The index page for the 1954 French flap section of this site is here.
Reference for this case: 27-Oct-54-Menton.
Please cite this reference in any correspondence with me regarding this case.
I must point out that the meeting report of the Société Astronomique de France about the meeting of November 7, 1954, published in L'Astronomie, Volume 68, page 469, indicates that a meteor was observed on October 27, 1954 at 20:40.
The report gave a visibility time of only three seconds, and the place was in the south of France, in Menton, Alpes-Maritimes.
[Ref. saf1:] "SOCIETE ASTRONOMIQUE DE FRANCE":
The meeting report of the Société Astronomique de France about the meeting of November 7, 1954, published in L'Astronomie, Volume 68, page 469, indicates that a meteor was observed on October 27, 1954 at 20:40.
The report gave a visibility time of only three seconds, and the place was in the south of France, in Menton, Alpes-Maritimes:
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In my catalog, the following sighting reports take place on this date and around this hour:
20:30, a recent catalog speaks of an unidentified object "which had an unusual appearance or performance" which would have been observed "by several witnesses for 30 minutes." The duration excludes any meteor, but the catalog in question is not reliable, giving durations "rounded" in a sometimes very fanciful way.
Jean Sider found in the newspaper Le Haut Marnais Républicain that at 07:30 p.m.towards Maranville and Longchamps-sur-Aujon in the Haute-Marne anonymous people saw "an unknown craft which flew at ground level before landing in a field. When it passed, some of the witnesses felt a sort of numbness."
At 6:15 p.m. in "Pierres Plates", according to an unreliable and not very detailed catalog, a UFO was seen by "several witnesses", "but with an aspect and a behavior which very probably would have a conventional explanation."
These cases take place on this date, but have no time indication at all:
Aimé Michel reports "a particularly well proven case" in Pas-de-Calais when many residents of Bouin "saw an extremely luminous sphere fly over the state forest of Hesdin from west to east." Neither time nor duration.
Same summary as the previous one, this time at Huby-Saint-Leu.
Two men were "dazzled by a brilliant disc", they stopped and observe 100 meters from their vehicle a "luminous craft in the shape of a boat posed on the road", they dare not approach, and "the craft took off almost immediately."
In the previous case, the sources added that at Tréglamus in the Côte-d'Armor, 50 km away, "several people saw a similar craft."
For none of these cases is it certain that it was the meteor reported at Menton, or even that it was a meteor; but I think it was appropriate to give this meteor report, or to consider these cases as possibly caused by this meteor.
(These keywords are only to help queries and are not implying anything.)
Menton, Alpes-Maritime, meteor, astronomer, negative case
[----] indicates sources that are not yet available to me.
| Version: | Created/Changed by: | Date: | Change Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | October 10, 2016 | First published. |
| Version: | Created/Changed by: | Date: | Change Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | February 13, 2020 | First published. |
