Captain Jean V. de Beyssac, chief pilote aboard a C-16 airfreighter of Varig Airlines, had, in the night from the 3 to 4 November 1957, left Oporto Alegre to reach Sào Paulo. He went up with his twin-engine to 2 300 m and maintained this altitude, above an irregular layer of clouds.
At about 01:30am he saw a strange red light below and on the left of his airplane. It asked his copilot to lean over to check if he could also see a a true flying saucer. The copilot did, and the two men of laughed at the joke. But they were not to laugh a long time. A few moments later, looking at the left, De Beyssac saw that the objet was still there and approached quickly. He directed his plane in its direction the UFO was musch faster and rushed toward the plane. Before De Beyssac had been able to modify his road, the red object reached his plane. There was a strong smell of burning, although the fire detectors did not reveal anything abnormal, and suddenly, the red gleam of the objet started to fade. A rapid check made clear to the crew that the radio, the magneto of the right engine and the radiogoniometer were roasted. Captain de Beyssac made made a half-turn and brought back it with only one working engine to Oporto Alegre where he wrote a complete report of the incident. After the copilot signed it too, "I went home" he said "and got myself drunk".
It was the second time in less than three months that a Varig Airlines crew had an incident with a UFO. On August 14, 1957, at 09:00pm, a C-47 cargo liner which had left Oporto Alegre to reach Rio de Janeiro under the command of captain Jorge Araujo and his copilot, Edgar Soares, both experienced pilots, flew at 250 km/h, 1 700m high, above a layer of clouds. The visibility was perfect. The two men saw a brilliant object on their left and a little behind and below their aircraft. A few seconds later, the object was ahead of them and far on their line of light, which, with the statement of the pilots, supposed a fantastic speed.
Then the objet rushed towards them at high speed.
In their report of the incident, the two pilots and the three other crew members described the object as having a disc shape with a flattened dome at the top.
At the very moment the UFO approched the plane, the light did almost extinct, the engines had failures and the radio reception had become null. A few seconds later - seconds of anguish, as the crew remembers, - the UFO had plunged in the clouds and electrical power was fully restored.
This report created quite an uproar at the time, not only in Brazil but in the whole South America, when the incident of the same kind occured, in November, to Captain de Beyssac, on another Varig Airlines flight, the company instructed its pilots from now on to keep their mouth shut about such encounters which were now to discuss only with the company officials.
| Date: | November 4, 1957 |
|---|---|
| Source: | NICAP, APRO |
| Location: | Ararangua, Brazil |
| Witness: | Cpt. Jean Vincent de Beyssac, Varig Airlines |
| Summation: | Red light source approached below plane, made erratic jump, electrical equipment on plane burnt out, heat. |
