Antofagasta Radar-Visual Encounter (Cerro Moreno, Chile, 1978)

The event

Around midday in 1978, two Chilean Air Force Northrop F-5 dual-seat trainers were flying a routine training sortie north of Antofagasta, returning from Mejillones to the Cerro Moreno base. The aircraft were not carrying weapons, only gun cameras for simulated attacks. According to the pilots, a large object appeared to the east, roughly 15 to 20 miles away and at the jets' altitude of about 30,000 to 40,000 feet. The pilot of the lead aircraft, Captain Danilo Catalán Farías, a flight instructor, pursued the object and described it as dark, triangular and cloudy. The second pilot, Captain Hernán Gabrielli Rojas, described a smoke-covered, banana- or cigar-shaped body, which he later compared in size to ten or fifteen aircraft carriers. The object reportedly kept pace with the jets for a time and then departed at high speed.

The first public account appeared in La Tercera in June 1979 and was reprinted in English in Flying Saucer Review (July–August 1979). Gabrielli gave interviews in late 2002 and to journalist Alejandro Guillier in August 2003, published in Revista TOC.

Radar and witnesses

The most cited feature is radar. Gabrielli said that on both F-5s a line stretched across the scope, which the crews first took for an equipment fault. The Cerro Moreno ground radar reportedly showed the same return, and ground control was said to have tracked a sharp turn at a speed the pilots estimated at about three times the speed of sound. Gabrielli later insisted that all three radar screens had been working normally. A radar operator in the control tower, Captain Ernesto González Yarra, is named in one account as a witness to the ground-radar contact. An avionics technician, Fernando Gómez, and another trainee are mentioned in Gabrielli's 2002 account.

The witnesses are professional military aviators with combat or instructor experience, which is why the case has been taken seriously. Gabrielli was a captain and flight instructor at the time and later retired as a general.

Official response and disputes

The accounts disagree about what the Air Force did. One widely reprinted version says the sighting was officially confirmed by General Benjamin Opazo Brun, commander of the First Wing, and that the radar manoeuvre was logged by the control tower. Gabrielli himself describes no formal investigation: he says the base commander was informed and that 'the page is turned and normal activity resumes'. The 2003 interview also notes that Chilean officials were silent when the matter reportedly came before Congress. The dates conflict as well. Gabrielli and most later summaries place the event in 1978, while the Project Acufoe catalogue and the 1979 press coverage give May 1979, and the pilot speeds quoted range from 0.92 to 1.3 Mach.

The British catalogers Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, in their 'dark blob' catalogue, judged that the witness descriptions conflict and that the radar evidence is inconsistent. They suggested a mirage as a possible explanation and concluded there is not enough recorded data to decide whether the event had a natural cause.

Assessment

The case is better documented than most South American reports of its era because the witnesses are named, serving or former officers, and the core account has been repeated consistently since 2002. What is missing is the primary record. The original La Tercera and El Mercurio articles, the Air Force control-tower logs and any radar tape have not been published, and the Air Force's position is reported inconsistently across sources. Gabrielli's own account also changed in small ways between interviews, including the object's shape and its direction of departure.

Skeptical readings focus on the conditions of the sighting. Mirage or atmospheric refraction effects at altitude, a possible fault in the radar, or the suggestibility of crews who had just noticed a radar anomaly could each account for the core reports. Supporters point to the simultaneous ground and airborne radar returns and the pilots' long careers as evidence that the event was not a misread. The incident is therefore best treated as a well-attested military report whose cause remains undetermined. It remains one of the most frequently cited Chilean UFO episodes.