The 1954 French flap:

Short chronicle
of the
Flying Saucers

Appearances in the region

Martians spend their weekends on earth. They are reported everywhere, from North to South, from the shores of the Ocean to the banks of the Rhine.

Besides, they are not Martians, because according to our most learned astronomers, neither Mars nor Venus can be inhabited. Mars is too cold and lacks oxygen. As for Venus, it is currently in the middle of the carboniferous period, much like Earth, 300 million years ago.

The unknown beings, piloting the diabolical crockery, are Uranians, the German professor Hermann Oberth, rockets specialist, revealed recently.

The whole world is lost in guesswork. There are supporters of the thesis of craft coming from another planet. There are those who believe them to be terrestrial, something like improved V2s. Finally, there are those who see it as the object of hallucinations.

We are looking for explanations: fireballs, false suns, false moons, refraction phenomena, comets, meteors, rockets. Nothing satisfactory. Nothing final.

There are many testimonies. Many are fragile. Some apparently solid do not always resist observation or lack precision which can guarantee authenticity.

The enigma is complete, the file of the saucers remains open but the windows of the museum of unknown objects remain empty.

***

After the Abbeville region, it's several people from Boves who have just seen "flying saucers", or at least one strange glow that moved slowly. According to these people, the craft seemed to fly off from the edge of the Boves soccer field. The "saucer" was therefore seen by Mr. and Mrs. Dhelly and Mr. and Mrs. Quin, as well as by Mr. Laurent Laporte, seller at Pont de Fouencamps.

We learned shortly after that other people from the village of Demuin had also noticed the craft. According to Mr. and Mrs. Deslandes, it was a kind of "phosphorescent lampshade" which moved without noise and sought to land. When these people alerted neighbors, the object was gone.

Sunday evening, a resident of Moreuil, Mr. Julien Béder, baker, rue Thibeauville, came back, with his wife and children, Mr. and Mrs. Quenehen, butchers in Péronne, by car, on the Amiens-Saint-Quentin road when between Foucaucourt and Estrées, he saw, around 9:15 p.m., a luminous object moving at ground level, towards Montdidier, at a distance which was, it will be understood, impossible to assess.

The shape and (apparent) size of a "four pound loaf" (sic) curved on the top, the "thing", the color of minium, was motionless, and the occupants of the car, after stopping, were able to observe it at leisure, while making the most diverse assumptions. A dark vertical bar, occupying about 1/5th of its width, appeared in the middle of the luminous dot, and remained there all the time that the observation lasted, about 10 minutes.

On the Amiens-Roye road
a driver was also a witness
of similar visions

Also, we learn that a retired miner from Beuvry-les-Béthune confessed to have made flying saucers himself made of paper that functioned like hot air balloons.

The hoaxer claimed that he had already built and launched more than a thousand of these devices.

***

Finally, a young man from Montdidier returning to Etelfay, on September 30, was reportedly dumbfounded when he saw a strange craft, around 11 p.m. o'clock, above Faverolles.