Spain.Montánchez · jets climb but cannot reach a bright object

On the afternoon of June 3, 1967, a T-33 jet trainer of the Talavera la Real Jet School, callsign Duende 20, with two captains aboard, was flying from Torrejón to its base. It had taken off at 15:55 universal time. On reaching the overhead of Montánchez, at about 22,000 feet (6,700 meters; flight level 220), the pilots saw at eleven o'clock, slightly left of the nose, a very bright object well above them. They reported it to the Matador alert and control squadron, one of the air-defense radar stations, which asked the operations center for permission to attempt an interception and got it.

The pilots climbed toward the object but could not reach it: they had the impression it was rising as they rose. That is how it was recorded on the magnetic tape of the conversation, which the file transcribes: "it is stationary… it looks like a white, bright balloon", and later, "the higher I climb, the higher it gets".

On the same tape, however, the pilot insists: "it is not an aircraft we are seeing, it is something strange", and later, "it is a strange object, not an aircraft or anything, but I do not know what it is". Twice they noticed strong radio interference when passing beneath it. The pilots described a shape that changed with the angle: first rounded, at 16:37 triangular, with the side facing away from the Sun brighter.

At 16:26 a second alert and control squadron, Bolero, picked up on its radar an object that seemed to be orbiting over the Talavera area; since the T-33 was in contact with Matador, it only listened. At 16:45 Matador's radar also had it: the height-finding radar showed two signals, although only the T-33 showed on the radar that sweeps the horizon; the controller read the second signal about 2,000 feet (600 meters) below the aircraft, and the pilot corrected him: the object was "much, much" higher, "close to 50,000 feet". He added that it could be seen "from 200 miles around" and that it seemed to be drifting very slowly toward the south-southwest.

Around 16:52 Matador did separate the object from the aircraft on the radar that sweeps the horizon: "we think we have that object on the screen," the controller said, and placed it 20 miles from the T-33 on a bearing of 095. The pilot agreed ("well, it looks like it") and headed toward it; the controller gave it at 15 miles on a bearing of 103 and then at twelve o'clock, at 10 and 8 miles, until the pilot reported: "the object is directly above us." In his June 5 report, Bolero's commander logged his echo's positions at 16:26 and 16:28, and three more between 17:27 and 17:33, while the F-86s were intercepting it; he added that the Pegaso team chief, at the operations center, later asked by phone that it be reclassified as "friendly" and disregarded.

At 16:59, with the T-33 short of fuel, a pair of F-86F fighters from Torrejón, callsign EL-01, carrying cameras, was ordered up. They made visual contact at 17:24; one climbed to 30,000 feet (9,100 meters) and the other to 42,000 (12,800 meters), and they tried to intercept for about twenty minutes without being able to close on an object that, according to their reports, kept gaining height. They took photographs; the file keeps only one very poor-quality print showing a point of light. All three aircraft returned for lack of fuel.

On June 8 the Air Defence Command sent the Air Staff a report with the statements of the Matador and Bolero commanders, the records of what both radars had followed, the tape transcript, the F-86 pilots' reports and the photograph; on June 14 it added the report of the two T-33 captains and a clipping from Badajoz's "Hoja del Lunes", which had published the sighting on the 5th. Its conclusions were cautious: the real existence of a strange object in Badajoz airspace, which none of the pilots could identify; that all three aircraft always flew below it without reaching its height; differing views on its shape, which seemed to change with the observer's position; and very slow or no horizontal movement over a long period.

In 1992, when preparing its declassification, the Air Operations Command summarized the case on a record sheet. It notes that pilots and controllers agreed on the possibility of a balloon, though at times they doubted it because of the brightness of the side away from the Sun, and adds a consideration: the double radar detection made the presence of a solid physical object, with very slow horizontal movement, undeniable. In the recorded conversation, the controller reminds the pilot of an earlier case, a balloon from Betanzos "that they launched into the air" and for which "many scrambles were sent", and asks whether he thinks it is "a controlled object".

The Montánchez file combines military pilots, two radars, fighters sent up with cameras, a recorded tape and an air command's report and, at the same time, almost everything that points to a conventional explanation. A bright object that stays almost motionless for over an hour, far above the ceiling of a T-33 and an F-86, that seems to climb when the aircraft climb, whose shape changes with the angle of the Sun and that the pilot places at about 50,000 feet is the portrait of a stratospheric research balloon, of the kind being launched in Europe in those years. The pilot said so on the frequency ("it looks like a white, bright balloon") and the controller recalled an earlier balloon case, although the same pilot repeated that it was "something strange" he could not identify.

The file's most quoted sentence, "the double radar detection makes the presence of a solid physical object undeniable", is correct, and it is exactly what one would expect of a large balloon with its payload: a real, slow, high object that reflects radar. Undeniable does not mean anomalous, and the radar record itself is less precise than the sentence suggests: the height of about 50,000 feet is the pilot's estimate, since the height-finding radar placed the second signal below the T-33.

The illusion that the object rises as the aircraft rises is typical of balloon chases, because a climbing pilot always sees the object above him until he reaches its altitude. Some details remain without a closed explanation (the radio interference, the change of shape), which wind, the geometry of sunlight and the balloon's own payload may explain, but which the file does not resolve.

Its documentation is complete, and it points to the misidentification of a balloon. It is also a good portrait of Spanish air defense in the 1960s: rapid reaction, a complete chain of command, a real interception attempt and a report that, without naming the balloon, leaves the hypothesis written on the tape. The Ministry of Defence collection publishes it in full, under an open license, which lets readers read the transcript and judge for themselves.