We’re stuck with a serious dilemma. Has the military from some country been testing new, extremely advanced craft since the mid-1970s, which is when reports of such triangular craft began? Was Belgium selected as the site for repeated test flights, monitored from a secret base somewhere? Common sense tells us that if a government had developed huge craft that can hover motionless only a few hundred feet up, and then speed off in the blink of an eye—all without making a sound—such technology would have revolutionized both air travel and modern warfare, and probably physics as well. In the two decades since the Belgian wave, the United States has been involved in three wars; had we possessed such advanced capabilities, they would surely have been put to use by now. If some government
As far as General De Brouwer is concerned, that possibility has been completely ruled out. So, to his mind, what’s left? “I am approaching the UAP issue in a pragmatic way. I stick to the facts and avoid extrapolations to possible extraterrestrial activities,” General De Brouwer responded by e-mail. “Nevertheless, I encourage scientific research which should be based on the objective analysis of a number of observations reported during the Belgian wave. Such research should not exclude the extraterrestrial option.”
Lastly, I want to point out the significance of the close-up color photograph of an unidentified object that De Brouwer will present—one of the most revealing UFO images of all time. Readers might reasonably ask why there aren’t more unequivocal pictures and videos of the Belgian objects, since there were so many sightings. Partly, this was because of the strict requirements of the authorities regarding the acceptance of photographs; their screening methods eliminated all questionable and unverifiable images. In addition, it’s easy to forget that twenty years ago, cell phones and relatively inexpensive, consumer-level digital and video cameras were not yet in use. Most often, people did not have loaded cameras handy at the unpredictable times when UFOs passed overhead, such as at night while driving. In my conversations with many UFO witnesses over the years, I’ve learned that when observing something as awesome, and sometimes frightening, as a gigantic low-flying UFO, people become almost transfixed. They are seeing something that isn’t supposed to exist, something ominous, huge and silent, that was previously unimaginable. Most do not take their eyes off the otherworldly thing except maybe to quickly summon family members or friends within earshot. They keep staring, and the distraction of taking a picture is not on their minds. The craft is usually moving away, soon to be out of sight. They do not want to run inside the house to look for a camera, or unpack a bag in the trunk of the car to find one, or worry if it’s loaded. The moment is too unusual, too breathtaking.
Even when a picture
On the pictures, however, the bright “spotlights” on the UFO, which to the viewers’ eyes had looked much, much brighter than the lights on the airplane, were hardly discernible. The triangular shape of the UFO, clearly visible to the naked eye, was also lost on the film. At the same time, the airplane lights came out brighter than those of the UFO, appearing just the way they had looked from the ground, even though the UFO was much closer to the observers than the airplane. Laboratory experiments show that this was likely due to the effect of infrared light around the UFO, which can cause even such an object to disappear altogether in a photograph. This could be one reason why so few usable pictures were received by investigators during the Belgian wave, and why bona fide UFO pictures are not as common as one might expect.
Witness drawings have an important role to play, encapsulating details imprinted in the memories of observers immediately after their sightings. Investigators can then make comparisons between renditions made in different locations at different times, or by multiple witnesses to the same event from different vantage points—all by people who don’t know each other. “The day will come, undoubtedly, when the phenomenon will be observed with the technological means necessary that won’t leave a single doubt about its origin,” General De Brouwer commented recently, with assurance. In the meantime, something physically, technologically real, yet completely unknown to any of us, repeatedly inserted itself into the skies over Belgium. We don’t know where it was from, where it was going, or why it was there. But the fact of its existence is remarkable enough and a sufficient challenge to those of us below, unable to do a thing about it.
CHAPTER 2
The UAP Wave over Belgium
by Major General Wilfried De Brouwer (Ret.)
On November 29, 1989, when I was Head of Operations of the Belgian Air Staff, a total of 143 sightings were reported in a small area around Eupen, Belgium, thirty kilometers (nineteen miles) east of the city of Liege and eleven kilometers (seven miles) west of the German border. Some reported sightings were witnessed by more than one person, which means that at least 250 people described extraordinary UAP activity, with most reports occurring after sunset.
The weather was clear with open skies and good visibility. Two federal policemen, Heinrich Nicoll and Hubert Von Montigny, made the most important report. At 5:15 p.m., while patrolling on the road between Eupen and the German border, they saw a nearby field lit with such intensity that they could read the newspaper in their car. Hovering above the field was a triangular craft with three spotlights beaming down and a red flashing light in the center. Without making a sound, it moved slowly toward the German border for about two minutes and then suddenly turned back toward the city of Eupen. The policemen followed. Other independent witnesses reported that they saw the strange object along the same road. It remained over the town of Eupen for approximately thirty minutes and was seen by numerous additional witnesses.
The object then proceeded to Lake Gileppe, where it remained immobile, hovering for approximately one hour, while Nicoll and Von Montigny sat in their car on a nearby hill and witnessed an extraordinary spectacle. The craft repeatedly emitted two red light beams with a red ball at the spearhead of both beams, in the horizontal plane. Subsequently, the beams disappeared and the red balls returned to the vehicle. A few minutes later, another cycle started, each cycle lasting several minutes. Hubert Von Montigny said it was like a diver shooting an arrow from an underwater gun that slows down at the end of its trajectory and is subsequently retrieved by the diver.[11]
But there was more to come. Suddenly, at 6:45 p.m., the policemen saw a second craft, which appeared from behind the woods and made a forward tilting maneuver, exposing the upper side of the fuselage. They described a dome on the upper structure with rectangular windows, lit on the inside. It then departed to the north. About forty minutes later, at 7:23 p.m., the first craft stopped emitting the red light balls and departed to the southwest. The two policemen, who were in radio contact with their dispatch, learned that another UAP had been reported in the north of Eupen, and they drove to an observation point, south of the highway E 40. From that position, they saw the UAP moving to the village of Henri-Chapelle, where two of their police colleagues, Dieter Plummans and Peter Nicoll (no relation to Heinrich Nicoll), saw the craft approaching from the direction of
