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The 1954 French flap:

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October 7, 1954, La Croix Saint-Ouen, Oise:

Reference for this case: 7-Oct-54-La-Croix-Saint-Ouen.
Please cite this reference in any correspondence with me regarding this case.

Summary:

At the end of the Sixties, Claude Poher, of the ufology group GEPA, who later was the head of the official group of ufology GEPAN, had listed in numerical data-processing form an observation on October 7, 1954, at 09:00 a.m. in La Croix Saint-Ouen in the Oise. His listing only contained sightings with an official source or having been the subject of official reporting.

In 1979, ufologists Gerard Barthel and Jacques Brucker, in their book "La Grande Peur Martienne", supposed to prove that the saucers of the 1954 French flap were all mistakes or hoaxes, told for the case to October 7, 1954, in Lacroix-Saint-Ouen in the Oise at 8:45 a.m, that their investigation - of which they say nothing - made them conclude that this was a "very short phenomenon"; about which they say nothing either. The may have mixed this observation with another one in the same city the next day at 11:30 p.m., the latter having been very short.

Later, two sources of the web listed it: Luc Chastan said the thing was "at less than 1000 meters" and moved in straight line; the German database "UFO Datenbank" only gives the date, the city, and the hour.

Then in 2014 the French official group of study of the "Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena" (UAP), the GEIPAN, published the short gendarmerie message about this observation.

It said that a man and a young lady both of the La Croix Saint-Ouen - their names were withdrawn from the publication - had seen a "machine" at the vertical of the bell-tower of the church La Croix Saint-Ouen, moving from the South-East towards the North-East, at an estimated altitude of 400 meters approximately.

The machine was of oval-shaped, of a very brilliant "aluminum" color.

The duration of observation had been given as one minute.

GEIPAN noted in their file for this observation that the data is meager, that it could have been for example a reflection of sun on a plane, a balloon, or a meteor.

Reports:

[Ref. gen1:] GENDARMERIE NATIONALE:

Note: this document was made public by the GEIPAN - see [gei1] below.

[Ref. cpr1:] CLAUDE POHER, UFO RESEARCH GROUP "GEPA":

In 1968-1969, before the official GEPAN ufology effort started, its future head Dr Claude Poher was a member of the unofficial GEPA ufology group, and gathered a computer coded listing of more than 700 UFO reports on which multiple factors statistical computation could be run. In the file were a number of 1954 French UFO reports, among those this one.

For readability, a decoded interpretation of the data is provided here under the original 80 character encoded string. Decoding was done according to the original indications, the code number and its generic meaning is given. Please note that the generic meaning of each code is a predefined category, not the real specific details of the case. For example, if the main witness' age was 33, the coding would result in a number "3" which corresponds to a category "Adult from 21 to 59 years."

[Ref. bbr1:] GERARD BARTHEL AND JACQUES BRUCKER:

The two authors note this case of October 7, 1954:

"Lacroix-Saint-Ouen - 60 - 08:45 a.m.: investigation. Very brief phenomenon."

[Ref. lcn1:] LUC CHASTAN:

Luc Chastan indicates that in the Oise in Lacroix St Ouen on October 7, 1954, at 09:00 hours, "Two witnesses observed during 1 minute at most and at less than 1000 meters, an ovoid object of metal color which moved in straight line."

Luc Chastan indicates that the source is "Les Universons par Poher Claude ** http://www.premiumwanadoo.com/universons/".

[Ref. gei1:] "GROUPE D'ETUDES ET D'INFORMATIONS SUR LES PHENOMENES AEROSPATIAUX NON IDENTIFIES":

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

Explanations:

The data is insufficient, and the suggestions of the GEIPAN are relevant: balloon, sun reflection on a plane, meteor... are all possible.

Keywords:

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

La Croix Saint-Ouen, Lacroix Saint-Ouen, Oise, silver, shining, egg, ovoid, oval, craft, day, gendarmerie, duration

Sources:

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

• [gen1] Message by the Gendarmerie Nationale, France, on the GEIPAN website in 2014, October 11, 1954.
• [cpr1] "Statistics from 735 UFO Observations", paper by Dr Claude Poher, GEPA, France.
• [bbr1] "La Grande Peur Martienne", book by Gerard Barthel and Jacques Brucker, Les Nouvelles Editions Rationalistes publishers, France, page 196, 1979.
• [lcn1] Base OVNI France, website by Luc Chastan, France, circa 2005, at baseovnifrance.free.fr/detobs.php?numobs=790
• [gei1] Case information on the website of the Groupe d'Etude et d'Information sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés (GEIPAN), France, circa 2014, www.geipan.cnes.fr
• [ubk1] Online database UFO-Datenbank, Germany, found in 2016, at ufodatenbank.de

Document history:

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This page was last updated on December 19, 2016.