The SOBEPS said that on November 29, 1989, almost simultaneously with the observation of Mr. B., lifeguard, and his wife, between 05:00 p.m. and 04:45 p.m., Mr. Jacques C., wine merchant, was driving on the road from Dolhain to Eupen.
Arriving at the Dolhain exit, he saw in front of him and slightly to the left “like an airplane”; which Mr. C. described as “big, very large, like a jumbo jet.”
However, this object was flying too low towards Verviers, to the southwest, in the opposite direction of Mr. C.'s vehicle.
He expected see this “airplane” crash and he stopped at once, he got out of the car, and he has saw the object pass at an altitude of 75 to 100 meters.
Although he could not specify the form of the object, described as “something that was not blurry, well-defined on the contrary, with a few openings, two or three, rather large, rectangular, which were lit from the inside, and in which there seemed to be shadows, as if someone came and went.”
Mr. C. also distinguished two or three white lights and a red light on top.
His first surprise, he began to analyze what he had seen. The details he observed seemed strange to him and unorthodox for a plane. The object emitted a deaf noise and had a “brown metallic” look. Mr. C. also saw that the object was “pressed longitudinally” inward, in the bottom as well as on top, and it seemed “decorated with dark objects.”
The author points out that this case has not been fully investigated, he used what was provided by the witness.
He commented that there is a problem that could be submitted to the sagacity of all ufologists: in Beyne-Heusay, Mr. Jean B. saw a UFO with portholes and hoped to distinguish silhouettes through them, and moments later, if not at the same time, less than 20 km in the east, Mr. Jacques C. saw such windows with vague forms behind them.
The author notes that it is difficult to pronounce definitive conclusions from the case file, and wonders whether it is even possible in ufology to pronounce definitive conclusions.
He noted that comments can still be made, including a comparison with the phenomena reported in Beyne-Heusay and Dolhain between 4:45 p.m. and 5 p.m. which may almost be considered as “two snapshots of the same event scattered in our space-time.”
SOBEPS published a sketch obviously made by hand by the witness, showing the object like this:
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To this sketch, I preserved the shape, the lines, I colored in red the part captioned to be red by the witness, and used the color of the sky at 5:00 p.m. for the background. It is not possible to me to give an exact “brown metallic” look to the object, so I just filled it in brown.
Source:
There is a summary for this observation, published on the web by the Belgian ufologist Godelieve Van Overmeire in her catalog circa 1999, now gone, but much copied by UFO websites and forums. This summary is as follows:
1989, November 29
BELGIUM, Dolhain
Between 04:45 p.m. and 5 p.m., Jacques C. was driving from Dolhain to Eupen. At the exit of Dolhain he sees almost in front of him and slightly to his left, like a plane, therefore, very large, like a big carrier to the SW, at an excessively low altitude. Mr. G. stopped and waited for the plane crash... which he saw pass by at 75-100 m. The witness cannot describe the shape of the object, however, he nevertheless says was very clearly seen, with two or three quite large openings, rectangular, illuminated from the inside, and where shadows were moving to and fro. On the top he saw two or three white lights and a red light. The object emitted a loud noise, had a brown metallic look, was thinner longitudinally inward as well at the bottom than at the top and seemed to carry dark objects. (Inforespace n. 84, p. 15)
Source example:
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| 06:50 p.m. | |
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Above: Dolhain is at the red dot, Eupen is at the green dot. It is said the witness was driving from Dolhain to Eupen, so he was probably on the N61. The position “the exit of Dolhain” should mean he had just left Dolhain. The map by the SOBEPS (cited source) puts it indeed on the N61 in Limbourg (blue dot).
In 2008, the French ufology group CNEGU published a text by French “UFO-skeptic” ufologist Renaud Leclet, with additions by fellows of his. Leclet argued that a number if not many of the UFOs in the “Belgium flap” must have been helicopters of various sorts, including German military helicopters that more or less secretly went across the German border in Belgium air space.
Though I found that some cases he details cannot really be caused by helicopters, some others could be, if only because the data known to me is so sparse that it leaves room for such an interpretation.
A small number of other cases are obviously helicopters sightings, such as in this 1992 report in which the witness drew this sketch.
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The case for this file is not mentioned in Leclet's text. But taken with the information I have, I think I would certainly also propose that this was an helicopter, a military helicopter.
There is a number of information in the report that would suggest such an explanation as possible or even very likely:
Of course, none of these could possibly rule out that it was an extraterrestrial craft. But no real strangeness would justify that it was that.
An extraterrestrial craft too, could be noisy, metallic brown, with “windows”, a red light, and fly low, etc. I am not saying the explanation is an helicopter, I am only saying that with the information I have, it could have been a helicopter.
I must note that the description is very, very different from those in which I would rule out a helicopter. This is obviously not a large flat triangular silent platform with the three powerful white headlights pointing down that we have in many other cases.
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Above: An Apache helicopter in the night.
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Above: A CH-47 Chinook helicopter in the night. If there really were shadowy figures movin behind the “windows”, the object may have been such a big transport helicopter.
| Version: | Created/changed by: | Date: | Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | Patrick Gross | September 25, 2013 | Creation. |
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | September 25, 2013 | First publication. |
