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Case of Strasbourg, on November 5, 1990:

Case number:

ALSACAT-1990-11-05-STRASBOURG-2

Summary:

On November 6, 1990, in their evening news show "Alsace Soir", the regional public channel FR3 Alsace broadcast a report on the "ufo?" or "luminous phenomena" seen in Strasbourg on November 5, 1990.

One of the two interviewed witnesses, a young man, told:

"I thought at first, that it was actually new year rockets, things like that, which were launched, but then as I saw, as I saw it was going towards the zenith, uh, well it was, yes I was relatively surprised, huh. It was a relatively beautiful show, huh. That's it. That's all I can say."

Asked by the TV reporter if he thought about UFOs, the young man smiles and answers: "Uh no."

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Sources:

[Ref. fr31:] CHAINE TV "FRANCE REGION 3 ALSACE":

The report by Géraldine Dehlinger, TV journalist, comprised an interview in a street of Strasbourg of a student, about what she had seen in the sky of Strasbourg on November 5, 1990. It continued with the interview of another witness, a young man who stated:

"I thought at first, that it was actually new year rockets, things like that, which were launched, but then as I saw, as I saw it was going towards the zenith, uh, well it was, yes I was relatively surprised, huh. It was a relatively beautiful show, huh. That's it. That's all I can say."

The TV reporter asks:

"Did you think about UFOs?"

Le jeune homme répond:

"Uh no."

Then Lieutenant Leconte, then team leader of the control tower of the Strasbourg - Entzheim airport, was interviewed. He stated:

"I received a few telephone calls from 7:10 p.m. on, uh, from people calling from different villages, asking me if I was aware of a strange vertical phenomenon. These people reported they had seen a seen luminous object, uh, that passed in the sky, uh, a round object, quite big, that moved slowly from west to east, uh, with a sheaf of sparks at the back."

The journalist comments:

"Even though the radars did not detect anything, it is now sure, the sky of Strasbourg was yesterday the theater of an unusual phenomenon, an appearance of a few moments which should find a natural explanation, perhaps by the presence of many satellites."

Then Agnès Acker, then director of the Strasbourg Observatory, was interviewed, and stated:

"It's quite plausible that one of the many satellites broke down and a piece broke up into several parts, and one saw that. Or, another explanation, perhaps there was a meteorite [sic, "a meteor"] rather thick, quite big, which would have disintegrated quite low, in the atmosphere, not in the very high atmosphere, and also it is the different pieces of the decomposition that one might have seen, perhaps."

The journalist continues (on the image of a spinning radar antenna):

Today already, the Munich Observatory confirms the hypothesis of the meteorite [sic, "meteor"] which would have exploded when entering the atmosphere. As of the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, they did not give their conclusions yet."

Discussion:

One should not expect more accurate data on the testimony (durations, directions etc.), TV journalists are not ufologists. Note, however, the search for an explanation, well conducted, except for the resumption of the "Observatory of Munich" - an observatory that does not exist and almost a gossip: an amateur astronomer from Munich had merely suggested, without much knowledge of the descriptions of the witnesses, that it could be a meteor. A media outlet used this as an explanation by the "Munich Observatory" without checking, and the other media often published it further without checking anything either.

This provides one more case that must be explained by the stubborn supporters of the thesis that there would have been a "wave of UFOs over France" that evening: how is it that the young man describes something totally consistent with the reentry of the Russian rocket debris, without a single element that could suggest anything else? The re-entry of the rocket debris being a proven fact, how is it that he saw no UFOs in addition?

Evaluation:

Space junk re-entry.

Sources references:

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

• [fr31] * Report of the public TV channel FR3 Alsace, in the "Alsace Soir" evening news, France, November 6, 1990.

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This page was last updated on July 6, 2018.