A November 1963 radio story described a metal sphere falling in Conde, Bahia, with a body inside and a deep impact hole. When United States diplomats checked the report, the account changed sharply. Their follow-up said no object or sighting had been verified and described the story as apparently fabricated. The case shows why a released file containing a dramatic crash claim must be read together with the correspondence that tested it.
The broadcast claim
The release item catalogued as EOP-UAP-D001 contains an FBIS monitoring text of a Radio Tupi broadcast from Rio de Janeiro at 23:30 on 8 November 1963. It attributed reports to the municipality of Conde in Bahia. The text claimed that a large metal sphere had fallen in the town, made a hole four metres deep and contained a human body in heavy clothing bearing unreadable inscriptions.
The same text described window-like openings with thick glass and said the authorities had been informed. These are details of what the broadcast reported. They are not an independently examined object, an authenticated photograph, an autopsy or a named witness statement. The record’s presence in a government archive establishes that the broadcast was monitored; it does not establish that its contents were true.
The first diplomatic check
DOS-UAP-D001, a 14 November 1963 communication from the embassy in Rio, asked the consulate in Salvador to confirm or correct the science attaché’s understanding of a telephone conversation. It set out the dramatic newspaper version involving a large metal object, a dead crew member and an impact hole.
The cable also recorded a much less dramatic possibility: an object might have been seen aloft and tentatively called a weather-type balloon, with no object found on the ground. Crucially, that was an enquiry seeking clarification. It is not a recovery report. The existence of a balloon suggestion at this stage cannot support a later claim that a specific balloon was recovered and identified.
The consul’s reply
The fuller follow-up is airgram A-628, dated 20 November 1963 and catalogued as DOS-UAP-D002. It reproduces the substance of a 14 November telegram from Harold Midkiff, the U.S. consul in Salvador. Midkiff reported that the story of an object descending in the Conde region was apparently fabricated in Rio.
According to that telegram, reporters and others who went to the area found nobody who had seen the alleged objects. A public-security official had speculated about a weather balloon, but no such sighting had been verified. The distinction is explicit: the record does not establish a crashed sphere, and it does not replace one demonstrated object with another.
What the embassy said local reporting found
The airgram says the consul also forwarded two Salvador newspaper clippings: Diário de Notícias of 9 November and Jornal da Bahia of 11 November. It describes the first as carrying a categorical denial from the Ministry of Aeronautics that there had been a strange object in Conde. It describes the second as an account of an airship that was not there.
The original newspaper issues are not reproduced in the two-page airgram reviewed for this article and were not separately inspected. The evidence here is therefore the embassy’s contemporary description of their reporting and the consul’s telegram. That is stronger than retaining only the original radio claim, but it should not be inflated into an independent UKPX audit of every reporter’s interview.
The final paragraph adds an ordinary detail about the investigation’s aftermath. A reporter sent a message from Conde’s federal telegraph office using a Morse-code transmitter and received a reply from Salvador five minutes later. The sentence continues onto the second page. Reading that continuation helps establish that this is a complete two-page diplomatic narrative rather than a clipped crash announcement.
A date error that should not create a second incident
The airgram’s subject line prints the reported sighting date as 8 November 1964. Its own document date is 20 November 1963, its reference is a 14 November 1963 telegram, the described newspaper issues belong to that November sequence, and the FBIS item is dated 8 November 1963. UKPX treats the subject-line year as an internal clerical error, not as evidence of a future or second crash.
The incident-year metadata is therefore 1963. The original broadcast, diplomatic enquiry, consul’s reply and final airgram are separate stages in the same source chain. They are not four independent crash reports and are kept together on this canonical case page.
Assessment and archive access
The outcome is Possibly Explained, specifically an apparent fabricated news story according to the contemporary consular enquiry. The source does not identify an admitted hoaxer or reconstruct who originated every detail. Calling the case a proven recovered balloon or an authenticated crash would exceed the evidence; calling it a well-supported unexplained craft would also ignore the negative follow-up.
The reproduced two-page airgram is U.S. federal diplomatic correspondence, credited as public-domain government work. It includes the consul’s federal telegram, but not copies of the newspaper clippings. The separate lead image is a clearly labelled conceptual AI illustration of radio and document research; it does not recreate the claimed sphere, body or crater.
The Sphere/Orb feature refers only to the form alleged in the original story. No Occupants tag is assigned: the broadcast described a human body, and this archive does not convert that into a non-human occupant. No landing or contact feature is inferred from the unverified crash narrative.
Location and sources
The pin is a rounded GeoNames reference for Conde town, Bahia, approximately −11.814, −37.611. It identifies the locality named in the story and subsequent enquiries, not a verified crater, crash site or recovered object. No such physical site was established in the reviewed records, and no visitor-access claim is made.
Original files reviewed: EOP-UAP-D001, one-page FBIS broadcast text; DOS-UAP-D001, one-page 14 November cable; and DOS-UAP-D002, both pages of the 20 November airgram, including the visible date conflict and final continuation. These are catalogue labels from the PURSUE UAP releases; a catalogue title is not itself evidence of a verified incident. Sources and map reference checked 13 November 2026.