You’re probably familiar with the disappearance of Frederick Valentich and his Cessna aircraft while being followed by a UFO over the Bass Strait between Australia and Tasmania, but have you heard of a similar incident that occurred near Puerto Rico?
One of the most intriguing cases of UFO-related disappearance is that of pilot Jose Pagan Santos, who disappeared along with his friend Jose Maldonado Torres on June 28, 1980 while flying from Santo Domingo to Puerto Rico.
Santos’ last communication was a distress call in which he reported having seen a strange object in front of his plane that caused him to lose his course and his instruments.
According to transcripts of his Mayday radio transmission, Santos described the object as “strange” and said it was an hour away from his position.
He also said he had to change his course three times to avoid it, but it kept appearing in front of him. He gave its heading as 070 degrees and its altitude as 1,600 feet. He said it should be 35 miles off the coast of Puerto Rico, but was unsure of its location.
At 8:03 p.m., the Las Mesas site and several aircraft picked up radio transmissions from N3808H:
“Mayday, Mayday! Ercoup ocho cero, eight, zero, zero, Hotel. We can see a strange object on our course, we are lost, Mayday, Mayday!”
An Iberia Airlines flight IB-976 en route from Santo Domingo to Spain responded to Mayday and received a reply:
“Ah we are going from Santo Domingo ah San Juan International, but we encountered ah, a strange object on our course that made us change course about three different times, we caught it right in front of us now at one o’clock, our course is zero seven zero degrees… our altitude one thousand six hundred one zero seven zero degrees… our VORs lost frequency…
Iberia Flight IB-976 then transmitted a message from the San Juan Center asking N3808H to turn on its transponder.
N3808H responded that the Ercoup was not equipped with a transponder. At 08:06 Iberia IB-976 requested its call sign and estimated position and received this reply:
“At this moment we should be about thirty-five miles off the coast of Puerto Rico, but we have something strange ahead of us that keeps us off course. Now it is three hundred miles and we are in the same situation again, sir.
They were not heard from again.
The Atlantic Fleet Weapons Range verified N3808H’s last radar position 35 miles west of Puerto Rico and a search was launched that included Santos’ father, who was a Puerto Rican Air Policeman.
Having the advantage of a last radar position the search for this aircraft was quick and thorough, concentrating on its last known area. However, nothing was found. No ELT signal was picked up by any station and no explanation was given for the “strange object”.
The case was investigated by several UFO researchers, such as Jorge Martin, who interviewed witnesses and obtained documents related to the incident.
Martin claims there is evidence of a cover-up by the authorities and that the object Santos encountered was an extraterrestrial spacecraft that kidnapped him and his friend.
The case remains unsolved and raises many questions about the nature and origin of the object Santos saw and what happened to him and his companion. It is one of the most compelling examples of a possible UFO abduction in aviation history. Source
