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Case · C-032

Campo de Mayo 1972: the Gendarmería pilots and the barium cloud

Campo de Mayo, Buenos Aires Province · Argentina · Nov 2, 1972

In flight Pilots

Explained

What happened
On the evening of November 2, 1972, the crew of a Gendarmería Nacional Cessna 182, on night training over the Campo de Mayo airfield, reported a large luminous object that seemed to follow it; it was also seen by an Aerolíneas Argentinas flight bound for Córdoba and by an aircraft that had departed from the Morón base. The Gendarmería file, with the pilots' statements and drawings, remained for more than forty years in the force's archives and was made public by the civilian group CEFORA around 2015. In 2017 the CEFAe compared the direction (320°) and elevation (25°) noted by the witnesses with the trajectory of an Argentine experimental rocket and closed the case as a barium cloud.
Proposed explanation
According to the CEFAe of the Argentine Air Force, the time, direction and elevation of the sighting coincide with the ionized barium cloud released for ionospheric experiments by a Rigel rocket launched at 20:28 local time from the Chamical base (La Rioja), two minutes before the pilots saw it; the 2018 report added new supporting evidence.
Official investigation
Gendarmería Nacional (1972 file); Fuerza Aérea Argentina – Commission for the Study of Aerospace Phenomena (CEFAe), analyses of 2017 and 2018
Words of the document
resulta compatible con la presencia de una gigantesca nube ionizada

Official documents

  1. Informe CEFAe 2017 – Caso «Campo de Mayo», presunto OVNI esférico (2/Nov/72) · Fuerza Aérea Argentina – CEFAe · 2017
  2. Informe CEFAe 2018 – Nuevos elementos en el caso «Campo de Mayo» (2/Nov/1972) · Fuerza Aérea Argentina – CEFAe · 2018

Sources

  1. La Nación (Argentina), March 30, 2022: who the military pilot who studies the sightings is and how he works (Rubén Lianza, CIAE) (press)
  2. Fuerza Aérea Argentina, Informe CEFAe 2017 (section “Casos enigmáticos”) (primary source)

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