Peru · 1980-04-11 (Peruvian accounts) / 1980-05-09 (US message)
Base Aerea La Joya, 1980
ReportedA fighter pilot emptied roughly 64 rounds of 30mm into a hovering sphere over his own air base, reported no visible damage, and the only paper that survives is an American intelligence message, not a Peruvian one.
- Where
- Base Aerea La Joya, Arequipa
- When
- 1980-04-11 (Peruvian accounts) / 1980-05-09 (US message)
- Who reported it
- FAP Su-22 pilot plus base personnel
- Entities described
- None reported
- Handled as
- INVESTIGATED / UNRESOLVED
- Evidence class
- GOV-4
The record
An official file preserves that a report was made and examined. It does not, by itself, establish what was seen.
UNVERIFIED - indexed at https://enigmalabs.io/library/e6b60e28-a5f2-449e-8c4f-8f36132ea4f7 with no scan link
No document is attached yet. The retrieval is open work.
What is not settled
The date discrepancy between the Peruvian telling and the US message is unresolved and may mean two conflated events. Peru has released nothing. A tethered or drifting balloon absorbing cannon fire without obvious damage is not implausible; the pilot's statements have grown in detail over decades.