The index page for the 1954 French flap section of this website is here.
Reference for this case: 4-Nov-54-Colmar.
Please cite this reference in any correspondence with me regarding this case.
The regional newspaper Les Dernières Nouvelles du Haut-Rhin, of Colmar, reported on November 5, 1954, two sightings for November 4, 1954, including this one:
At about 07:40 p.m., from the Saint-Joseph railway station, a shiny object was seen, "much bigger than a shooting star and moving from the hospital to the Vosges, followed by a blue-red streak."
[Ref. dnr1:] NEWSPAPER "LES DERNIERES NOUVELLES DU HAUT-RHIN":
Thursday morning at 6:15 a.m., when he was near the Saint-Joseph station, a young man saw a luminous object that moved high in the sky above the Vosges. He reported it immediately to the member of the staff at the counter of the station, Mr. A. M., and the two men were able to look at the strange apparition for a few minutes. The object was about 1 m long, trailing a long tail and radiated a white-orange light. Many people witnessed the event. Three minutes later, the "flying cigar" disappeared over the Vosges.
At about 07:40 p.m., again from the St. Joseph station, a new shiny object was seen, much bigger than a shooting star and moving from the hospital to the Vosges, followed by a blue-red streak.
[Ref. cvn1:] CHRISTIAN VALENTIN:
Christian Valentin gathered a dossier concerning the 1954 flap in Alsace, the dossier was published in 2004 in the magazine Les Saisons d'Alsace published by the big regional newspaper Les Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace. This is one of the cases he presented.
On November 4, 1954 at 07:40 p.m., a luminous ball followed by a red and blue trail flies over the civilian hospital of Colmar in direction of the Vosges.
[Ref. cvn2:] CHRISTIAN VALENTIN:
Former journalist Christian Valentin published in 2012 a very interesting book telling the story of UFO sightings, flying saucers sightings, in Alsace, from the beginning to 1980.
In this book, he reports that the newspaper Les Dernières Nouvelles du Haut-Rhin of Colmar, in the bilingual issue for November 5, 1954, published this article about sightings on November 4, 1954:
Thursday morning at 6:15, when he was near the Saint-Joseph station, a young man saw a luminous object that moved high in the sky above the Vosges. He reported it immediately to the member of the staff at the counter of the station, Mr. A. M., and the two men were able to look at the strange apparition for a few minutes. The object was about 1 m long, trailing a long tail and radiated a white-orange light. Many people witnessed the event. Three minutes later, the "flying cigar" disappeared over the Vosges.
At about 07:40 p.m., again from the St. Joseph station, a new shiny object was seen, much bigger than a shooting star and moving from the hospital to the Vosges, followed by a blue-red streak.
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The St. Joseph railway station is now a halt fot the tram-train going to the Munster valley in the Vosges, rue du Val Saint-Grégoire in Colmar. The UFO said to have gone to the Vosges, so between the Southwest, West, Northwest. And even more probably at 298°, if the witnesses were standing in the street and watched the Vosges as visible from the street (Photo below by day in 2013). So it went in a visual direction between Kaysersberg and Lapoutroie.
The hospital of Colmar, where the thing is reported to have come from, is practically in the same visual direction from the place of observation, just a few degrees farther north. Presumably this meteor crossed a small visual angle and was very far away, surely visible from the other side of the Vosges too.
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There is little information to help here about what was seen. There was the mention that it was brilliant, that it had a trail, that it was "much bigger than a shooting star". This all suggest that apart from the size it looked like a shooting star. On thing that looks like a shooting star but much bigger is a meteor.
There is little doubt though about this explanation: I also have sightings of the meteor type that same day noted at 07:30 p.m. in Dijon, Côte-d'Or and in Senlis, Oise.
(These keywords are only to help queries and are not implying anything.)
Colmar, Haut-Rhin, ball, red, blue, trail, luminous
[----] indicates sources that are not yet available to me.
| Version: | Created/Changed by: | Date: | Change Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | Patrick Gross | December 6, 2005 | First published. |
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | January 18, 2009 | Conversion from HTML to XHTML Strict. First formal version. |
| 3.0 | Patrick Gross | May 3, 2014 | Additions [dnr1], [cvn2], Summary. Explanations changed, were "Not looked for yet. Airplane, meteor..." previously. |
