This SU-22 fighter pilot of the Peruvian Air Force, experienced a real “Independence Day” in real life, when he fired sixty-four 30mm shells at a UFO to “destroy” it, but they had no effect on the UFO.
Forty years ago, fighter pilot Oscar Santa Maria Huerta attempted to shoot down a mysterious “light bulb” shaped UFO, which still remains the only documented case of a military plane shooting at a UFO.
It was the early morning of April 11, 1980, and a 23-year-old lieutenant in the Peruvian Air Force was preparing for daily drills along with about 1,800 military and civilian personnel at La Joya Air Force Base, located 1,000 kilometers south of the Peruvian capital.
Lieutenant Huerta, a pilot of eight years’ experience, was ordered to take off in his Russian-made Sukhoi-22 fighter jet to intercept a strange silver object that was seen hovering near the end of the runway.
The object was five kilometers away, hovering about 600 meters off the ground and not responding to any messages.
This “balloon” was in restricted airspace without authorization, posing “a serious challenge to national sovereignty,” the now-retired colonel writes in his book UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Testify.
Colonel Huerta was one of many researchers, former officers and others who testified at a major press event at the National Press Club in Washington in 2013 aimed at getting the U.S. government to open its files on UFO sightings.
After taking off, Colonel Huerta climbed to an altitude of 2,500 meters and attacked the UFO. “I reached the required distance and fired a volley of sixty-four 30mm shells, which created a cone-shaped ‘wall of fire’ that normally destroyed everything in its path,” he wrote.
“Just one of those shells would have destroyed the car, but they had no effect on the object. I thought then that the balloon would burst and gases would begin to flow out of it. But nothing happened. It seemed that the shells were absorbed by the balloon and it did not receive any damage.
The object then shot skyward rapidly away from the base, causing Col. Huerta to activate the afterburner and begin a 500-meter chase behind it. When they reached the town of Kamana, 84 kilometers from the base, the object suddenly stopped, causing him to veer sideways.
Turning right and upward, Colonel Huerta attempted to position himself for another shot.
“I began to approach him until he was in my sight,” he writes. “I fixed the target and was ready to fire. But just at that moment the object made another swift ascent, dodging the attack. I stayed under him; he ‘thwarted the attack.'”
He tried to repeat the same maneuver two more times, and each time the object evaded him, flying up several seconds before he could fire.
By this time the object was 14,000 meters above the ground. Colonel Huerta decided to attack the object from above so that it could not leave the kill zone, but the object pursued him at 19,200 meters, well beyond the performance of his aircraft.
As he was running out of fuel, he realized he could not continue the attack and decided to fly closer to the object to get a better look at it. Only when it was 100 meters away did he realize what it was.
“I was amazed to see that the ‘balloon’ was not a balloon at all. It was an object about 10 meters in diameter with a shiny cream-colored dome on top, similar to a light bulb cut in half,” he wrote.
“Underneath was a wider, round, silver-colored base that looked like some kind of metal. It was missing all the typical airplane components. It had no wings, no jet engines, no exhaust pipes, no windows, no antennas, and so on. It had no visible propulsion system.”
“At that moment I realized it wasn’t a spy device, but a UFO, something completely unknown. I was almost out of fuel, so I could neither attack nor maneuver my plane, nor make a high-speed maneuver. Suddenly fear overwhelmed me. I thought I was finished.
Colonel Huerta was able to make it to the airfield burning the last remaining fuel and “zigzagging to make my plane harder to shoot down, constantly watching the rearview mirrors, hoping it wouldn’t follow me.”
After landing, the object remained where he left it for another two hours, “visible to everyone at the base as it reflected in the sunlight.”
Colonel Huerta claims that the object was seen by everyone on the base, many of whom had to report back. A June 1980 U.S. Department of Defense document entitled “UFO sighting in Peru” describes the incident, but says only that the object is of unknown origin.
A similar incident occurred in 1976, when Iranian Air Force General Parviz Jafari attempted to fire at a UFO, but found his equipment malfunctioned. As it turned out later, the armament was fine, but the UFO was able to disable it.
“My equipment was mechanical, and that may have been the reason it could not be disabled, so instead the object had to bounce back at the last moment,” Colonel Huerta writes.
“I am in a unique position, at least at this point and as far as I know, being the only military pilot in the world who has actually fired a weapon and hit a UFO. I still get goosebumps thinking about it.”
