The 1954 French flap:

The flying saucers

Paris, 25. -- Few saucers on this rainy Sunday, it should actually be pointed out that one of them, according to a hundred people including several peacekeepers, had only the aspect of a star moving above St-Etienne at an altitude of 2 to 300 meters. Another was just an "old saucer" observed on October 12. It is a young mason from Plogastel-St-Germain (Finistère), who witnessed this last phenomenon, but did not speak of it feariing one would scoff at him.

He had seen, in the evening, a kind of luminous swarm, 1.50 meters in diameter, animated in its central part by fins, rising from a field 60 meters from where it was.

THE ITALIAN AIR MINISTER CONCERNED ABOUT "FLYING SAUCERS"

Rome, 25. -- The testimonies collected for more than a month concerning the "flying saucers" and flying "cigars" seen in the sky of the peninsula, were the topic of a press release from from the Italian Ministry of Air Forces.

"So far, the statement said, radar sets did not detect any such device, with the exception of planes and sounding balloons, the characteristics of which are known."

"Special instructions were given to the heads of the detection stations to intensify surveillance during the twilight and night hours during which, according to witnesses, the "flying disks" were seen, the press release added.

"As for the documentation on the flying "disks" that the Italian Air Army possesses, it is only, specifies the press release, some testimonies emanating from officers who would have seen these apparatuses above the Tyrrhenian coast, moving in a south-north direction, at a speed greater than 2,000 km per hour."

 

Saucer-
cigar
in the sky of Alsace

Mulhouse, October 23.

Consumers of a Wittenheim coffee shop saw last night around 11 p.m. at about 300 meters of alltitude, a circular craft rapidly rotating on itself and moving at a moderate pace. The night was very clear and the witnesses noted that the craft was animated by a horizontal rotation movement which gave it the appearance of a saucer, and that it also revolved around a central nucleus, then evoking a shape like a cigar.

After ten minutes of moves, the apparatus whose outer edges had passed successively from red to brown, then to bright red, and whose glowing central nucleus surrounded itself with sparks, quickly disappeared.

XXX

Furthermore, few saucers on this rainy Sunday, it is even said that one of them, according to a hundred people including several peacekeepers had only the appearance of a star moving above St-Etienne at an altitude of 2 to 300 meters. Another was just an "old saucer" observed on October 12. It was a young mason from Plogastel St-Germain (Finistère) who witnessed this last phenomenon, but did not speak of it fearing that one would scoff at him.

He had seen, in the evening, a kind of luminous swarm, 1.50 m. in diameter, animated in its central part by fins raising from a field 50 meters from where he was.