify the case, though nothing from Vallée himself confirms it. The story is often confused with Amaury Rivera's 1988 photograph said to show F-14s shadowing a disc over Cabo Rojo. Still, witnesses in Lajas and Cabo Rojo reportedly agreed on the details and their sketches without knowing each other. The case has never been explained.