On January 16, 1958, the photographer from Bahia, living in Niterói, Almiro Baraúna (April 30, 1916 – Niterói, July 29, 2000), then 42 years old, invited by the Brazilian Navy to participate in oceanographic research on Trindade Island, on the Espírito Santo coast, taking underwater photographs, he would have captured, on board the training ship Almirante Saldanha, four images of a discoid ship flying over the island. The film was developed in the ship’s infirmary, improvised as a laboratory, but due to the reduced dimensions of the negatives, the supposed ship could not be seen by any of those present, only one point was noticed.[1] Days after disembarking on the continent, Baraúna presented the press with positive and enlarged photographs, claiming to be of that object, and the case gained international repercussion. In a letter dated January 30, 1967 – nine years after the episode – he described to Hungarian-American Colonel Colman von Keviczy, director of the Intercontinental UFO Network (ICUFON) in New York, how the sighting was:

“On January 16, 1958, the training ship Almirante Saldanha, of the Brazilian Navy, was anchored in the inlet of Ilha Trindade, about 800 miles off the coast of Espírito Santo. It was around 11 am, the day was clear, the crew was preparing to return to Rio de Janeiro, when suddenly a group of people on the stern of the ship, among them the captain of the Brazilian Air Force reserve, José Viegas, he raised the alarm. In an instant, everyone on the ship’s deck, some fifty people, began to observe a strange silver plate-shaped object moving from the sea towards the island. The object in question didn’t make the slightest noise, it was luminous and moved now quickly, now slowly, rose, fell, undulated gently and when it increased its speed, it left behind it a white phosphorescent trail that soon faded away. In its trajectory, the object disappeared behind the Pico Desiredo hill, and when everyone expected it to appear on the opposite side, it returned in the same direction, stopped for a few seconds and then shot off at incredible speed, disappearing into the horizon. During the apparition, I managed to take six pictures, two of which, due to the pandemonium that formed on the deck, were not used, the other four show in a reasonable sequence the object on the horizon, approaching the island, standing on the side of the hill (the best) and finally disappearing into the distance. The film was developed about twenty minutes later, at the request of the commander, who wanted to know if the photos were okay. The negatives were seen by almost the entire crew, and all were unanimous in later identifying the extensions in the Navy’s Secret Service. It should be clarified that the group of civilians was on board at the invitation of the Navy to carry out underwater research and take photographs of the island’s underwater fauna.