Alien Base: The Evidence for Extraterrestrial Colonization of Earth: DEVELOPMENTS IN ARGENTINA
Leonard Stringfield, the former United States Air Force intelligence officer who later specialized, as a civilian, in cases involving crashed unidentified aerial craft, was given details of an extraordinary incident that took place in a remote area of Bahia Blanca, Argentina, on 10 May 1950. The witness, Dr Enrique Caretenuto Botta, Italian by birth, was an ex-Second World War pilot, an aeronautical engineer, and, at the time of the incident, an architectural engineer with a Venezuelan real-estate company engaged in a construction project on the pampas. Dr Botta first related his story to the Venezuelan researcher, Horacio Gonzales who, in turn, put Stringfield in contact with Botta. In the following account, I have incorporated some of the information supplied to the late UFO researcher Coral Lorenzen, of the former Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), by Gonzales, who was APRO’s representative in Caracas.
Dr Botta was driving along the highway about 75 miles from his hotel (at a point he gave as 64° Longitude West Greenwich; 37° 45′ South Latitude, 800 feet above sea level) when his attention was drawn to a metallic disc-shaped object resting on the ground off the highway, with a flashing light on top. He stopped to investigate. After a few moments waiting to see if anything would happen, he approached the object. ‘The object was resting on the ground in an inclined position,’ Dr Botta wrote to Stringfield in October 1955. ‘The disc was 32 feet in diameter, the surface was slippery and brilliant. The height was about 13 feet, the tower [dome?] with windows was six feet high . . .’ Dr Botta decided to enter the vehicle through a small hatch in the side.
Three little men were seated in soft armchairs. They were dead. One of the three, the pilot (I believe), was seated in the center of the tower. In front of him was a large panel with bright instruments. His hands were resting on two levers. They were about four feet in height. In appearance they were human, equal to ourselves with eyes, nose and mouth. The color of their hair was gray-chestnut, cut short. Their skin was bronze, their faces were dark [or charred]. They were dressed in overalls of a gray-lead color . . .’
According to the information supplied by Dr Botta to Gonzales, the pilot sat on what appeared to be a ‘control chair’ while the other two ‘were lying on lounges along the curved wall of the ship . . . All three were dressed in brown, tight- fitting overalls that exposed only the hands and the face, and their feet were encased in some kind of boots . . . their skin [was] a tobacco-brown, their eyes light colored.’ 7
Dr Botta’s report to Stringfield continues: I touched the bodies which were rigid. In the tower there was a smell [like] ozone and garlic. In the roof of the cabin there was an intermittent small light of orange-whitish color . . .
There were no cables, no pipes, only the panel of the controls. Above the panel there was a small [glass-like] sphere with a circle. To the right of the pilot there was an apparatus similar to a TV screen. I remained five minutes in the tower but the absence of the [presumed] fourth person impressed meso much that I went out of the machine very stunned Dr Botta headed straight back to his hotel and there related his adventure to two colleagues. Arming themselves with revolvers and taking a camera, the engineers at first considered going to the site immediately, but as night was approaching they decided to wait until morning. On reaching the spot then, all that could be seen was a pile of ashes. Dr Botta took a photograph of the ash and one of the group scooped up some of it. His hand turned purple, the colour remaining indelible for several days.
As the engineers wandered around the site looking for more evidence, one of them glanced up and saw three objects: one cigar-shaped, high up, and the others smaller and disc-shaped. One of the discs, about 10 metres in diameter, was hovering above the group at an estimated altitude of 600 metres. In haste, Dr Botta managed to take five photographs, only two of which showed the objects with sufficient clarity. The two discs then shot upwards, apparently merged with the cigar, which flew for a short distance, turned ‘blood red’, made an 80-degree turn, and disappeared in seconds.
Dr Botta said that although the craft had a metallic appearance, it felt (very untypically) ‘resilient, like rubber’. Also, there were holes or vents in the floor. Tor weeks he suffered from a fever which no doctor in the area could diagnose, and his skin was covered with blisters,’ reported Gonzales. ‘He had entered the disc with dark green eyeglasses (used by pilots) and the outline of the glasses was marked around both eyes. A doctor tested him for radiation but could not find any traces . . . Because of the character of the man and his professional standing, it is difficult to believe the story is a hoax:
Dr Botta’s observation that the faces of the aliens were ‘dark or charred’ is interesting. During a conversation with Dr Rolf Alexander at Mexico City airport in 1951, General George Marshall, US Army Chief of Staff in the Second World War and later US Secretary of State, allegedly revealed that American authorities had recovered alien craft and bodies. On three (unspecified) occasions, said Marshall, there had been landings which had proved disastrous for the occupants: breathing the heavily oxygenated atmosphere of Earth supposedly had incinerated the visitors from within. (If General Marshall did say this, his remark is technically correct: what we call ‘burning’ or incineration is a process of rapid, often destructive oxidation.)