Person
Carlos Dolz de Espejo
Also known as Dolz de Espejo, Carlos Dolz
- Lieutenant General, Spanish Air Force; commander of the Canary Islands Air Zone (1976)
- Air Force pilot
Carlos Dolz de Espejo was a Spanish Air Force lieutenant general who commanded the Canary Islands Air Zone in 1976. That June he ordered an official inquiry into a mass sighting over the islands. On 19 November 1976, piloting an Air Force T-12, he saw a huge luminous halo form over the sea, a sighting also seen from the Navy training ship Juan Sebastián Elcano and from an airliner.
In his report to the Air Staff he called it an unidentified optical phenomenon, not a craft, and suggested foreign weapons tests. In later television appearances he described the sighting in detail, while saying no one had ever proved an extraterrestrial craft. Researchers have since matched the November sighting to a US Poseidon missile launch.
Sources: Ejército del Aire, expediente 761119; Antena 3, Cita con la Vida, 10 April 1996
Facts and claims
- documented As the general commanding the Canary Islands Air Zone, he wrote on 13 December 1976 that he had himself seen the 19 November phenomenon, that no flying object was seen but "unicamente un fenómeno optico", and that it was "Indiscutiblemente" an unidentified optical phenomenon possibly caused by the experiments of certain foreign powers. The released file blanks his name. Source: Spanish Air Force file 761119: the luminous phenomenon over the Canary Islands, 19 November 1976
- claimed On Antena 3 in 1996 he said he was flying the aircraft himself, that his co-pilot, aide and flight mechanic and a Spantax crew saw the same thing, and that the commander of the Juan Sebastián Elcano came the next day to tell him the ship had seen it too. — Carlos Dolz de Espejo Source: Cita con la Vida (Antena 3, 1996): the declassified Canary Islands files, with Lt. Gen. Carlos Dolz de Espejo at 7:34
Connected files
Incidents
Videos
- En familia: OVNIs (RTVE, 1989), with Lt. Gen. Carlos Dolz de Espejo and Iberia captain Juan Ignacio Lorenzo (appears in)
- Cita con la Vida (Antena 3, 1996): the declassified Canary Islands files, with Lt. Gen. Carlos Dolz de Espejo (appears in)