Sighting record / 2023
Tuesday, 5 September 2023. Evening in Bahía Blanca, Argentina. Around 20:10, residents near the Comandante Espora Naval Air Base began asking each other the same question. What was that noise? They heard what sounded like heavy gunfire and explosions. A helicopter circled overhead. Phones came out. One short clip showed two red lights hanging in the sky, one flickering, one blinking. Days later, a UFO research group went further. Four black triangles had come in from the sea, it said, and one fired a kind of laser at the soldiers below. The Navy answered that it was a routine Sea King training flight, with no ammunition of any calibre. Argentina turned it into a meme. The Navy's account never quite squared with what the neighbours heard.
Bahía Blanca has an old reputation. In 1963, Carlos Ferguson called it "the first capital of UFOs". The city sits beside Base Aeronaval Comandante Espora, the main base of Argentine Naval Aviation, in Villa Espora, about 11 km from the centre. The base shares its runways with the civil airport. In May 1962, sightings were reported at Espora itself.