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The 1954 French flap:

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November 4, 1954, Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône:

Reference for this case: 4-Nov-54-Marseille.
Please cite this reference in any correspondence with me regarding this case.

Summary:

From July 3, 1955, and for the next days, numerous newspapers in the United states mainly, published a photograph showing lenticular clouds, titled "unusual cloud formation."

The captions explained that the picture was just released by the U.S. Navy via the Associated Press, and that the Navy said it was taken over the city of Marseilles in France, on November 4, 1954:

The Navy said it shows an "unusual cloud formation"- which it obviously shows - and gave no indication as to why they released the photo nor any information as in why they considered its release pertinent. "Perhaps the Navy has been reading about flying saucers", the Press commented.

(This version of the image is from the photo archive of the Texas University, Rec. Nr. JA000689).

There were apparently publications of the picture in a few UFO sensationalist works such M. K. Jessup's "The UFO Annual", and in the 2010's, it appeared in a "UFO sightings database" with just the location Marseille and the date.

Reports:

[Ref. tsn1:] "THE SUNDAY NEWS" NEWSPAPER:

[Ref. tps1:] "THE POST-STANDARD" NEWSPAPER:

[Ref. osl1:] "THE ORLANDO SENTINEL" NEWSPAPER:

[Ref. jen1:] JAMES EASTON:

Ufologist James Easton wrote in 2000 that the US Navy published a photograph showing "a strange cloudy formation" above "the town of Marseille", a photograph which had been taken on November 4, 1954. The US Navy does not give any additional information on this photograph and does not say either if they disregard it or if they have any interest in it.

The photograph is poor bad quality because it is a scanned Xerox but one can indeed see a circular shape.

James Easton adds that many observations were reported in October and November 1954 as well as the previous and following years in France and that he plans to publish on Internet all these many observations "one more incredible than the other."

The post was accompanied with an Internet link to the scanned picture mentioned in the post but as of June 2004 the picture is not available at this address.

[Ref. jbs1:] VICENTE-JUAN BALLESTER-OLMOS, "FOTOCAT 1954":

[Ref. uda1:] "UFODNA" WEBSITE:

The website indicates there was a sighting in Marseille, France, on 4 November 1954.

The source is indicated as Keyhoe, Donald E., Flying Saucer Conspiracy, Holt, New York, 1955.

[Ref. jbs2:] JUAN-VICENTE BALLESTER-OLMOS:

This Spanish ufologist launched a project of a catalogue of French UFO photographic cases. This cases appears in his table as:

[Ref. ubk1:] "UFO-DATENBANK":

[Ref. jbo2:] JUAN-VICENTE BALLESTER OLMOS:

Explanations:

Non-event.

I want to note that the July 3, 1955 Press articles I provide here are only a tiny fraction of the publication of the image and the story in the Press. The item was also published, for example, in:

• The Daily News, New York City, New York, USA, page 102, July 3, 1955.
• The Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, page 4, July 3, 1955.
• The Hartford Courant, Hartford, Connecticut, USA, page 7, July 3, 1955.
• The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, page 5, July 3, 1955.
• The Dayton Daily News, Dayton, Ohio, USA, page 6, July 4, 1955.
• The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, USA, page 12, July 4, 1955.
• The Ottawa Journal, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, page 7, July 5, 1955.
• The Great Falls Tribune, Great Falls, Montana, page 1, July 5, 1955.
• The Battle Creek Enquirer, Battle Creek, Michigan, USA, page 15, July 6, 1955.
• The Tribune, Coshocton, Ohio, USA, page 1, July 6, 1955.
• The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, USA, page 11, July 7, 1955.
• The Daily Chronicle, Centralia, Washington, USA, page 16, July 7, 1955.
• The Johnson City Press, Johnson City, Tennessee, USA, page 1, July 8, 1955.
• The Tallahassee Democrat, Tallahassee, Florida, USA, page 3, July 8, 1955.
• The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, page 13, July 9, 1955.
• The Jacksonville Daily Journal, Jacksonville, Illinois, USA, page 5, July 9, 1955.
• The Eugene Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA, page 4, July 10, 1955.
• The Fremont Tribune, Fremont, Nebraska, USA, page 11, July 101 1955.
• The Abilene Reporter-News, Abilene, Texas, USA, page 22, July 11, 1955.
• The Daily Times, New Philadelphia, Ohio, USA, page 12, July 11, 1955.
• The Camden News, Camden, Arkansas, USA, page 2, July 11, 1955.
• Etc. etc.

I should be quite obvious, given the content of this publication, that this was never a flying saucer sighting or photograph. It was just the usual piece of "entertainment" about lenticular clouds that look like "flying saucers". In the next decades, more and more often, pictures of lenticular clouds would be used in the media as if people mistakenly mistook those for flying saucers or UFOs...

Keywords:

(These keywords are only to help queries and are not implying anything.)

Marseille, Bouches du Rhône, US Navy, photograph, clouds, cloud, disc, disk

Sources:

[----] indicates sources that are not yet available to me.

• [tsn1] Article in the foreign newspaper The Sunday News, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA, page 36, July 3, 1955.
• [tps1] Article in the foreign newspaper The Post-Standard, Syracuse, New York, USA, page 26, July 3, 1955.
• [osl1] Article in the foreign newspaper The Orlando Sentinel, Orlando, Florida, USA, page 3, July 3, 1955.
• [----] Article in the foreign newspaper The New York Times, New York City, New York, USA, July 3, 1955.
• [----] "The Flying Saucer Conspiracy", book by Donald Keyhoe, Holt publisher, USA, 1955.
• [----] "The UFO Annual", book by Morris K. Jessup, Citaldel Press publisher, 1956.
• [----] Article in Look magazine, special issue on flying saucers, USA, pp 28-29, 1967.
• [jen1] Post by ufologist James Easton on the discussion list "UFO Research List" à UFORL@listbot.com, dated May 29, 2000.
• [jbs1] "The Year 1954 in Photos", paper by Vicente-Juan Ballester-Olmos, Fondation Anomaly, Spain, 2004.
• [uda1] "4 Nov 1954 - Marseille, France", web page at the UFOdna website, circa 2007, at www.ufodna.com/uf02/uf3/023792.htm
• [jbs2] "An Approach to UFO Photographs in France", table by Juan-Vicente Ballester-Olmos, Spain, circa 2013, as link to Google Groups from fotocat.blogspot.fr
• [ubk1] Online database UFO-Datenbank, Germany, found in 2016, at ufodatenbank.de
• [jbo2] "France Fotocat", electronic spreadsheet by Juan-Vicente Ballester Olmos, Spain, as of 2021, at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dXknrr52UAWC4uURr0ruOLsllw3zDUj3VdZ8dprTsow/edit#gid=0

Document history:

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This page was last updated on November 5, 2021.