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ALSACAT:

ALSACAT is my comprehensive catalog of UFO sighting reports in Alsace, the region is the North-East of France, whether they are "explained" or "unexplained".

The ALSACAT catalog is made of case files with a case number, summary, quantitative information (date, location, number of witnesses...), classifications, all sources mentioning the case with their references, a discussion of the case in order to evaluate its causes, and a history of the changes made to the file. A general index and thematic sub-catalogs give access to these Alsatian case files.

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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."

Data:

Temporal data:

Date: September 22, 1946?
Time: ?
Duration: Seconds?
First known report date: September 22, 1946
Reporting delay: Hours, days?

Geographical data:

Department: Haut-Rhin
City: Aspach-le-Haut, Cernay
Place: Coming out of Aspach-le-Haut, going to Cernay, UFO in the sky.
Latitude: 47.777
Longitude: 7.137
Uncertainty radius: 1 km

Witnesses data:

Number of alleged witnesses: 2
Number of known witnesses: ?
Number of named witnesses: 0
Witness(es) ages: ?
Witness(es) types: ?

Ufology data:

Reporting channel: Regional Press?
Type of location: Exiting a village, UFO in the sky.
Visibility conditions: ?
UFO observed: Yes
UFO arrival observed: ?
UFO departure observed: ?
Entities: No
Photographs: No.
Sketch(s) by witness(es): No.
Sketch(es) approved by witness(es): No.
Witness(es) feelings: ?
Witnesses interpretation: Rocket.

Classifications:

Hynek: DD or NL
ALSACAT: Probable meteor.

Sources:

[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:

Scan.

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

Map.

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.

Scan.

Evaluation:

Probable meteor.

Sources references:

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

File history:

Authoring:

Main author: Patrick Gross
Contributors: None
Reviewers: None
Editor: Patrick Gross

Changes history:

Version: Create/changed by: Date: Description:
0.1 Patrick Gross April 1, 2014 Creation, [cvn2].
1.0 Patrick Gross April 1, 2014 First published.

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This page was last updated on April 1, 2014.