The 1954 French flap:

Was it just a simple meteor?

NEW TESTIMONIES
ABOUT THE FLYING SAUCER
seen Monday in Angers
give us more details about this curious sighting

In yesterday's edition, we reported a number of testimonies about the unusual phenomenon observed Monday evening in Angers, which immediately led to speculation about a flying saucer passing through our skies.

During the morning, two new witnesses came to further confirm this sighting, which, as we said, was also seen by two of our staff members.

Mr. and Mrs. Chancoin, who were on vacation that day in Fresne-sur-Loire, clearly saw a greenish ball, whose glow was comparable to that of fluorescent tubes of the same color, heading in the indicated direction.

"We were quite surprised," Mr. Chancoin told us, "by this phenomenon, which did not at all resemble the passage of a meteor. Although fast, the speed of the object was much slower than that of a shooting star, and in fact, night was only just beginning to fall."

A second confirmation was given to us by Mrs. Rousseau, who lives in the Saint-Michel suburb and was returning from Ponts-de-Cé around 8:20 p.m. Monday evening via the Ruelles path.

"I clearly saw," she said, "a green ball, surrounded by a very unusual glow, which disappeared toward the north within a few seconds. This ball, apparently the size of a light bulb, emitted a very lovely green light."

Finally, several letters reached us during the day yesterday, as well as a press clipping that may, it seems, put a final word on this flying saucer matter—if indeed it was a saucer.

From Villevêque

First, a reader from Plessis-Grammoire wrote to us regarding the greenish glow seen Monday evening in the sky: "We had gone to drop off friends in Villevêque. We were chatting on the campground when a glow caught my attention. I [unreadable]: Look, a shooting star. But since there were no stars, this struck us as odd.

"This glow resembled a firework rocket. It lasted about 10 seconds and disappeared toward the north. We saw no brown disc and heard no sound; this glow was very high in the sky."

We connect this letter to another sent by a female reader of our newspaper, who also saw, at the same hour, a luminous globe heading north and "leaving only a faint trail in the sky." Mrs. Ernest Chupin, from La Chapelle-Rousselin, also saw an orange disc with a green tail cross the sky between two clouds.

The saucer in Indre-et-Loire

A reader from Rigny-Ussé, in Indre-et-Loire, intrigued by our first article, also confirmed to us the statement from Miss Claire Cordier, who was the first to report the phenomenon. This reader was at a farm during threshing and saw, at precisely 8:20 p.m., the brown disc and the glow "heading at dizzying speed toward the north. There were about ten of us men," he said, "who saw it. The diameter of the disc could have been 50 cm." And our subscriber, who initially thought it might have been a rocket launched from the Fonterrault training field, adds: "In any case, this disc was seen in several places throughout Touraine." Finally, a reader from Faye-d'Anjou confirmed these various accounts in identical terms.

"A meteor in the Poitou sky"

Before closing this article, we would like to connect these testimonies—and the ones that came before—to an article published in "Libre Poitou." Our colleague says he received from Father Colin, priest of Buxerolles near Poitiers, and a graduate of the World Meteorological Organization, a very interesting report regarding a meteor seen in the Poitou sky on August 30 around 8:30 p.m. This specialist saw, 30 degrees above the horizon and coming from the Gamma star in the Andromeda constellation, "a magnificent meteor with an apparent length of 1.5 meters, of a dazzling green color, slowly streaking toward the ground. This meteor, roughly the size of a bottle," Father Colin specifies, "did not resemble a typical shooting star, which is fast and followed by a whitish luminous trail."

This interesting testimony from a well-informed witness would seem sufficient to explain the phenomenon witnessed by so many people. At most, we could classify Monday's sighting under the category of "unidentified celestial objects" and leave the label of "flying saucers" for another time.