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Case of Illzach, on November 5, 1990:

Case number:

ALSACAT-1990-11-05-ILLZACH-1

Summary:

In the years 2015, "Theudrick", visiting the web board "Paranormal.fr", where he read an alleged UFO testimony, explains that it reminded him of his own sighting of November 5, 1990, around 7 p.m. He explained:

It was dark, there was no cloud as I remember. I was in the car park of a car center in the ZAC des Trois Frontières in Illzach (Haut-Rhin, France). The whole area is lit. At one point I raised my eyes to the sky and saw a huge dark mass passing at low altitude. It must have been at least a hundred meters, probably more, because it blocked the horizon. The "object" seemed to be made of a single block, it was as if the light of the area was reflecting on it. It was triangular in shape with three powerful whitish lights at each end, it was followed by a red trail. The object was moving very slowly, noiselessly, from west to east. I have never seen anything so huge pass in the sky.

An article appeared in the newspaper "L'Alsace" on November 7, 1990. It was about the explosion of a meteorite. So I kept my story to myself.

Since that day, I am convinced that either our technology is much more advanced than what is commonly believed, or we are not alone in the universe.

Data:

Temporal data:

Geographical data:

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Ufology data:

Classifications:

Sources:

[Ref. pnn1:] WEB BOARD "PARANORMAL.FR":

Discussion:

On November 5, 1990, one or two minutes after 07:00 p.m., a very commonplace phenomenon occurred, explained, and devoid of any actual strangeness, but it nevertheless started a UFO delirium of some of the French ufologists.

The sightings started with an explosive decay over the Bay of Biscay in France, resulting in combustion fragments seen from afar, and generally, as they approached, seen as a group of three main lights - hence it was called a "triangle" - of large angular size, and followed by trails of smoke and sparks.

Once over land, the thing was seen from different angles and at various distances by people on the ground, which gives a range of quite diverse descriptions.

The thing crossed France following a line approximately from Bordeaux to Strasbourg, in silence, in a straight line without any maneuver, in two to three minutes, reaching Strasbourg at about 07:06 p.m.

There were also sightings reported from the South of England, London, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, but not beyond.

In the evening, several Gendarmerie brigades contacted the National Center for Space Studies to report what people told them. Gendarmes brigades of Angers and Tulle got the chance to see the display themselves. In the evening, the Press service of the armies, SIRPA, confirmed that military pilots had seen something without being able to formally identify it. Near Paris airports of Orly and Roissy, the luminous phenomenon was seen from the control towers. Hundreds or even thousands of civilians reported their sightings to the authorities, the Press and other media.

Radio stations, television channels, newspapers, talk of a UFO, then a meteor, and finally the correct explanation appeared through information given by NASA: it was the entering in the atmosphere of the remains of a Russian Proton rocket launched from the Baikonur space center to put a Gorizont 21 satellite in orbit. Calculations had predicted the fallout of the rocket debris at its 36th orbit, crossing France from the South West to the North East on November 5, 1990 around 07:00 p.m.. SEPRA, then officially in charge of such matters, provided this explanation to news agencies on November 9, 1990.

On November 5, 1990 already, an amateur expert in satellites and space debris impact trajectory calculations, Pierre Neirinck, had seen himself, and had also identified the phenomenon, independently of NASA, as space junk from the Proton rocket.

Any sensible ufologist should have understood what is was from the beginning, given the descriptions, and at least understand thereafter that it was a classical space junk case. But some ufologists refused to hear anything about a rocket and continued to talk and write about it as a "UFO flap", of "400 UFOs" or even "thousands of UFOs", often mixing other, unrelated sightings that were more or less of the same day, sighting who have other explanations. This resulted in the continuing presence of this explained case as massive UFO sightings in some of the UFO literature, and of course this includes observations made in Alsace.

Evaluation:

Space junk reentry.

Sources references:

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

• [pnn1] * Witness report published on the web board "Paranormal.fr", France, circa 2015, disappeared page, was at http://www.paranormal-fr.net/forum/post263835.php#p263835
• [pnn1] * Witness report republished on the web board of the radio "Ici et Maintenant", France, circa 2015, disappeared page, was at http://icietmaintenant.fr/SMF/index.php?topic=1543.90

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This page was last updated on January 23, 2023.