I’m an air traffic controller – I saw fighter jets intercept 10,000mph UFOs & I even managed to communicate with them
SITTING in his control tower, Sergio Mota spotted a light on the horizon but there were no planes scheduled to land at that time.
Before long it was joined by other mysterious objects he said were traveling at speeds of up to 10,000mph – it was the start of the infamous "Night of the UFOs".
Mota witnessed the scrambling of fighter jets to intercept the objects - and even managed to establish some semblance of communication with them as he flashed his runway lights.
He appeared to be able to elicit responses from objects, which suggests to him whatever the shapes in the sky were they were "intelligent".
Over several hours, hundreds of witnesses, including the elite of the Brazil’s military, saw strange objects that seemed to move at a terrifying speed.
Pilots found themselves looking at objects in front of them that didn’t appear on their aircraft radars.
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And sometimes the other way around - as the objects played "cat and mouse" with them.
But it all began soon after Mota, then a sergeant in the Brazilian Air Force, began his night shift at Sao José dos Campos base on the evening of May 19, 1986 near the city of Sao Paulo.
Speak to The Sun Online, the now 65-year-old Mota recalled what he witnessed on that extraordinary night.
“I went to my night shift and about 6pm I saw a little bright light near the horizon and it appeared to be an aircraft approaching,” said Mota, who still works as an air traffic controller.
“But there was not an aircraft scheduled at that time that to land and nothing on the radar system.
“As the time passed, that light was still in the same position but it was brighter than before, like a bright star.
“I checked with the radar systems around me, with the defence system and the civilian radar, and no-one could see that.
“In the next hour I saw its colour changing all the time – it was blue or green.”
Around 8pm around 2,000 cadets and officers from an air force training school in the same area, reported spotted the lights.
Then an hour later, a plane piloted by the president of aircraft maker Embraer reported several objects in the sky as it landed at the Mota’s airport.
“The light moved in front of them but then it disappeared and then started following them.
“I couldn’t see any kind of structure it was just light and the lights had a kind of intelligent behaviour, it was following plane.”
Soon the lights in the sky were putting on a performance for as were able to reach speeds of 10,000 mph “in a matter of seconds” and made “lines of light” in the sky.
“There was three of them in the south-west sector, flying side by side in a half moon formation. They were performing movements around each other.”
At that point Mota decided to have some fun with the objects and see if he could somehow communicate with them.
“I had this idea to change the lights of the runway,” he said.
“When I increased the brightness of runway, the lights went and as soon as I increased, they came back to me. It showed a kind of intelligent behaviour.
“I felt a bit of fear but mostly I was excited. But there was no aggression – they were just flying around and observing, just playing games with me.”
The lights in the sky were also seen from two passenger planes, including one travelling in the interior of Brazil.
The air force then swung into action and scrambled its fighters to intercept the objects – but it was not a simple task as the pilots found themselves disoriented by what was happening.
What was the Night of the UFOs?
Brazil's epic 'Night of the UFOs' saw fighter jets chased mysterious bright objects - some of them 300ft wide and travelling at incredible speeds.
Five bewildered pilots testified to seeing 21 objects appear and disappear, while hundreds of troops on the ground also witnessed them.
Initially three planes were sent up, including a Mirage F-103, which took off at just before 11pm with Captain Armindo Sousa Viriato at the controls.
Soon his high performance warplane hit 1,000mph but as he closed in on the UFO, it accelerated to a speed he calculated as 15 times the speed of sound, or 11,500mph.
"If there is a plane that can develop that speed, I don't know of it," he said in an interview a few years later.
Meanwhile, the incredible events taking place in the sky had not gone unnoticed on the ground.
Photographer Adenir Britto was working the night shift in the office of his newspaper when he got a tip off that there was a "flying saucer" over head.
Initially assuming to be a prank, he went outside with a reporter and to his amazement saw the objects and began shooting.
In a further twist, two air force officers accompanied by the American UFO researcher James J. Hurtak, turned up at the newspaper about a month later.
They demanded the editor showed them the negatives of the photos on the pretext they wanted them to be analysed by NASA. They have never been seen since
The incredible events soon seeped out and began to receive extensive coverage in the media.
That prompted air force minister Brigadier Octávio Júlio Moreira Lima to hold an unprecedented press conference at which the pilots described what happened.
But he was forced to admit: "We have no explanation.”
A 2009 an air force report into the 'Night of the UFOs' concluded that its top brass “are of the opinion that the phenomena are solid and reflect, in a certain way, intelligence”.
“They sent up jet fighters to intercept them but they were never able to approach the lights.
“I could see the light and the jet fighter behind it but in a few seconds the light was gone and they jet fighter wasn’t able to follow it.”
He said the incident ended about 5am the next day but he couldn’t sleep and had to type up his report as the media tried to get hold of him after the incident became headline news in Brazil.
Mota believes the objects he saw were a form highly intelligent but artificial life.
“No organic life could survive going from zero to such high speeds in seconds. It’s impossible”
But while the media attention died down, his interaction with the strange objects wasn’t over.
Ten days after the incident he went to start his night shift at the airport.
“I told my colleague I was about to replace in the tower that I had this strange feeling that the objects could return that night but he looked at me at me and said ‘are you crazy!’,” he said.
But around 7pm the civilian air traffic controller who had been on duty when he first spotted them radioed to him “guess what, they’ve returned!”.
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“After two hours they vanished but this time an object appeared near the sea and as soon as it appeared the 22 objects flew towards it and joined it.
“As soon as they joined, they all disappeared. They never returned to see me again – they didn’t leave any card.”