Cruzeiro_ contain a number of significant details that have been
glossed over or ignored by UFO enthusiasts, both in Brazil[X-19] and
in the United States[X-21], who apparently accept the Trindade saucer
at face value. A study of the available news stories, facts gathered
by Intelligence officers, and of the photographs themselves leads
inescapably to the conclusion that the Trindade Island photographs were
almost certainly a hoax.
Almiro Barauna was a free-lance photographer. A professional of unusual
skill, he had long been interested in flying saucers and, some time
before the Trindade incident, he had published a purposely humorous
magazine article entitled “A Flying Saucer Hunted Me at Home” and
illustrated by admittedly faked photographs. He had also published
trick photographs of “treasure chests” lying on the ocean bottom. In
addition, Barauna specialized in underwater photography and was a
member of the Icarai Submarine Hunting Club, a group interested in skin
diving and the study of life on the ocean floor.
When the _Almirante Saldanha_ left Rio for its historic January visit
to Trindade Island, the ship had on board, as guests of the Navy, five
members of the Icarai Club. Among the five, in addition to Barauna,
were Amilar Vieira Filho, captain of the group, and José Teobaldo
Viegas, a retired captain in the Brazilian Air Force[X-22]. On January
16 when the ship was getting ready to leave Trindade, these three
friends were on deck, Barauna with his loaded Rolleiflex camera, the
other two standing some distance away. Suddenly Vieira remarked on
a big sea gull in the sky. Looking up, Viegas immediately shouted,
“Flying saucer!” and Barauna snapped his pictures.
No other eyewitnesses have been found, even though the deck was
crowded with sailors. The ship’s dentist has been listed as a witness
(in one document he appears as two persons, under two different
versions of his name) but no newspaper yet examined mentions his story.
Captain Bacellar, returning from his post as commander of the Trindade
station, has also been listed as a witness but, according to his
statement, he was not on deck when the incident occurred.
Vieira, the first man to sight the object, had called it “a big sea
gull.” When interviewed five weeks later, in the midst of the saucer
excitement, he had changed his mind about its being a sea gull, but he
was no longer certain just what he had seen. He stated that the unknown
had been in view for twenty seconds at most, and had disappeared too
quickly for him to note any details; it was simply an oval gray object
that seemed to flash briefly before it vanished. He did not mention the
Saturn-like bands around the middle that are a conspicuous feature of
the photograph.
_The Trindade Photographs_
Accounts of the Trindade affair often remark that the photographs
must be genuine because no opportunity for fraud occurred. On the
contrary, there were ample and repeated opportunities. Since Barauna
was not under observation when he loaded his camera, he could easily
have inserted a prepared film, with no one the wiser. With the type of
camera used, the operation would have been simple. He was again free
from observation when he developed the negatives. Captain Bacellar
escorted him to the door of the darkroom but remained outside, on guard
at the door. The only person to accompany Barauna inside (to help by
holding a flashlight) was his friend Viegas--the same man who had cried
“Flying saucer!”
When Barauna emerged with the dripping film, Bacellar examined it but
what he expected to find is a question, since he had not observed the
UFO. The witnesses allegedly agreed, however, that the negatives showed
the object they had seen in the sky--an amazing feat when we remember
that the Rolleiflex film frame is small, only about 2.25 inches square.
In the print of Frame 3 shown in _O Cruzeiro_[X-22], the UFO is
slightly more than ¼ inch long and less than ⅛ inch thick. Assuming an
enlargement factor of a little more than three, we find that the UFO on
the negative would have appeared merely as a pale blur about 1/16 of an
inch in length and no thicker than a pencil line. Miraculous eyesight
would have been required to distinguish a “Saturn-like” or any other
shape.
The Navy’s officers on board showed astonishingly little interest in
the film and did nothing to prevent the possibility of fraud. All
during the homeward trip the photographer had both the camera and the
negative in his own possession. When the ship stopped at Santos, he
and his fellow club members were allowed to debark (with camera and
negative), and they completed the journey to Rio by bus. The ship had
been anchored at Rio for two days before Captain Bacellar, of the
Trindade station, finally called on Barauna and asked to see the prints
so that he could show them to the Navy. Thus the photographer had been
free of supervision for days. In that time he could have produced
pictures of little men from Mars, if he had wanted to.
The pictures themselves raise many questions. The three witnesses had
emphasized the brilliance of the UFO, yet the prints show merely a gray
shape with no suggestion of luminosity. Barauna had used a Rolleiflex
camera, 2.8 Model E, f/8 lens, set at 125. Finding that he had
overexposed the film, he said, he had treated the negative with silver
salts after development in order to increase the contrast. (During this
procedure he was, again, without official supervision.)
The prints used in _O Cruzeiro_ have obviously been cropped since,
unlike the film frames, they are not square. Frame 1 shows the UFO
above the sea, some distance from the island; Frame 2 shows the
UFO above rocky crags, at the right of a peak. Frame 3 shows it at
the right of the peak but at lower altitude. Frames 4 and 5, not
reproduced, did not show the object, and in Frame 6 the UFO is a mere
speck low on the horizon.
Frame 3, the only one showing the Saturn-like shape, deserves special
attention. In the published print the mountains in the foreground are
quite clear, while the UFO is little more than a dark line with an
indistinct beginning and end, with a faint suggestion of rounding at
top and bottom; without the dark line the curves would scarcely be
visible, so completely does the object merge into the background of
overcast sky. The picture widely distributed by news agencies is a
further enlargement of the section containing the UFO. In the enlarged
section, the foreground rocks are a mere black blur, but the UFO has
gained greatly in clarity. The central band is darker, particularly at
the left, and the outlines of the object are no longer vague.
The Navy’s study of the negatives revealed several dubious features.
The details of the land in the foreground were very sharp but the UFO
disk was hazy, showed little contrast, and was essentially without
shadows. The object in Frame 2 seemed to have been inverted, as
compared with Frames 1 and 3. From the reported high velocity of the
saucer and the fast shutter speed, some lateral haziness might have
been expected, but no such blurring appeared.
Exactly when and how the fraudulent images were produced--if they were
fraudulent--cannot be known. Experienced photographers can easily think
of a dozen possible devices. The probability that they were faked is
overwhelming and, but for the embarrassing fact that the Brazilian
President had seemed to sponsor them publicly, the Naval Ministry would
undoubtedly have exposed the entire hoax.
In summary, the facts are these: The man who made the Trindade pictures
had no connection with the Brazilian Navy; he was a professional
photographer noted particularly as an expert at trick photography. No
officer or crewman of the Brazilian Navy reported seeing the UFO; in
addition to the photographer, only two persons are on record as actual
eyewitnesses; both of them were personal friends of the photographer;
neither of them had any connection with the Brazilian Navy. The
photographer had ample time and many opportunities to fake the
pictures. A Rolleiflex camera can easily be used for double exposures.
A series of pictures of a model saucer against a dark background could
be rerolled and exposed a second time to provide the background, an
old and well-known photographic trick. The pictures themselves show
internal inconsistencies. The Brazilian Naval Ministry never accepted
the pictures as authentic records of a flying saucer.[C]
[C] During a visit to Rio de Janeiro in February 1963, Dr. Menzel
discussed this case with some of Brazil’s leading astronomers; they
concurred in the view that the Trindade saucer was a hoax.
The final paragraph from a United States Intelligence report provides
perhaps the most appropriate comment on the affair:
“It is the reporting officer’s private opinion that a flying saucer
sighting would be unlikely at the very barren island of Trindade, since
everyone knows that Martians are extremely comfort-loving creatures.”
_Project Ozma_
Astronomers have found no evidence suggesting that intelligent life
exists on any of earth’s sister planets. Most scientists would agree,
however, that life of some kind probably does exist in other parts
of our galaxy and in other galaxies. Even if this probability were
certainty and space travel were possible over the vast distances we
measure in light years, the chance that earthman and alien will ever
establish physical contact remains infinitesimally small. An explorer
(whether from earth or from a planet of another sun) would have to
begin by locating, among the millions of stars in the heavens, a
particular star that had a family of life-bearing planets. If he were
able to identify one of these needles in the cosmic haystack, he
would next have to find out which of the planets supported living,
intelligent organisms. If he could find the planet and set down his
spaceship, the explorer would then have to try to identify and to
communicate with creatures that might be unimaginably strange--so
strange that he would not recognize them as either living or
intelligent.
At present, only light waves and radio waves can bridge the immensities
of space. Physical travel to other star systems is not now and may
never be possible. Nevertheless, men are making attempts to find out
whether other intelligent beings do exist outside the solar system
and, if so, where. The earliest effort, known as Project Ozma, started
a few years ago at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green
Bank, West Virginia. As the first step in a systematic search, the
astronomers began to listen for possible radio signals from the
neighborhood of certain stars. Tau Ceti, Epsilon Eridani, and 61 Cygni
were chosen as the first targets because they lie within range of our
radio telescopes--ten to eleven light years distant--and because they
resemble our own sun in age and type and therefore might have planetary
systems not unlike our own. So far, the radio telescopes have detected
no phenomena that might be interpreted as artificial signals.
The problems involved are incredibly difficult. A background of radio
noise--“swishes,” “whistles,” “tweeks”--comes in constantly from the
universe at large. Deliberate signals, if they occurred, would be hard
to distinguish from the random noise. Even if signals came in and
were detected, they might still be indecipherable just as the written
records of some early civilizations on our own planet remain a mystery.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were meaningless pictures for millennia until
the Rosetta stone provided the key, less than 200 years ago. The many
pages of text and pictures left by the Mayan Indians cannot yet be
read, except for some dates and a few astronomical symbols. Hundreds
of inscriptions exist in the Etruscan language, written in an alphabet
that resembles the familiar Greek, but scholars have deciphered only a
few words.
If we are not able to interpret the records devised and set down by
human beings like ourselves, we will not easily understand signals that
might possibly be broadcast by aliens from the planets of other suns.
[X-1] Wiener, J. S. _The Piltdown Forgery._ London: Oxford Univ. Press,
1955.
[X-2] MacDougall, C. D. _Hoaxes._ New York: Ace Books, 1958.
[X-3] Fry, D. W. _The White Sands Incident._ Los Angeles: New Age Publ.
Co., 1954.
[X-4] Redondo Beach (Calif.) _Daily Breeze_, September 25, 1953.
[X-5] Bethurum, T. _Aboard a Flying Saucer._ Los Angeles: De Vorss &
Co., 1954.
[X-6] Van Tassel, G. W. _I Rode a Flying Saucer._ Los Angeles: New Age
Publ. Co., 1952.
[X-7] Cahn, J. P. “Flying Saucers and the Mysterious Little Men,”
_True_ magazine (September 1952).
[X-8] Menger, H. _From Outer Space To You._ Clarksburg, West Virginia:
Saucerian Publications, 1959.
[X-9] Peterborough (N.H.) _Transcript_, Oct. 30, 1958.
[X-10] Leslie, D., and Adamski, G. _Flying Saucers Have Landed._ New
York: British Book Centre, 1953.
[X-11] Adamski, G. _Inside the Space Ships._ Abelard-Schuman, 1955.
[X-12] ---- _Flying Saucers, Farewell._ Abelard-Schuman, 1961.
[X-13] _UFO Investigator_ (June 1959).
[X-14] Michel, A. _The Truth about Flying Saucers._ New York: Criterion
Books, 1956.
[X-15] “Have We Visitors from Outer Space?” _Life_ magazine (April 4,
1952).
[X-16] Rio de Janeiro: _O Cruzeiro_, May 17, 1952.
[X-17] Civilian Saucer Investigations _Quarterly Bulletin_ (September
1952).
[X-18] Air Force Files.
[X-19] _UFO Critical Bulletin_ (March-April 1958).
[X-20] Fontes, O. T. “The Brazilian Navy UFO Sighting at the Island of
Trindade,” _Flying Saucers_ (February 1961), p. 27 ff.
[X-21] Maney, C. A., and Hall, R. _The Challenge of Unidentified Flying
Objects._ Washington, D.C., 1961.
[X-22] Rio de Janeiro: _O Cruzeiro_, March 8, 1958.
_Chapter_ XI
ANGEL HAIR, PANCAKES, ETC.
If thousands of aircraft from other planets have indeed been patrolling
the earth for many years (according to some authors, for centuries),
they have achieved an incredibly perfect safety record. Disabled or
wrecked flying saucers have occasionally been reported, but the debris
and bodies to be expected from such incidents have never been located.
A “mummified man,” sometimes referred to as proof of such a
catastrophe, may be seen at Caspar, Wyoming. Found in the Rocky
Mountains in the autumn of 1932, this little creature measures 6½
inches high in a sitting position and weighs three-quarters of a pound.
Paleontologists recognize it as _Hesperopithecus_, an anthropoid
denizen of earth during the Pliocene period. The mummified body of
another such creature, supposedly found in Arizona, has also been
called the remains of “a little green man.”[XI-1] In 1952 four
spaceships were supposed to have crashed in the deserts of New Mexico
and Arizona, carrying the bodies of thirty-four “little men”[XI-2],
but the only evidence offered for this disaster was a chunk of
“unknown metal” that proved to be ordinary aluminum, and the entire
drama was shown to be the work of a known hoaxer[XI-3]. Although a
few flying-saucer organizations regard such “humanoid” evidence with
some doubt, others, such as the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization
(APRO) are less skeptical of the reality of “little men.”[XI-4]
UFO publications have reported the finding of various substances
alleged to have been produced by UFOs. The offices of Air Force
investigators at Dayton house a small museum of such “pieces of
saucers”--old batteries, meteorites, parts of primitive radios, rocks,
corroded lead pipe, tangles of wire, strips of tin foil. Although
a few of these specimens have been sent in by optimistic hoaxers,
most of them have been submitted by genuinely puzzled citizens. When
analysis shows the normal origin of such an object, the finder usually
accepts the verdict calmly, whether he is disappointed or relieved,
but occasionally he rejects the identification and indignantly accuses
the Air Force of theft, substitution, or plain lying to suppress the
“truth.” Nevertheless, not a single fragment studied so far--animal,
vegetable, or mineral--shows any evidence that it grew or was
constructed on an alien world.
_Angel Hair and Spiders_
Some centuries ago the primitive inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands,
observing the feathery, hairlike threads of volcanic glass left on
the ground from ancient eruptions, accounted for the substance by
the legend that the goddess Pelee had once stopped somewhere in the
neighborhood to comb her hair. “Angel hair,” a term in UFO parlance
used to describe any unfamiliar fibers, strands, threads, liquids,
granules, and powders found on the earth and supposedly deposited from
flying saucers, offers an interesting analogy.
_Fils de la Vierge_--the hair of the Virgin Mary--is the usual French
phrase for gossamer or cobwebs, whose origin was long a mystery.
Similarly the English “gossamer” commonly means cobwebs. According to
one source, the word may be derived from _gaze à Marie_--the gauze of
Mary. According to legend, cobwebs were formed from threads that fell
from the shroud of the Virgin Mary on her Assumption. UFO enthusiasts
in France began to use _fils de la Vierge_ in 1952, to describe the
cobwebby material that allegedly fell from flying saucers. Translators
of the French UFO publications, instead of using the English equivalent
“gossamer” or “cobwebs,” chose to create the new term “angel hair”
which, unlike the French, implies an entirely strange substance, one
that has no apparent connection with such ordinary earthly phenomena as
spiders.
Two remarkable falls of angel hair were reported in France on October
17 and 27, 1952. In both incidents, witnesses observed in the sky a
strangely shaped, cottony cloud at a height of several thousand feet.
Above it was a long, narrow, cylindrical object trailed by a white
plume, moving slowly across the sky and accompanied by twenty or thirty
smaller objects that looked like puffs of smoke. Following a broken
path, they made rapid zigzag motions, and left a broad ribbon of
white substance that slowly drifted to the ground and clung to trees,
telephone wires, and roofs of houses. These masses of white threads
were described as like wool, nylon, or Fiberglas. When rolled into a
ball they became gelatinous and disappeared within a few hours; set on
fire, they burned like cellophane.
One witness was able to disentangle a single strand more than ten yards
long. None of the material, unfortunately, was preserved for study.
Students of UFOs pondered the unusual phenomenon: “If the observers
really did see what they described, and if all these objects were
machines guided by a single intelligence, then what mysterious
experiment were they performing? What purpose was served by the strange
ballet of paired saucers? What was the meaning of the whitish streak
appearing between two saucers on separation? What, finally, was the
‘angel’s hair’ that sublimed so readily in the air?”[XI-5, p. 150]
UFO enthusiasts have suggested various theories of the nature and
origin of the mysterious substance. According to one hypothesis[XI-5,
p. 149], angel hair might be produced in the wake of a spacecraft
moving in a force field; ionization of the atmosphere would produce
ultraheavy particles which would react with ordinary air to form a
kind of precipitate-angel hair--which would disintegrate as ionization
decreased (see _Chapter_ IX). Another theory suggests that angel hair
might be a chain polymer of cellulose containing radioactive carbon 14
(the carbon 14 being produced by the action of cosmic rays on atoms
of nitrogen in the atmosphere), hydrogen, and oxygen from moisture in
the air, the three elements combining under the action of ultraheavy
particles produced by ionization[XI-6]. This theory overlooks the fact
that cellulose is not formed from a combination of carbon dioxide,
oxygen, and hydrogen in air. Rather, it is made by living organisms in
a series of complicated enzymic reactions. Even if cellulose could be
made by the hypothetical reaction suggested, it would contain no more
carbon 14 than does the ordinary carbon dioxide in the air.
To French entomologists, the angel hair seen in October 1952, was
no mystery at all. The objects dancing the strange ballet were not
spaceships, but spiders. Far from performing a mysterious experiment,
they were merely carrying out the well-established routine of migration.
Each year the young spiders of most species leave the nests of their
infancy and prepare to establish their own homes. Crawling by the
hundreds or the thousands to the tops of fence posts, walls, or trees,
they spin long silken webs which, inflated by the air, carry the tiny
emigrants up from the ground. These gossamer parachutes drift up and
along on rising air currents, sometimes to great heights; they may
soar for a few yards or for many miles over hills and valleys. These
migrating balloonists have been observed as high as 14,000 feet, and
at sea 200 miles from any land. Eventually drifting back to earth,
the spiders detach the now useless parachutes and move off to build
new nests for the coming year, while the abandoned gossamer may pile
up in great masses on trees, fences, telephone wires, and ground, to
decay and vanish in a matter of hours. These gossamer showers sometimes
include so many outworn webs that the filmy blankets of fine silk may
be several inches deep and may cover an entire landscape like snow.
These migrations occur in spring or, more frequently, in autumn--but
only when the weather is exactly right. Spiders may sit patiently for
days, waiting for a calm, clear, windless day. On such days the steady
upward currents of air from the sun-warmed ground carry the spiders
gently aloft[XI-7]. The association of angel hair with UFO sightings is
completely natural. The drifting patches of gossamer reflect the sun
brilliantly. A whole armada of saucers can appear overhead and then
vanish as the gossamer cascades to earth.
The description of the material and the date of the fall both indicate
that the angel hair observed in France in October 1952 was of arachnid
origin. Even the weather was exactly right--“superb, with a sky of
cloudless blue”--for the migration of a smother of spiders.
A similar fall of angel hair occurred in the United States on October
22, 1954, near a school in Marysville, Ohio. At afternoon recess the
pupils of the Jerome Elementary School noticed a dazzlingly bright
object in the sky. It disappeared, and for the next forty-five minutes
both children and teachers watched white, cottonlike tufts floating
slowly down to the ground. The material was in long strands, very fine
and soft, could be stretched and rolled into a tiny ball, but quickly
vanished to nothing and left a green stain on the hands. The stuff clung
to grass and cars, draped the telephone wires for a distance of three
miles, and was like a misty canopy over the road[XI-6].
Unfortunately none of the material was preserved and no analysis was
possible. Marysville is near Columbus, Ohio, an industrial center,
and the stuff might have been waste products from one of the many
factories. Since similar falls were reported in Indiana during the same
period, the substance more probably was gossamer. As in the French
incidents, the time was late October and the weather was perfect, a
warm autumn day with a sunny, cloudless sky. Both the time and the
weather were ideal for migrating spiders to take to the air, float down
to earth on their fluffy parachutes, and then discard the no longer
necessary _fils de la Vierge_.
Many falls of angel hair that occur in the warm days of Indian
summer are probably abandoned gossamer. It is significant that of
fourteen such incidents reported in Europe and the United States, all
but three took place in October and November, the season of spider
migration[XI-6]. In one of the three incidents reported in other months
(Horseheads, New York, February 21, 1955) the angel hair was identified
as waste products from the local milk plant.