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.

TIMELINE OF A FANTASTIC SUNDAY

The weekend of October 2-3 appears on all charts as the maximum-maximum of the 1954 wave. Various newspapers and magazines that I have been able to check for this period give us an almost complete overview, in any case very broadly representative of the regional observations that were reported in the press for Sunday October 3rd. I have included the observations of the Somme which seemed to me inseparable from those of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais and which appear moreover in the chapter entitled "Zigzag on the mining country" of the book by A. Michel: "Mysterieux Objets Célestes." I count, as one case, each observation made by an independent group of witnesses. The astonishing number of observations reported below, once again shows the interest of thoroughly digging into the newspapers archives.

OCTOBER 3, 1954:

[...other cases...]

46) idem [=time not specified]- RN 334 - between AMIENS and ROYE -80-: A female driver reportedly saw a mysterious object. (Journal de Santerre) (10/8, p.3)

[...other cases...]

[...]

We know that that evening, at 9:30 p.m., the crescent Moon was setting in the southwest and that according to case 9 it was distorted by low clouds...

Disaster! This bundle of suspicions throws a total discredit on this magnificent series of observations, one of the most beautiful that we have ever found yet. We will have to verify certain data, the direction of certain sightings, the weather conditions, but already the doubt is too great for us to be able to classify these sightings as UFOs.

[...]

The Fabulous day of October 3, 1954

[...]

Chronology of the observations of October 3.

We give here only a summary of what was published in the press of the time, for the nord region, regardless of what the ufologists could later say. We have numbered all these observations, the first of which have nothing to do with the setting of the moon, in order to be able to study them globally in a table. Some are already the subject of a special file.

[... other cases...]

46) Hour not specified, RN 334 - between AMIENS and ROYE (80)

- A female drive reportedly saw. a mysterious object.

(Journal du Santerre 8/10 page 3)

[... other cases...]

All this is only a compilation of the information given by all newspapers of the time, including local editions, and of which ufologists only used a part.

We will see that the analysis of this information makes it possible to eliminate the hypothesis of a flying saucer, in favor of those of multiple observations of the moon, whose image was reddened and deformed by clouds, which also gave it a illusory apparent movement.

Analysis of the observations of October 3, 1954

[... other cases...]

46) Hour not specified, RN 334 - between AMIENS and ROYE (80)

Insufficient information.

[... other cases...]