Spain.Morón · a jet pilot sees a gray object that seems to hover

On February 23, 1995, a captain of 211 Squadron, in the Spanish Air Force's Wing 21, was returning to Morón de la Frontera air base, in Seville, in a CASA C-101 jet trainer, known in the Air Force as the E-25. He was flying low, some 1,000 feet above the ground, on heading 030 (30 degrees east of north), over the Cádiz hills. At about 12:35 local time, according to the questionnaire he later filled in, he saw at his one o'clock (ahead and slightly to the right), almost directly over the village of Puerto Serrano, an oval, light gray object.

It seemed to be hovering: he held his heading and saw that the object did not change position relative to the ground. In the sketch he drew for the file, the object appears as a dark elongated mark to the right, between the Montellano hill and the village. As he passed it, he saw it suddenly accelerate on the heading opposite to his, the object by then at his four o'clock (to the right and slightly behind), and vanish from sight.

In the questionnaire he described it as "a lentil, light gray in color", solid, sharp-edged and without light, "not very far"; he noted that the observation lasted about ten seconds, through the windshield, and that he could not determine its size, but that at that distance it "seemed [...] the size of a vulture".

The first messages record, in the pilot's first person, that the object stayed stationary "until the crossing, at some 500 ft or less (300 ft)", that is, about 150 meters or less, without the quotation making clear whether this is a distance or a height, and then "accelerated at great speed (400-500 kts)". They were the Strait Air Command's note of February 27 and the Morón base's message of March 1, which on those same data judged it "not appropriate" to open an investigation for lack of other sources. The next day the Strait Air Command reported that a file was being opened. In the questionnaire the pilot only noted that he "had the impression that it accelerated rapidly on the opposite heading".

The aircraft was at that moment in radio and radar contact with the duty controller of the Seville Operational Air Traffic Flight (ECAO), who stated that radar contact with the C-101 was intermittent because of the aircraft's low altitude and that at no time did he see anything else in the area. He added that even if an object had existed at that height it could hardly have been tracked, because Puerto Serrano is surrounded by mountains. The major commanding that unit, at the investigating officer's request, checked with Seville approach control staff whether any traffic seen on the radar screens that day could be linked to the object; the search was negative.

Morón base, the nearest to Puerto Serrano, 15 nautical miles (about 28 km) away, confirmed that no traffic that could explain the sighting had taken off or landed at that time, and its tower had no record of any flight over Puerto Serrano. The base weather office reported a stable atmosphere, an almost clear sky and good visibility. On February 27 the Strait Air Command reported the sighting by fax to the Chief of the Air Staff and the Air Operations Command; according to the file's index, a later fax (009/95) cancelled the one sent that day. On March 2 it informed the same recipients that the officer appointed as investigator was opening a file, and on April 20 it gave the file the number 01-MAEST-95.

The officer interviewed the Civil Guard post commanders of the two nearest villages and asked them to make discreet inquiries among their neighbors. Nobody had seen anything, but one of the sergeants provided a detail: on that February 23, at about 12:30, the Tour of Andalusia cycle race was passing along the Puerto Serrano road, with several television helicopters flying over the race. The officer also took the statement of a married couple who had seen something strange around then, but concluded it was unrelated: it was on another day, near Jerez, and probably traffic from Rota base or Jerez airport.

Finally, the officer checked the aircraft. Several Wing 21 C-101s had scratched canopies with microfractures on the right side, a defect pilots call "crazy" that, with the sun to one side, produces glare and opacity. The captain's aircraft was one of them, and the pilot had seen the object precisely through that side. The captain himself acknowledged that the defect could cause reflections or false alarms.

The investigating officer did not stop at the statement of the witness, a captain and professional pilot, nor at the absence of radar, which in mountainous terrain says nothing. He looked for what else was in the air that midday, and found it by a humble route: a Civil Guard sergeant's remark about a cycle race. Television helicopters following a stage fly low, hover almost motionless over the road and dart off at full speed when the peloton moves on: exactly the behavior the pilot describes, an object stationary over the village that suddenly accelerates in the opposite direction.

The second piece is physical. The aircraft's canopy had microfractures on the side through which the pilot looked, and that kind of defect produces glare and loss of sharpness that distort what is seen behind it. A distant helicopter, seen through scratched Plexiglas with the sun to one side, can become a gray oval smudge with no visible rotor.

There is a single witness, with no radar or visual confirmation, and the proposed explanation was not fully verified: the file does not identify which helicopter was over Puerto Serrano at 12:35 or reconstruct its path. The investigating officer does not discuss the 400 to 500 knot figure of the first messages, but his explanation covers the movement: "it is probable that the captain saw a helicopter, first hovering and then moving".

The match in place and time is very close, the optical mechanism is documented and the command accepted it: on June 6, 1995 the lieutenant general commanding the Strait Air Command assessed the event as "a conjunction of two causal and casual factors", the helicopter and the scratched canopy, which "can cause a false visual appreciation and a surprising optical illusion", and added that the mission's including no other aircraft, the pilot's flying alone and his not deciding to close on the object to identify it "reaffirm the assessment". What remains open is a reasonable hypothesis nobody finished checking.

The case also shows how the procedure had changed by the 1990s. The pilot did not write a free report but filled in the Air Force's standard questionnaire, with position sketches and questions on shape, color, sound and behavior, and the file was declassified the following year with the express finding that nothing justified keeping it restricted.