Case · C-064

Campeche: the Mexican Air Force films eleven lights in infrared

Airspace over southern Campeche · Mexico · Mar 5, 2004

In flight Military witnesses Video Radar

What happened

On March 5, 2004, the crew of a Fuerza Aérea Mexicana Merlin C-26, on an anti-narcotics surveillance mission, recorded with the infrared camera eleven lights that it could not identify. In May the Secretariat of National Defense released the video: the secretary, General Vega García, explained that he did not consider it a military secret, that he had entrusted it to Maussan and that the latter's conclusions were not those of the Secretariat. Subsequent analyses have traced the main lights to the flares of the offshore Cantarell wells, observed from a great distance.

Proposed explanation

Captain Alejandro Franz and the aerospace engineer James C. Smith (Skeptic magazine, 2004) identified the group of ten lights with the gas flares of oil platforms in the Cantarell field, in the Bay of Campeche, at 110–120 miles; that segment had no radar echo, while other echoes had aircraft-like characteristics. The journalist Jaime Maussan, who received the video from SEDENA, presented it as proof of unidentified objects.

Official investigation

Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional (SEDENA) – Fuerza Aérea Mexicana

Sources

1. El Siglo de Torreón (AP), “Explica Sedena video sobre ovnis”, May 12, 2004 (press)
2. James C. Smith, “The Mexican Air Force UFO Affair”, eSkeptic, 2004 (analysis, skeptical)
3. Metabunk, “Mexican Air Force UFO Video? [Oil Rigs]” (analysis, skeptical)
4. Wikipedia – UFO sightings in Mexico (other)

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