Peru.La Joya · a Peruvian fighter fires on an object

On the morning of April 11, 1980, around 7:15 a.m., according to later accounts of the case, some 1,800 personnel assembled in formation in the yard of La Joya Air Base, in the Arequipa desert, observed a luminous spherical object hovering near the perimeter, a few kilometers away and at low altitude. Suspecting a foreign surveillance balloon over sensitive military facilities, the command ordered an interception. Lieutenant Óscar Santa María Huertas, about 23, took off in a Sukhoi Su-22 armed with 140 rounds of 30 mm cannon.

By his account, on his first approach he fired a burst of 64 rounds that formed "a wall of fire" over the object; none seemed to damage it, and the object absorbed the impact or dodged it with no visible effect. On the next three approaches, each time Santa María locked onto the object and was about to fire, it climbed or moved away at high speed and stopped again out of range, in a pattern the pilot read as deliberate evasion. He came, by his testimony, within about 90 meters of the object, close enough to describe it in detail. The pursuit, at varying altitudes and toward high levels, lasted about 22 minutes. Out of useful ammunition and low on fuel, the pilot returned to base.

The object, which he described as about 10 meters across, with a shiny cream-colored upper dome, like a light bulb cut in half, and a wide silver circular base, remained stationary in the sky for nearly two more hours, in view of hundreds of personnel.

No instrumental record survives: no gun-camera film or published radar tracks are preserved, and the Peruvian Air Force published no report. There is, however, a contemporaneous record, from another state: intelligence report IR 6 876 0146 80, "UFO sighted in Peru", prepared by Col. Norman H. Runge at the U.S. defense attaché office in Lima with a date of information of May 10, 1980, and received at the Joint Chiefs of Staff on June 3. Its source is an FAP officer "who observed the event". According to the report, the object was spotted on two occasions near Mariano Melgar Air Base at La Joya. The first was on the morning of May 9, when a group of officers in formation saw a UFO "round in shape, hovering near the airfield"; the air commander scrambled an Su-22 and the pilot, "according to a third party", intercepted it and fired upon it "at very close range without causing any apparent damage"; on a second attempt the UFO out-ran the Su-22.

The second occasion was in the early evening of May 10: the vehicle was lighted, another Su-22 was scrambled, and again it out-ran the aircraft. The originator added that he had heard discussion of the sighting from other sources: "apparently some vehicle was spotted, but its origin remains unknown". The report differs from the pilot's later account in the date (May 9 versus April 11) and in the number of sorties, and it conveys the firing second-hand. Santa María testified publicly for decades (including before international forums and in the U.S.) and kept to the essentials of his account.

There is a named officer, a military base as the setting and, by the accounts, hundreds of witnesses. The base's initial suspicion was a surveillance balloon from another state; what the pilot describes (an object that withstood 64 rounds and moved away each time he locked onto it) does not fit that suspicion.

The episode rests on Santa María's testimony, sustained for forty years, with no gun-camera film or published radar record to back it. Almost all the anomalous content (the absorbed fire, the evasion, the dimensions) comes from a single narrator. The only contemporaneous document, from another state, conveys the firing second-hand and differs from the pilot's account in the date and the number of sorties.