Belgian Military Jets
Tracks
UFOs 
This report was prepared by
me in 1990 and was based largely on material supplied by Patrick Ferryn,
cofounder of the Belgian UFO research organization SOBEPS (Societe Belge D'Etude
Des Phenomenes Spatiaux). A similar version was published that year in the MUFON
UFO Journal.
For those not familiar with
Belgium, it is one of the smallest and most densely populated countries in
Europe. It is about a third the size of the state of Indiana and, with a
population of more than ten million, has almost twice as many
people.
It
is bounded on the northwest by the North Sea, on the north and northeast by The
Netherlands, on the east by West Germany, on the southeast by Luxembourg, and on
the west and southwest by France.
* *
*
For
at least eight months beginning in October 1989, Belgium experienced almost
daily sightings of large triangular-shaped UFOs similar to those reported
throughout the United States on countless occasions since the
mid-1970s.
As of
late May 1990, the Belgian UFO research group SOBEPS had investigated 
about six hundred fifty cases, collecting reports from more than nine
hundred witnesses, many of them highly competent professional
people.
(The SOBEPS investigators accumulated an incredible amount of information on the sightings. In 1994 they published their findings in two thick volumes totaling nearly a thousand pages, Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique, Un Dossier Exceptionnel and Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique, Une Énigme Non Résolue.)
It is
estimated that at least ten thousand Belgians saw the UFOs, described at times
as being “as big as or bigger than an aircraft
carrier."
In
many respects the sightings paralleled those reported in the Hudson Valley area
of New York and Connecticut just north of New York city in 1983-1986, as
reported in the book NIGHT SIEGE: The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings (by Dr.
J. Allen Hynek, Philip J. Imbrogno and Bob Pratt, Ballantine Books, 1987, and
the revised and expanded edition published by Llewellyn in 1998).
GOVERNMENT COOPERATES IN
INVESTIGATION
In
what at that time was probably unique in the history of worldwide ufology, the
Belgian government assisted SOBEPS in investigating the
sightings.
The
Ministry of the Interior ordered the Gendarmerie Nationale (a combination of
police and army, many of whose members reported seeing the UFOs) to give SOBEPS
copies of all UFO reports and to immediately advise SOBEPS of new
sightings.
In
addition, the Ministry of Defense, through the Belgian Air Force, authorized
SOBEPS to contact radar specialists, pilots and installations. In an unheard of
display of cooperation, the Air Force even had two military aircraft
and their crews on standby at Bierset Airport, near Liege, to work with SOBEPS
during the long, four-day Easter weekend in
1990.
"One
of these aircraft, a Hawker Siddeley 748, was equipped with an impressive
infrared video camera," said Ferryn, then a television director and producer.
"We also had professional video equipment and sophisticated
instruments.
“On
the ground and in the whole eastern and southern part of Belgium we had teams
with CB radios and mobile phones. Last but not least, an important Air Force
radar station at Glons was connected with our improvised headquarters in the
Bierset Airport."
Briefly, this is what
happened:
● The
sightings started in October 1989 near Eupen, close to the Dutch and German
border, and then progressed steadily westward to Liege, Namur, Wavre (just
southeast of the capital, Brussels), Mons and finally toward the French border.
The area involved is about a hundred miles 
long.
●
Most of the sightings were at night but a few were in the daytime. Many were
CE-I's and CE-II's.
●
Among the witnesses were nearly two hundred members and officers of the
Gendarmerie Nationale as well as policemen, military and civilian pilots, air
traffic controllers, meteorologists, aeronautical engineers and
physicists.
●
Most of the witnesses reported seeing a dark, triangular-shaped object with
three bright lights and a red flashing light in the middle. Often, people saw
one or more rows of scintillating lights on the side of the
triangle.
●
Several times highly competent witnesses used such expressions as "as big as a
football field" or "huge" or "massive" to describe the UFO. Some even said it
was "as big as or bigger than an aircraft carrier." When seen from the side in
profile, the object was described as "very high" with large
“windows.”
● One
witness said that "while the object was flying slowly directly overhead, one
could not see the front part and the end at the same time because it was too
big."
●
Some triangular-shaped objects were "modest" in size, only about as large as
small aircraft.
●
Often an object hovered for minutes at a time. When it began moving, it usually
moved very slowly, too slow to be a conventional airplane. However, at times it
would suddenly accelerate so rapidly that it would be across the horizon in a
second or two – and sometimes it would flash right
back.
● The
object was nearly always noiseless or made only a faint humming sound, like an
electric engine or a sewing machine.
●
Many times while hovering or moving slowly it would pivot, turning 90 degrees
and even 180 degrees.
● In
three cases (as also reported by some witnesses in the Hudson Valley sightings),
people saw structures underneath "with heavy metal parts, crisscross effects,
diamond shape work, and tubular things here and
there."
●
Some people claimed to have seen triangles that changed shape into a round light
which later opened, releasing a great number of small red objects going in all
directions, and then change into a triangle
again.
●
Very often, sightings occurred in densely populated areas and also near
illuminated highways and expressways, just as happened in the Hudson Valley
sightings. Said Ferryn: "As I visited the Hudson Valley and the Connecticut area
two years ago (for archaeological purposes), I can say the landscapes are very
similar to what one can see around Eupen, Liege, Namur,
etc."
●
Some witnesses said they signaled with their car lights and the UFO would
respond with a similar light signal or by moving at the moment the signal was
made.
One
of the biggest nights of sightings was November 29, 1989 when several UFOs were
seen by hundreds of people around Eupen. SOBEPS collected nearly one hundred
twenty reports from this night alone.
LIGHT BEAM HITS PATROL
CAR
The
first important sighting that night came from the Gendarmerie. Two officers in
their patrol car were lit up by a beam of light coming from a dark triangle
equipped with three "projectors" and a winking red light. The object was huge
and made a faint humming sound. It was hovering at an altitude of six hundred to
nine hundred feet.
One
officer said the light was so dazzling "that we could read a newspaper under
it."
The
object then moved slowly in the direction of the nearby La Gileppe Dam, where it
hovered for forty-five minutes. It then moved southwest about thirteen miles and
hovered over the city of Spa for thirty minutes before
disappearing.
In their investigation,
SOBEPS researchers learned that a number of other people had seen the UFO even
earlier that evening.
One was a Gendarmerie
officer on duty on the third floor of the Eupen station who saw a luminous
rectangular object about sixty-five feet long between him and the rear wall of
the station six hundred fifty feet away. It was just below the level of his eyes
and was moving very slowly.
"It was like a big chamber,"
he said.
Astonished, he watched it
drift slowly out of sight and immediately radioed two officers in a patrol car
who were in the area it was heading for. Several minutes later they saw it
coming in their direction and they could see the underside of
it.
The
two officers told SOBEPS it was triangular in shape and that when it moved a
"balancing movement" was clearly noted, during which a sort of dome was visible
on the upper side.
One
of the officers said he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life, and as
he spoke he was very affected and seemed about to
weep.
EIGHT FAST-MOVING
OBJECTS
Another important night of
sightings took place on March 30, 1990. That evening, fifteen members of the
Gendarmerie on duty in different places around Wavre (about fifteen miles
southeast of Brussels) saw eight white luminous objects in the sky that were
three to five times larger than a star. The objects moved away and then came
back very fast, glowing red as they returned.
The
commander of the Gendarmerie station at Wavre alerted the Air Force radar
station at Glons and the Air Force base at Beauvechain. Two F-16s immediately
came into the sighting area (and later an AWACS aircraft) and were literally
guided by witnesses on the ground.
The
next day newspapers reported that the F-16s "came home with an empty bag," but
that was not true. After weeks of computer analysis, the Belgian Air Force
Headquarters reported to the Ministry of Defense that FIVE different military
radars (two on the F-16s and three radar stations) had detected unidentified
echos at the same moment and in the same place indicated by witnesses on the
ground.
Furthermore, the report
confirmed that the objects had moved with incredible
speeds.
Details of that report
appeared on TV and in newspapers on May 19 – coincidentally the anniversary of
the 1986 overflights in Brazil when six military jet fighters chased (and
sometimes were chased by) twenty to thirty UFOs that were being tracked on radar
by air traffic controllers over vast areas of the
country.
The
sightings in Belgium on November 29, 1989 created a sensation and were heavily
publicized by the press, TV and radio. SOBEPS was immediately snowed under with
reports and opened a UFO Hotline – just as Philip Imbrogno and his investigative
team did in Connecticut during the early heavy sightings in
1983.
"People called literally at
all hours of the day and night," Ferryn said. "It is striking to see how, at one
and the same time, a great part of the public and the press have reacted to
these events exactly in the same way here and in the U.S. (as reported in
NIGHT SIEGE)."
Some
of those calling did report what later turned out to be conventional aircraft.
However, Ferryn said, most of the witnesses were familiar with civilian and
military aircraft because there are many bases in the area, and they were
certain they were not seeing aircraft.
STEALTH FIGHTER
RUMORS
"We
all went through the same stages of thinking," Ferryn said. "We first thought of
ultra light aircraft, then military aircraft, the mystery plane, the phantom
fliers (a kind of 'Black Baron,' as we called it) and so
on.
“Of
course, some officials and specialists claimed astronomical mistakes, holograms,
lasers, temperature inversions and so on. We must admit we also wondered at
first if it could be some sort of sophisticated ultra light aircraft. Of course,
now, none of these hypotheses make any sense."
There
were numerous rumors that the American-built F-117 Stealth Fighter was being
flown in Belgian skies. The rumors were partially confirmed by the French
newspaper VSV on April 21 in an interview with U.S. Air Force Col. Tom
Tolin.
He
reportedly told the newspaper: "F-117s are flying in Europe during night
missions, sometimes piloted by United Kingdom Royal Air Force pilots, but we are
not authorized to tell you where."
The
journalist's theory, of course, was that the UFOs that had been seen since
October were actually the F-117s. If F-117s were flown over Belgium, that could
account for some sightings but not for the reports of huge triangular-shaped
objects that hovered or moved slowly, suddenly accelerated and disappeared
across the horizon in seconds, or released hundreds of small red objects that
flew in all directions.
With
so much UFO activity, SOBEPS was able to collect twenty-five different video
tapes made during the sightings.
"Three of these are really
interesting for they clearly show what is undeniably NOT a conventional aircraft
or anything else known," said Ferryn. "As a professional in this field, I have
enlarged and treated the interesting sequences in slow motion with sophisticated
equipment.
“One
film shows three important spots of light forming a big triangle having a red
flashing light in the center. It flew slowly low over our capital on March 30,
the same date the fifteen Gendarmes of Wavre saw the eight objects southeast of
Brussels."
SOBEPS also had some
photographs "but they are extremely disappointing because either nothing shows
or what is seen doesn't correspond with the sightings," said Ferryn. "Only one
of these shows what could be a triangle or a trapezoidal-shaped object, while it
was observed as being rounded and ray shaped."
A GLOBAL
PHENOMENON
The
Brazilian military had a similar experience in 1977 when it was investigating a
long series of sightings around the small town of Colares at the mouth of the Amazon River just north of
the major city of Belem.
(The
sightings are discussed by Jacques Vallee in CONFRONTATIONS: A
Scientist’s Search for Alien Contact, Ballantine Books 1990, as well as
my own book, UFO DANGER ZONE, Terror and Death in Brazil – Where Next?
Horus House Press, 1996.)
A
Brazilian Air Force team spent approximately four months in the area, during
which they shot hundreds of photographs and motion picture films of UFOs. The
officer in charge said he and his men photographed nine different shapes of
UFOs, including several that were triangular or like a pyramid.
Other
aspects of the Belgian sightings have been reported in other countries as well,
proving once again, as we all know, that this is a global
phenomenon.
One
Belgian witness said that when the UFO was overhead, he could not see both the
front and back at the same time because it was so huge. In the Hudson Valley
sightings, a security officer at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Reactor at
Buchanan, New York, reported much the same
thing.
On
the night of July 24, 1984, a huge triangular-shaped object hovered over the
reactor for ten minutes and the officer, watching it on the monitor of a
security camera mounted atop a ninety-five-foot pole, had to pan the camera 180
degrees to scan the entire object from front to
back.
Another point of similarity
is the incredible acceleration. Some Belgian witnesses said the UFO would shoot
off across the horizon in a second or two, and sometimes come back just as fast.
In Colusa, California, in 1976 a witness reported seeing a UFO suddenly shoot
across the sky to a far away mountain and then return just as
quickly.
In
1977 two Memphis policemen watching a large triangular UFO hover over a golf
course said it disappeared over the horizon in two seconds. During the Hudson
Valley sightings in 1983-86, one witness saw a triangular-shaped UFO vanish
across the horizon in seconds, and in another sighting a couple said a
boomerang-shaped object "streaked from one end of the sky to the other, and then
back again in a split second."
In
the United States in the 1970s, a number of people, including military
personnel, reported seeing UFOs shoot from near the ground far out into the sky
and vanish in seconds.
BOOMERANG
SIGHTINGS
Similar actions were
reported in the small city of Pinheiro, in northern
Brazil, where sightings occurred nearly every night for four months in 1977. The
mayor said the UFO, a large, fiery red ball of light that often hovered about a
thousand feet above the town, would sometimes suddenly shoot so far out into the
atmosphere as be lost among the stars, and at times it would shoot straight back
down to earth again.
The
enormous sizes reported in Belgium have become common and are typical of the
triangular or boomerang-shaped objects reported in the U.S., Canada, Great
Britain, Iran and elsewhere.
The Belgian reports are
exciting for many reasons, but especially because of the numerous high quality
witnesses and the official government cooperation, and because they affirm once
again the reality of the phenomenon.
* *
*
Members of SOBEPS are very
interested in learning about sightings elsewhere in the world similar to those
occurring in Belgium. The organization is also encouraging and inviting
researchers around the world to join in a greater, freer exchange of UFO
data.
"I'm
definitely convinced we must exchange and share information," said SOBEPS
cofounder Patrick Ferryn. "And this is an encouragement and a warm request to do
so. Of course, we already exchange publications and bulletins, but this is not
enough."
In
addition to printed reports (its reports are in French), SOBEPS is interested in
exchanging videotapes, films and photos. Write to: SOBEPS, Avenue Paul Janson
74, 1070 Bruxelles, Belgium. The SOBEPS web site (in French and English) is www.sobeps.org/.
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