Ota Air Base UFO Incident

Ota Air Base UFO Incident

Date: November 2, 1982

Location: Ota, Portugal

In the chapter he wrote for UFOs, Airline Captain Júlio Miguel Guerra relives his lengthy encounter with a highly active UFO while serving as a flight instructor for the Portuguese Air Force in 1982.

He writes:

At various times the object had been very close to me and I was able to verify that it was round with 2 halves shaped like 2 tight fitting skullcaps. I carefully looked at the lower one, which seemed to be somewhere between red and brown with a hole or dark spot in the center.

The center band looked like it had some kind of a grid, and possibly a few lights, but it was hard to tell since the sun was so bright and was reflected.

The object circled his small airplane for 15 minutes while he was alone in the sky, in his DHC-1 Chipmunk. He made this drawing the day after the encounter and submitted it with his report to the Portuguese Air Force.

Guerra states that the object flew at a fantastic speed in a large elliptical orbit to the left, between 5,000' to the South and approximately 10,000' to the North, always from left to right, repeating this route over and over.

I tried to keep it in sight.

2 fellow Air Force officers, Carlos Garcęs and António Gomes, flew to the location, and they too watched the object repeat its elliptical course, passing between both planes on each return, for about 10 minutes.

They were able to estimate the size, given its proximity to the aircraft: about 8' to 10'.

Guerra made the decision he would intercept the object. Realizing that he would not be able to chase down the craft due to its superior speed, he instead headed for a spot where he anticipated it to be. He almost met the craft head on before it swerved upwards and came to a stop right above his plane.

After landing, all 3 pilots filed detailed, independent written reports with the Air Force.

General José Lemos Ferreira, the Portuguese Air Force Chief of Staff at the time, authorized the release of all the records to a team of scientists and experts, which conducted a lengthy scientific investigation.

The group estimated that the unidentified object was flying at over 300 mph vertically and its velocity when it circled Guerra’s aircraft was about 1550 mph.

Perhaps the reason for the ease the files would become available for investigators was due to the Portuguese Air Force Chief of Staff, General Jose Lemos Ferreira’s personal experience with such matters.

He himself had witnessed a very similar craft, decades earlier when he was still a young squadron leader.

What’s more, the sighting occurred in the same skies as the 1982 encounter, over Ota Air Force Base.

Ferreira’s incident would occur on the evening of September 4, 1957. Leading his squadron of F84G Thunder Jets at around 9:00 p.m., a strange, bright object came into view. Colored red/blue/white & green all emanated from the craft.

All pilots were aware of the craft, and all would recall seeing smaller orb like objects leave the main body.

After observing the scene for several minutes, he would lead his squadron back to base and file a report.

The government stated it was a weather balloon, all crews rejected that statement.

Accoding to their estimates, the craft had managed vertical speeds of close to 300 mph, not the kinds of speeds that a weather balloon could manage.

When flying around the Chipmunk planes, those speeds were likely 5 times as fast, close to 1,500 mph.

Offically the sighting remains unidentified, but that the craft is of intelligent design, according to the pilots.

Since leaving the Air Force in 1990 after 18 years of service, Júlio Guerra has been a Captain with Portugália Airlines, TAP, Portugal’s largest commercial airline.

He has 17,000 hours of flight experience, and in 2009 he received an aeronautic science degree from the Lusofona University of Oporto.

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