Captain Faria de Sousa

Captain Faria de Sousa served as a combat pilot in the Portuguese Air Force during the 1950s and remains a peripheral but documented figure within European UAP history due to his involvement in a significant military interception attempt on November 4, 1957. While piloting an F-84G Thunderjet from Ota Air Base near Lisbon, he was scrambled to investigate an unidentified target that Portuguese ground radar had detected hovering at high altitude near Sintra. Upon reaching approximately 30,000 feet, de Sousa established visual contact with a large, intensely luminous, disc-shaped object that executed maneuvers at extraordinary velocities and altitudes far exceeding the operational capabilities of his jet fighter. Despite his repeated attempts to close the distance and maintain pursuit, the object rapidly accelerated and vanished from both visual and radar contact, leaving the encounter officially documented in Portuguese military records as unexplained. This incident stands as one of the earliest confirmed radar-visual military UFO cases in European aviation history, representing a rare instance of official Portuguese Air Force documentation of UAP activity during the Cold War period.