Operação Prato — Brazilian Air Force field investigation in Colares (1977–1978)

Operação Prato — literally "Operation Saucer" — is the most institutionally significant UAP field investigation in Brazilian history. Between September 1977 and December 1978, the Brazilian Air Force (Força Aérea Brasileira, or FAB) deployed a small uniformed team to the island municipality of Colares in the state of Pará to document a sustained wave of luminous-object sightings affecting riverside communities at the mouth of the Amazon. Unlike most UAP investigations of that era, the resulting dossier was not destroyed, not permanently classified, and not denied: it was archived inside FAB's institutional record and eventually released to Brazilian researchers in the years that followed.

What the team was sent to investigate

Residents of Colares and surrounding villages reported recurring nighttime encounters with luminous objects that approached people, hovered over rooftops, and in some accounts projected focused beams of light onto the body. The local press coined the term chupa-chupa — colloquially "sucker" — to describe the phenomenon, with witnesses claiming the beams caused puncture-like marks, burns, weakness, and, in several reported cases, hospital admission. By mid-1977 the local mayor had formally requested federal assistance, and the regional health authorities had logged dozens of patient complaints attributing symptoms to the encounters.

The investigation that followed was officially designated Operação Prato and operated out of the I COMAR (First Regional Air Command) in Belém. It was led by then-Captain Uyrangê Bolívar Soares Nogueira de Hollanda Lima, working with a small team of officers and enlisted photographers. The mandate was straightforward: gather first-hand testimony, photograph what could be photographed, and produce a closed institutional report — not a public communiqué.

What the team produced

Over roughly four months of field deployment, the team accumulated a substantial documentary record: hundreds of pages of typed reports, interview transcripts with named witnesses, sketches, and a body of photographic and 16mm film material captured by FAB personnel during their own nighttime observations. The team did not merely collect civilian accounts; multiple officers reported direct sightings during the course of the operation. The final report was submitted internally and the operation formally concluded at the end of 1977, though follow-up materials continued into 1978.

For decades the dossier sat inside FAB archives without public access. Beginning in 1997, Captain Hollanda — by then retired — gave a series of on-the-record interviews to Brazilian researchers and television producers in which he confirmed the operation's existence, its findings, and his own personal conviction that the team had documented something they could not explain conventionally. Hollanda died in October 1997 in circumstances officially ruled a suicide; the timing of his death, shortly after his most extensive public statements, has been a continuing point of contention within Brazilian UAP research circles.

Release and the IPM framework

Brazil's Air Force began releasing batches of historical UAP files to the National Archives in the late 2000s under the country's expanding access-to-information framework. The Operação Prato dossier was among the materials transferred. Researchers can now consult portions of the original typed reports and photographic indexes, though file integrity varies by batch and not every page referenced in the original 1977 inventory has surfaced in the released sets. The institutional vehicle for these holdings is the FAB's Inquérito Policial Militar (IPM) system — the military's internal investigative file structure — which is also how more recent cases have been catalogued. SkyLens coverage of the broader FAB/IPM framework is available alongside other Brazilian case files.

What this does and does not establish

What the official record establishes: a uniformed Air Force investigation was conducted, a multi-month field deployment took place, officers and witnesses provided sworn accounts, and a formal report was filed and retained. What the record does not establish: the physical nature of the objects observed, the mechanism behind the reported beam-related injuries, or any specific origin hypothesis. The IPM dossier is investigative material, not adjudicative conclusion. Many of the medical claims associated with the Colares episode rest on regional clinic records and witness testimony rather than on systematic forensic analysis.

Operação Prato matters in the broader UAP record because it is one of the very few cases in any national archive where an air force voluntarily conducted, completed, and preserved a sustained ground-level investigation of a civilian UAP wave — and then, decades later, made the underlying paperwork available. For comparative context with other Brazilian materials, including the Trindade Island photographs of 1958 and more recent FAB releases, see the case index on the SkyLens UAP files page.

Editorial note: This is independent SkyLens reporting on a publicly documented case from the Brazilian UAP record. Related cases and primary-source releases are catalogued on the SkyLens UAP files page.