The index page for the 1954 French flap section of this website is here.
Reference for this case: 11-Jan-54-Pontailler-sur-Saône.
Please cite this reference in any correspondence with me regarding this case.
On the morning of January 9, 1954, a meteor was seen over Burgundy and Alsace among other areas, and in the newspaper La Bourgogne Républicaine, the journalist and ufologist in the making Charles Garreau considered that this could have been a "saucer".
In an article of January 13, 1954, the newspaper reported in addition to some of the observations, that on January 11, 1954, the gendarmerie had recovered a weather balloon that had fallen two kilometers from Pontailler-sur-Saône.
According to the newspaper, "some" had thought that this could have been the solution to the sightings of January 9, 1954, in the region.
[Ref. bre1:] NEWSPAPER "LA BOURGOGNE REPUBLICAINE":
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Pontailler (from our P.C.). - Monday afternoon, one discovered, 2 kilometers from Pontailler, a parachute at the end of which was a radio-sounding balloon, which was recovered, with its instruments, by the gendarmerie brigade.
Some have speculated that this was the object that stirred the region on Saturday morning.
The additional information we are providing today proves that this is not the case.
No luck! If this statement had been correct, an irritating problem might have ceased to exist!
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Negative case, fallen weather balloon.
The same or another debris is documented here.
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Above: on the cover of Scientific American magazine of June 1954, a U.S. Army weather balloon. Under the balloon, the red parachute, under the parachute, the radiosonde. When the balloon goes up, it expands. At very high altitude, it explodes, and the radiosonde descends while being braked by the parachute.
Below: 1950s American radiosondes. The box is usually marked with "United States Government" and instructions for the discoverer to return the device to the authorities.
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(These keywords are only to help queries and are not implying anything.)
Pontailler-sur-Saône, Côte-d'Or, gendarmes, weather balloon, crash
[----] indicates sources that are not yet available to me.
| Version: | Created/Changed by: | Date: | Change Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | January 6, 2021 | First published. |
