AP PRESSWhat happened
A months-long wave of low, slow, silent triangle reports; on the night of Mar 30–31, 1990, two F-16s were scrambled and recorded radar lock-ons.
The record on unidentified anomalous phenomena
For months across 1989 and 1990, Belgians reported the same thing: a vast dark triangle, three lights and a red beacon, moving low and slow and making no sound. The gendarmerie logged it. The Air Force answered questions about it in public — a transparency almost unique in this file.
This episode covers the scrambles, the lock-ons, and the press conference — and then does what this channel does: it tells you plainly that the case's most famous image, the Petit-Rechain photograph, was confessed to be a hoax in 2011, and weighs what survives without it.
A months-long wave of low, slow, silent triangle reports; on the night of Mar 30–31, 1990, two F-16s were scrambled and recorded radar lock-ons.
Thousands of civilians and multiple gendarmerie patrols; Belgian Air Force acknowledged and investigated openly.
The BAF held a press conference (July 11, 1990) presenting the F-16 radar data and stating no explanation.
Unexplained — with the famous Petit-Rechain photo confessed as a hoax in 2011
The radar lock-ons have candidate explanations — ducting, ground returns, and the jets at times locking each other. The photo is a confessed fake. What remains is harder: months of consistent close-range descriptions from police officers and thousands of witnesses of a silent object no aircraft of the era matches. Both readings are in the episode.