The Dwikora UFOs: Anti-Aircraft Fire Over East Java, 1964

September 1964. Indonesia was at the height of Operasi Dwikora, its Confrontation with Malaysia and Britain. What happened next over East Java comes to us mostly through one man. R. J. Salatun was an Air Force officer, scientific adviser to the Air Force Minister, and the founder of LAPAN. In 1982 he told the story in his book UFO: Salah Satu Masalah Dunia Masa Kini.

For one week, from 18 to 24 September, the objects came every night. They appeared after sunset. They were gone just before dawn. The reports formed a triangle between Surabaya, Malang and Bangkalan on Madura.

Witnesses did not agree on a single shape. Some saw a black object that sometimes showed a fiery tail longer than a jet's exhaust flame, with a very bright light underneath. One saw a greenish-blue ellipsoid and compared it to a mango. An Air Force pilot near Porong saw something round like a traffic signal, glowing deep red. It drifted toward Surabaya without any sound at all. Others heard a hum like a spinning top, nothing like an aircraft.

The objects flew low, only about 1,200 m. They moved unpredictably, slowing like a helicopter, then shooting off at high speed. The radar station at Ngliyep, near Malang, picked up targets circling over the coast. Sources say they were seen by eye and on radar at the same time. The Army's air defence guns opened fire. Nothing was hit. Instead, fragments of the Army's own shells fell on the Sidoarjo area, injuring several people sitting outside their houses.

One account goes further. A farmer at Ngliyep reportedly saw a round object land in the middle of a cornfield. Two foreigners came out, in shiny silvery clothes. They had blond hair. They asked the farmer, "Ini jagung?" Is this corn? A naval helicopter later checked the site. It found no physical evidence.

On 29 September 1964 the National Air Defence Command, Kohanudnas, filed its report. The targets were real, it concluded. They were conventional aircraft and unmanned craft, hostile, flying a psychological-warfare mission. The suspected origin was the British carrier HMS Victorious, said to be roughly south of Kendari. On 8 October Dr J. Leimena urged the public to stay calm and not to spread rumours.

Air Marshal Roesmin Nurjadin, the Air Force chief, confirmed it in a letter of 5 May 1967: "Sometimes they pose a problem for our Air Defence and once we were obliged to open fire on them." Salatun called it the most spectacular UFO incident in Indonesia, each time "welcomed with perhaps the heaviest anti-aircraft barrage in history."

No photographs or film are known. No radar records have been published. No 1964 newspaper coverage has been found, and nearly every retelling traces back to Salatun. The official theory has loose ends too. HMS Victorious reportedly passed through the Lombok Strait on 12 September, six days before the sightings began. Kendari lies in Southeast Sulawesi, far from East Java. No skeptical analysis has ever been published.

The case lives on through BETA-UFO, the Indonesian community whose name Salatun coined, and through a stream of articles and videos. BETA-UFO illustrates it with images of the Battle of Los Angeles of 1942, another night of anti-aircraft fire and injuries from falling shells. In 2021 Guntur Sukarnoputra said his father, Sukarno, believed in UFOs and asked that the subject stay confidential.