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Case between Aspach-le-Haut and Cernay, on September 22, 1946:

Case number:

ALSACAT-1946-09-22-ASPACHCERNAY-1

Summary:

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 L'Alsace for Sunday, September 22, 1946 reported a sighting on the same day apparently, without precision unfortunately, an observation that can be linked to the wave of "ghost rockets" for that year in Europe, mainly in Scandinavia:

"Leaving Aspach-le-Haut, towards Cernay, two very credible people were dazzled by the light of a rocket crossing the sky in the west-east direction. The projectile left behind a luminous double trace which was seen by two people for a few seconds, without producing a whistling sound."

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[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 there was on Sunday, September 22, 1946, without precision unfortunately, an observation that can be linked to the wave of "ghost rockets" for that year in Europe, mainly in Scandinavia:

"Leaving Aspach-le-Haut, towards Cernay, two very credible people were dazzled by the light of a rocket crossing the sky in the west-east direction. The projectile left behind a luminous double trace which was seen by two people for a few seconds, without producing a whistling sound."

He indicates that the source is the newspaper L'Alsace, for Sunday, September 22, 1946.

Discussion:

About Christian Valentin's book:

It is not at all my habit to "advertise" a book or anything, and I have no interested relationship with the author, but I wanted to say a word on the book by Christian Valentin, "Mythes et Réalités des Phénomènes Aériens Non Identifiés" (i.e. "Myths and Realities of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" (cover on the left) , ref. [cvn2]; which, as its subtitle indicates, is about Alsatian UFO sighting reports and the saucer lore in Alsace.

I think Alsatian ufologists and, generally, people interested in the UFO question, or in the history of Alsace, my region, would probably like this book.

The 144 pages book is sober but well presented, unbiased, richly documented and illustrated. It is the first work in print specifically about UFO sightings in Alsace. (There was another one a few years ago, but it was partly made by copying - pasting without mention of the sources, portions of my website, especially the Alsatians cases I almost exhaustively documented in my catalog of UFO sightings in France in 1954, and copies from another websites; the trivial explanations I proposed or gave there being almost always stripped off!)

The author does not want to prove or disprove the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors or some other so-called "extraordinary" explanation, he rather offers a chronologically ordered review of Alsatian UFO reports, starting from the origin and stopping in 1980, based on known sources ufology, on the articles of the regional Press, and cases less known or even unreleased so far that he collected directly with the witnesses. His own comments are printed in a different color, references to the sources are always given. A very nice work in my opinion!

The author currently has a blog where he shows what libraries in Alsace have the book available, see: christian.valentin.overblog.com

There was in 1946 in Alsace no chance to see a passing rocket, much less a rocket with two trails, but reasonable chances of seeing meteors, even double meteors.

That, to me, is the obvious explanation for the observation, although it seems hardly possible to provide the "scientific proof" that some diehard ufologists would surely demand.

In 1946, the idea of extraterrestrial visitors was by no means non-existent, but the most common misconceptions in this kind of cases was that it were Russian rockets, or hallucinations.

Evaluation:

Probable meteor.

Sources references:

* = Source is available to me.
? = Source I am told about but could not get so far. Help needed.

• [lae1] ? Article in the regional newspaper L'Alsace, France, September 22, 1946.
• [cvn2] * "Mythes et Réalités des Phénomènes Aériens Non Identifiés - Histoire des soucoupes volantes en Alsace jusqu'en 1980", book by Christian Valentin, Grimoires d'Alsace publishers, France, page 13, 2012.

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This page was last updated on April 1, 2014.