Mexican Air Force Campeche FLIR Video

Friday, March 5, 2004. A Mexican Air Force Merlin C-26A from the 501 Aerial Squadron was flying a routine anti-drug patrol over southern Campeche. On board were eight airmen, a search radar and a FLIR Star SAFIRE II infrared camera. Three of the crew would later speak on the record. Maj. Magdaleno Castañón Muñoz, the pilot. Lt. Germán Marín Ramírez, on radar. Lt. Mario Adrián Vázquez Téllez, on the infrared camera.

Just before five in the afternoon, the radar operator found an unknown echo. It was 37 miles away. The plane closed in to within two miles. By then the echo had become several.

Outside, there was nothing to see. On the infrared screen, there was plenty. Bright points of heat. "They were spherical all the time," the camera operator said. They flew in formation, two or three together. "There are ten, eleven objects," the cockpit audio recorded. "My God, what's that."

The plane turned back toward base. The first echo followed. On radar, the targets changed speed suddenly, 60, 120, 300 knots. "Why are they following us?" Then the lights seemed to close in. "We are not alone… they are surrounding us." Major Castañón later described it. "There was a moment when the screens showed they were behind us, to the left and in front of us. It was at that point that I felt a bit tense." Running short of fuel, the crew gave up the chase and returned safely to base.

On April 20, 2004, the journalist and ufologist Jaime Maussan met senior officers. Two days later he had a copy of the recordings. On May 11 he showed them to the press, and SEDENA, Mexico's Defence Ministry, confirmed it had provided the video. "They were invisible to the eye but they were there, there is no doubt about it," Maussan said. Lieutenant Vázquez was careful. "I couldn't say what it was … but I think they're completely real." Defence Secretary Gen. Clemente Ricardo Vega García said only this. "All I can say is that those white spots are there, they were recorded, and that is all the information we have."

The first explanation arrived on May 17. Julio Herrera Velázquez, a nuclear researcher at UNAM, proposed ball lightning. Alberto Hernández Unzón of the National Meteorological Service called that "nonsense." Bruce Maccabee argued that ball lightning, even if it formed in clear air, "wouldn't move at all."

Then Capt. Alejandro Franz of the research group Alcione pointed across the Bay of Campeche. On July 24, 2004, aerospace engineer James C. Smith published the case in eSkeptic. He matched the lights to 10 gas flares on the Akal-C, Akal-J and Nohoch-A platforms of the Cantarell oil field, 110 to 120 miles away. In 2012, Ben McGee showed National Geographic's Chasing UFOs how one light splits into two as the angle changes. Metabunk researchers later found NASA fire data confirming heat sources at Cantarell that day.

The radar contacts are another matter. Smith noted that the segment with ten lights showed no radar return, and analysts treat the echoes separately. For those who side with the crew, that is where the mystery lives.

In 2021, Mexican outlets reported SEDENA's answer to a transparency request. The footage had gone to Maussan in person. SEDENA kept no copy. "No veía la utilidad de que se quedara eso grabado ahí," former Defence Secretary Vega García explained. Every copy online traces back to that handover. Eight months later, a US Navy infrared camera would record the Nimitz "Tic Tac." Campeche came first.