Trindade Isle was the best known, but by no means only, UFO report that year from South America. Most of these were reported by private citizens throughout the continent, many were at close range by multiple witnesses (including law enforcement), several involved automotive electrical disturbances and intense heat, a few included sightings of humanoid beings, and one involved an object with portholes hovering over the sea for more than an hour. On May 5, in San Carlos, Uruguay, a veteran pilot reported “intense heat and electromagnetic effect” from a disc-shaped UFO that hovered over his plane near the Curbelo Naval Base. On July 22, 1958, a major blackout occurred in Salta, Argentina, while a large UFO was observed.70
In Brazil, the banks of the Peropava River in Iguape (near the Sao Paulo Province), became the location of a UFO sighting on the afternoon of October 31, 1958. Twelve people heard a loud roar overhead, accompanied by metallic clanking sounds. A shiny disc, about fifteen feet in diameter and four feet thick at the center, approached the river erratically. The people watched the craft crash into the trunk of a palm tree, gouging out a notch. It hovered briefly over the river, then plunged in. The river was fifteen feet deep at the point of entry, and very muddy. A loud hissing noise followed, and bubbles surged up. Police and investigators interviewed witnesses and, for two weeks, searched in vain for the craft.71
Elsewhere in the world, UFO activity was considerably less intense. On January 26, 1958, in Shimada City, Japan, several chemical workers saw a very bright object land, and claimed that beings fell from the sky without parachutes. They wore strange suits and spoke an unknown language. In Korea on March 8, American air force radar tracked a slowly descending UFO. On April 11, a Danish fighter pilot near Jutland saw a UFO formation. The objects accelerated away when he tried to close. The pilot’s commanding officer then broadcast an appeal to Danish citizens to report any strange flying object they saw. On August 3, a large section of Rome, Italy, was blacked out while a luminous and large UFO maneuvered overhead. In Switzerland on August 16, about a dozen people were out on Lake Leman in perfect weather when they saw a bright light descending. They stopped their boat as the object hovered fifty feet over them. It looked like a classic flying saucer: about thirty-five feet in diameter, an upper half with a cabin and windows, and an outer spinning portion. The craft was silent and created a current in the water as it approached. After several “leaps,” it flew off at an amazing speed.72
An incident somewhere in the Soviet Union was said to have occurred on November 17, at 10 P.M. A bright object, with an apparent diameter greater than that of the full moon, was observed for two minutes descending from a high altitude, hovering at tree height, then landing. CIA files record a UFO incident along the Soviet-Indian border that took place on December 6, 1958. According to the files, an “artificial object having a continuous brightness of magnitude” was seen through a telescope traveling north to south. Although the observer originally thought the object was
Meanwhile, in America, all was quiet, and Blue Book files listed only ten officially unidentified sightings for all of 1958. Although some of this probably reflected an actual drop-off in UFO activity, the greatly increased censorship also contributed. One NICAP report described an encounter during the summer at an unnamed air force base in the southwestern United States, in which two maneuvering UFOs evaded jet interceptors. At Offutt AFB in Omaha, Nebraska, on September 8, an air force major and other officers saw a rocket-like UFO accompanied by satellite objects.74 The CIA also maintained an interest and genuine puzzlement over UFOs. On October 1, 1958, an unknown author of a CIA memo wrote of a civilian who had managed repeatedly to photograph “geometrically shaped flying objects as they passed between his telescope and this moon.” These photos were “remarkably clear and certainly indicated a phenomenon for which he had no ready explanation.” The writer requested advice on “how we might get our hands on these materials to examine them firsthand and to make a more complete analysis of them.”75
