This experience was
the subject of a later article entitled A Cigar-Shaped UFO over Antarctica.
"At the beginning of January 1956, during a period of stormy weather, the party
suddenly became aware of something which, in other circumstances, could have
been very grave for them. This was that their radio had mysteriously ceased to
function. This was not too worrying a disaster in so much as it was firmly
settled that the helicopter would return to take them off again on January 20."
One of the scientists, a doctor, was in the habit of getting up
in the night to observe anything of meteorological interest, but another of the
group, a professor, did not like to be disturbed. However on the night of
8th January 1956, the Doctor decided to wake the professor. He
pointed upwards, almost overhead. Still in a bad temper through being
disturbed, [the professor] looked as directed, and beheld two 'metallic'
cigar-shaped objects in verticular positions, perfectly still and silent, and
flashing vividly the reflected rays of the sun."
Soon after 7.00am, two other members of the party, an assistant
and a medical orderly joined the two men. The group watched the two craft. At
about 9.00am object No. 1 (the nearest to the zenith) suddenly assumed a
horizontal posture and shot away like a flash towards the west. It had now lost
its metallic brightness and had taken on the whole gamut of visible colours of
the spectrum, from infrared to ultra-violet. Without slowing down it performed an incredible acute-angle
change of direction, shot off across another section of the sky and then did
another sharp turn as before. These vertiginous manoeuvres, the zig-zagging,
abrupt stopping, instantaneous accelerating, went on for some time right
overhead, the object always following tangential trajectories in respect to the
Earth and all in the most absolute silence.
"The demonstration
lasted about five minutes. Then the object returned and took up position beside
its companion in almost the same area of the sky as before, but now it was the
turn of No. 2 to show its paces and do a weird zigzagging dance. Shooting off
towards the east, it performed a series of ten disappointed bursts of flight,
broken by brusque changes of direction, and marked by the same colour changes
when accelerating or stopping, and so on. After about three minutes of this,
object No. 2 returned and took up its station near its companion, and reassumed
its original solid and metallic appearance.
"The scientists had with them two Geiger-Miller counters of
high sensitivity, one of the auditory and the other of the flash-type. When the
two objects had finished their dance and reassumed their stations in the sky,
someone discovered that the flash-type Geiger counter now showed that
radioactivity around them had suddenly increased 40 times - enough to kill any
organism subjected long enough to it. The discovery greatly increased the
anxiety felt by the four men. Although they had no telescopic lens, they did however have
cameras with them, and they took numerous photographs of the objects, both in
colour and black and white. We are not told in the report what became of these
photographs." (24).
Five years later there was another documented account of a UFO
sighting over Antarctica by Rubens Junqueira Villela, a meteorologist and the
first Brazilian scientist to participate in an expedition to the white
continent, now a veteran of eleven expeditions to Antarctica (two with the US
Navy, eight with the Brazilian Antarctic Programme and another on the sailing
ship Rapa Nui). Whilst on board the US Navy icebreaker Glacier which had
set sail from New Zealand at the end of January 1961, Villela claims that he
witnessed a UFO event in the skies over Antarctica which he immediately recorded
in his diary, even including the emotions felt by all those involved. During
16th March 1961 and after a fierce storm had forced the expedition to
retreat to Admiralty Bay in the King George Isles, "a strange light suddenly
crossed the sky, and everyone started to shout. 'It's a missile!' said one excited Marine. 'No, it's a
meteor,' barked another member of the crew. The excitement was wide-spread and
growing. Trying to describe the light which appeared over wasn't
easy. I wrote in my diary: 'Positively the colours, the configuration and
contours of the object, as a bodied [sic] light, with geometric forms, did not
seem to be from this world, and I did not know what could possibly reproduce
it.'
"The object was multi-coloured and had a luminous body
oval-shaped. It left a long tube-like orange/red trail. Suddenly, it split into
two pieces, as if it had exploded. Each part shone even more intensively, with
white, blue and red colours projecting 'V' shaped rays behind it. Quite quickly
they moved away and could be seen 200 meters above the ground. Throughout the
sighting no noise was heard by any of the witnesses." The US Navy officially registered the incident as "a meteor or some
other natural luminous phenomenon" according to the report submitted by the
Glacier's captain, Captain Porter. As a trained meteorologist, Villela easily dismissed the official line. "How
could they mistake a meteor with an object carrying antennae, completely
symmetrical and followed by a tail without any sight of atmospheric
disturbance?" (25). The renowned sceptic and self-styled debunker, Phillip Klaus,
believes this episode is a classic example of 'plasma', however the late
meteorologist, James McDonald argued that the highly structured nature of the
object and the low cloud overcast present at about 1500 feet were not compatible
with Klass's hypothesis.
The South Atlantic area was also host to another sighting on
16th January 1958 when the Brazilian naval vessel Almirante
Salddanha was escorting a team of scientists to a weather station on
Trindade Island. As the ship approached the island (or rather an outcrop of rock)
a UFO reportedly swooped past the ship, circled the island, then flew off in
front of dozens of witnesses. One of these witnesses, the expedition photographer, took a
number of photographs of the object, and later the film was handed over to the
military by the Captain. After analysis, the Brazilian government released the
film stating that they were unable to account for the images. Whatever was going on in the Antarctic region, it certainly
wasn't happening in isolation.
Explore forgotton clues scattered throughout history that are suggestive
of an alternative history.
Join the world-wide search for evidence
of a lost civilisation that predates
known history.
Has Earth already been contacted by other civilisations either in the distant past or in recent centuries?
A discussion of the emergence of advanced technologies and the bizarre invasion of Antarctica after WWII.
A discussion of sightings of UFOs in the sky above Earth and within the solar system, including Moon anomalies.
Evidence the Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials and how the public had been subject to disinformation.
A list of credits and sources for the themes and issues explored
in Violations.
Violations is now available to purchase in
paperback or Kindle versions complete
with exclusive additional content!