The Belgian UFO Wave
The Belgian wave began at Eupen on 29 November 1989 and peaked with an F-16 scramble on 30-31 March 1990. SOBEPS logged 2,600 reports. Here is what held up.
The Belgian UFO wave was a run of sightings of large triangular lights over Belgium from 29 November 1989 to about April 1990. It began near Eupen, close to the German border, where gendarmes and other witnesses reported a big triangle with bright lights. It peaked on the night of 30 to 31 March 1990, when two military radars tracked unknown targets and the Belgian Air Force sent up two F-16s. The pilots saw nothing, and their brief radar locks were later put down to locks on each other and atmospheric echoes. The civilian group SOBEPS collected about 2,600 reports. The famous Petit-Rechain photo of a triangle was admitted as a hoax in 2011. No one has ever identified a craft.
The first night at Eupen
On the evening of 29 November 1989 people in the area of Eupen and Verviers in eastern Belgium reported a huge triangle with bright lights, sometimes hovering, sometimes moving slowly. The best known witnesses were two gendarmes, usually named as Heinrich Nicoll and Hubert von Montigny, who said they followed it for some time on their patrol, including near the Gileppe dam. The ufologist Patrick Gross summarises the early count as 41 witnesses that night, six of them gendarmes. In the end about 143 reports were linked to that date.
The sceptic Brian Dunning makes two points about those numbers. Most of the 143 reports came in more than a week later, after SOBEPS had appealed for witnesses in the press. And the gendarmes’ main report described a stationary white light where the planet Venus would have been. The Belgian investigator Renaud Leclet thought one of the objects was probably a helicopter, and some witnesses described engine noise.
How the wave grew
Over the next months reports came in from Liège, Namur, Wavre, Brussels and many smaller towns. Most described a dark triangle with a light at each corner and often a red or orange light in the middle. SOBEPS, the Belgian Society for the Study of Space Phenomena, gathered about 2,600 reports and published two large volumes on the wave. The Defence Minister, Guy Coëme, said publicly that the objects were not Belgian military aircraft. The United States said none of its stealth aircraft were flying in the area.
The F-16 night, 30 to 31 March 1990
At 10.50 p.m. on 30 March a gendarme named Renquin rang the master controller at the Glons radar station from his home in Ramillies. He said he could see three unusual lights in a triangle. Glons picked up an unknown target at 11.15 p.m., moving at about 25 knots. By 11.49 p.m. the Semmerzake radar had confirmed it. At 11.56 p.m. the order came to scramble, and two F-16s took off from Beauvechain at 00.05 on 31 March. On the ground, Captain Pinson of the Wavre gendarmerie watched four white lights in a square until about 1.30 a.m.
The official report on the night was written by Major Lambrechts. It says the F-16 radars made brief contact with a target several times. In one case, at 00.13, the target’s speed was recorded rising from 150 to 970 knots while its height changed sharply, and the lock broke within seconds. Colonel Wilfried De Brouwer, the Air Staff’s chief of operations, later described a change from 280 to 1,800 km/h with a drop from 3,000 to 1,000 metres in about a second. That works out at around 40 g, far beyond what a pilot could survive. No sonic boom was heard. Neither pilot saw anything.
What the radar data really showed
SOBEPS said the F-16s locked on nine times. The Belgian military counted three. A later technical study by Officer Cadet Gilmard under Major Salmon at the Air Force’s Electronic Warfare Centre looked at the recordings. According to Dunning’s summary of the work, the three locks were the two F-16s locking on to each other. The other contacts were “angel” echoes, known as Bragg scattering, which can appear when layers of air of different density reflect radar. De Brouwer himself said that “the technical evidence was insufficient to conclude that abnormal air activities took place during that evening.”
That leaves a puzzle on the ground, not in the air. Gendarmes and others did see lights that night. Bright stars and planets, aircraft lights and the excitement of a well-publicised wave can all play a part.
The Petit-Rechain photograph
In April 1990 a photo taken at Petit-Rechain near Verviers appeared to show a black triangle with a light at each corner and one in the centre. It became the symbol of the wave and was studied by experts, including at Belgium’s Royal Military Academy. In 2011 Patrick Maréchal told Belgian television that he and friends had made it with a styrofoam triangle painted black, with lights fixed to it, hung on a string. Dunning notes that if so many people had seen the triangle, it is odd that this hoax was the only famous photo.
Why it still matters
The Belgian wave is unusual because the military took it seriously and shared data with civilian researchers. That openness is the main reason we can check it now. Supporters, including the physicist Auguste Meessen of SOBEPS, argued in 2011 that the wave was still unexplained. Sceptics such as Marc Hallet, writing in 1992, argued it was a social wave driven by publicity, with helicopters, aircraft and bright planets behind many reports. For more on the triangle sightings, see our page on the 1989 Belgian wave triangles, and on the Petit-Rechain photo.