Almiro Barauna was a free-lance photographer. A professional of unusual skill, he had long been interested in flying saucers and, some time before the Trindade incident, he had published a purposely humorous magazine article entitled “A Flying Saucer Hunted Me at Home” and illustrated by admittedly faked photographs. He had also published trick photographs of “treasure chests” lying on the ocean bottom. In addition, Barauna specialized in underwater photography and was a member of the Icarai Submarine Hunting Club, a group interested in skin diving and the study of life on the ocean floor.
When the Almirante Saldanha left Rio for its historic January visit to Trindade Island, the ship had on board, as guests of the Navy, five members of the Icarai Club. Among the five, in addition to Barauna, were Amilar Vieira Filho, captain of the group, and José Teobaldo Viegas, a retired captain in the Brazilian Air Force[X-22]. On January 16 when the ship was getting ready to leave Trindade, these three friends were on deck, Barauna with his loaded Rolleiflex camera, the other two standing some distance away. Suddenly Vieira remarked on a big sea gull in the sky. Looking up, Viegas immediately shouted, “Flying saucer!” and Barauna snapped his pictures.
No other eyewitnesses have been found, even though the deck was crowded with sailors. The ship’s dentist has been listed as a witness (in one document he appears as two persons, under two different versions of his name) but no newspaper yet examined mentions his story. Captain Bacellar, returning from his post as commander of the Trindade station, has also been listed as a witness but, according to his statement, he was not on deck when the incident occurred.
Vieira, the first man to sight the object, had called it “a big sea gull.” When interviewed five weeks later, in the midst of the saucer excitement, he had changed his mind about its being a sea gull, but he was no longer certain just what he had seen. He stated that the unknown had been in view for twenty seconds at most, and had disappeared too quickly for him to note any details; it was simply an oval gray object that seemed to flash briefly before it vanished. He did not mention the Saturn-like bands around the middle that are a conspicuous feature of the photograph.
The Trindade Photographs
Accounts of the Trindade affair often remark that the photographs must be genuine because no opportunity for fraud occurred. On the contrary, there were ample and repeated opportunities. Since Barauna was not under observation when he loaded his camera, he could easily have inserted a prepared film, with no one the wiser. With the type of camera used, the operation would have been simple. He was again free from observation when he developed the negatives. Captain Bacellar escorted him to the door of the darkroom but remained outside, on guard at the door. The only person to accompany Barauna inside (to help by holding a flashlight) was his friend Viegas—the same man who had cried “Flying saucer!”
When Barauna emerged with the dripping film, Bacellar examined it but what he expected to find is a question, since he had not observed the UFO. The witnesses allegedly agreed, however, that the negatives showed the object they had seen in the sky—an amazing feat when we remember that the Rolleiflex film frame is small, only about 2.25 inches square.
In the print of Frame 3 shown in O Cruzeiro[[X-22]], the UFO is slightly more than ¼ inch long and less than ⅛ inch thick. Assuming an enlargement factor of a little more than three, we find that the UFO on the negative would have appeared merely as a pale blur about 1/16 of an inch in length and no thicker than a pencil line. Miraculous eyesight would have been required to distinguish a “Saturn-like” or any other shape.
The Navy’s officers on board showed astonishingly little interest in the film and did nothing to prevent the possibility of fraud. All during the homeward trip the photographer had both the camera and the negative in his own possession. When the ship stopped at Santos, he and his fellow club members were allowed to debark (with camera and negative), and they completed the journey to Rio by bus. The ship had been anchored at Rio for two days before Captain Bacellar, of the Trindade station, finally called on Barauna and asked to see the prints so that he could show them to the Navy. Thus the photographer had been free of supervision for days. In that time he could have produced pictures of little men from Mars, if he had wanted to.
The pictures themselves raise many questions. The three witnesses had emphasized the brilliance of the UFO, yet the prints show merely a gray shape with no suggestion of luminosity. Barauna had used a Rolleiflex camera, 2.8 Model E, f/8 lens, set at 125. Finding that he had overexposed the film, he said, he had treated the negative with silver salts after development in order to increase the contrast. (During this procedure he was, again, without official supervision.)