1978 Tarija UFO Crash
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On May 6, 1978, hundreds to thousands of witnesses across Bolivia and northern Argentina observed a large luminous cylindrical object streaking through the sky before impacting El Taire mountain near the Bermejo River. The sonic boom shattered windows within a 30-mile radius. Within days, two U.S. Air Force officers from the American Embassy in La Paz arrived under Project Moon Dust, the classified program for recovering foreign and anomalous aerospace objects. A declassified telex signed by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance explicitly stated that no known re-entering space objects correlated with the event. No wreckage was ever publicly recovered or presented, but the Police Chief of Tarija described a 'dull metallic cylinder twelve feet long with a few dents' at the site. Five declassified U.S. State Department documents confirm the official American response.
Key Facts
- ›Date: May 6, 1978, approximately 4:15-4:30 p.m. local time
- ›Impact site: El Taire mountain near the Bermejo River, on the Bolivia-Argentina border southwest of Tarija city
- ›Sonic boom from the impact was heard up to 150 miles (240 km) away; windows shattered within a 30-mile radius
- ›Estimated 500+ witnesses at a local soccer match in Aguas Blancas, Argentina (on the border), plus thousands more across the region
- ›Two Argentine border police officers Eduardo Salmon and Bienvenido Ortega observed a metallic oval object trailing smoke
- ›Bolivia's Air Force scrambled three AT-6 aircraft to reconnoiter; Argentina's 20th Border Police unit was dispatched to search for wreckage
- ›Bolivia formally requested NASA assistance
- ›Two U.S. Air Force officers (Colonel Robert Simmons and Major John Heise) arrived in Tarija under Project Moon Dust / Operation Blue Fly
- ›A declassified telex signed by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance (May 18, 1978) stated: 'No direct correlation with known space objects that may have reentered the earth's atmosphere near May 6 can be made'
- ›The Smithsonian Scientific Event Alert Network confirmed the object was not a meteorite
- ›Police Chief of Tarija reportedly described recovered object as a 'dull metallic cylinder twelve feet long with a few dents' - never independently confirmed
- ›Five declassified U.S. State Department documents confirm the American military response