Eupen Nov. 29, 1989 Belgium flap ▶ Home ☰

The Belgium flap:

On November 29, 1989, in the Eupen area:

05:30 p.m., in Eupen, Pavée street:

SOBEPS recorded the following:

A couple, Mister and Mrs A., came out of a store giving on the Pavée street in Eupen, and they then saw a very large object flying at a speed considered to be slow, with excessively luminous headlights.

The Pavée street is perpendicular to the street of Aachen and gives on the latter at the corner where Verviers street begins. They saw the object coming at some 150 meters or less, at a few tens of meters above the antenna of the barracks of the police, which is on the northern side of the street of Aachen.

The man and the woman initially thought it was a large helicopter, but give up this explanation because the object moved completely silently.

SOBEPS specifies that the shape was not either that of a helicopter: they described it as a very flat triangle, with a rounded point at the front and the rear corners slanted. It had two powerful lights at the front and a weaker light at the back.

The husband described:

“It was a craft with two powerful 'headlights' at the front and another with the back. The light was excessively white. It was very impressive. The two front headlights lit the ground. The beams were very visible and one of them was really vertical. The white light, like a halogenous spot, very dazzling, was so sharp that the roadway was illuminated in a very clear area. In the center of the object, an amber light flickered.”

The husband specified that the contours was well visible, in spite of the headlights and the lights of the city, since it was not yet a full night and that the sky still had a certain luminosity.

The husband is familiarized with the large NATO AWACS planes, since he often observes them, and he stated that this object was not an AWACS.

During its displacement, the object tilted and took a a turn in the direction of the hospital of Eupen, which lead it to cross the beginning of Verviers street while moving away, and while going down, “as if it were going to land”; and that made it possible to the witness to see its top: it was surmounted by a dome.

The investigator wrote:

“At the time when the object was more tilted, he managed to see its upper part from the side. It was in the shape of a dome and comprised several port-holes (5, 6, perhaps more) in the shape of vertical rectangles, lengthened, they were very clear. The colors were orange.”

The husband explicitly took note of the hour by checking his wristwatch, it was exactly 05:30 p.m.. The observation, which he described as “very impressive”, lasted 45 to 60 seconds.

Source:

"Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique - Volume 1", collective book, SOBEPS, Belgium, pp 20-21, 1991.
"Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique - Volume 2", collective book, SOBEPS, Belgium, page 146, 1994.
"Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique - Volume 2", collective book, SOBEPS, Belgium, page 162, 1994.
"Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique - Volume 2", collective book, SOBEPS, Belgium, page 173, 1994.

The locations:

Above:

Pavée street in Eupen. The witnesses came out of a shop giving onto that street.

Above:

Part of Eupen seen from the air. The witnesses left a store giving on Pavée street, with a view towards the barracks of police force and Verviers street.

The trajectory of the object, in red, is partially conjectural. What I could actually read as of now is only that it passed visually above the barracks, made a turn towards the beginning of the street of Verviers which starts not far from Pavée street, and then took the direction towards the Saint Nicolas hospital.

Short discussion:

On April 24, 2008, nearly twenty years later, appeared the first version and explanation communicated by one “skeptical” ufologist for this observation, explained as having been a helicopter, or probably a helicopter. This version consisted of a quote from a text announced since 2005 and which is still not published as of April 2008. The extract is quoted on a list of ufological discussion by an author whose opinion is that all the sighting reports of the Belgium flap explain as errors and inventions (the “socio-psychological” thesis.)

It is quoted as example of a case for which the author of the text found that the explanation of the sighting was a helicopter or probably a helicopter.

Here the quote that was given to me as well as to some dozens other ufologists on the same occasion:

“At 5.30 p.m. at Eupen, Mr A. and another people saw a craft with two powerful “headlights” at the front, and another at the back. The witnesses saw the underside of the object. Its speed was slow and Mr A. estimated the altitude at 150 metres or perhaps less. According to SOBEPS, the object came from the direction of Walhorn/Kettenis to the north-north-east of Eupen and moved towards the Gileppe (31). According to VOB 1, pp.21-22, Mr A. thought of a “big helicopter”, like those that land regularly in the park of the Eupen hospital, located in the direction followed by the object.”

It can be observed when this quote is considered:

It is alleged there that the witness thought that it was a large helicopter. This is fraudulent, since he actually declared that he initially thought of a helicopter but that it was not a helicopter.
It seems that the author of this unpublished text considered to have shown that it was a helicopter. But no explanation or demonstration is available to date. In the quote, there is not even an opinion of the author reproduced on this case, it is only a “version” of the sighting report which could be truncated in the original, or truncated in the quote.
It is noted that in this quote, important facts are eliminated: there is not a word on the fact that the object was clearly described as silent, and clearly described as having a shape without resemblance to a helicopter.

One might be lead to believe that the author of the text had a confirmation that the object was nevertheless a helicopter.

But here what the “skeptical” author exposed of the results of the proceedings of the author of the unpublished text about “the helicopter” at 05:30 p.m. in Eupen that day:

He stated that “Some helicopters misinterpreted as UFOs were probably also medical crafts, bringing ill or wounded people to a hospital” and that the text's author wrote to the Eupen hospital, as UFOs suspected to be choppers were seen near it, but he got no answer...”

Concerning the question of the noise, i.e. in this case, the silence, it still another mention of this unpublished study which might put on the track of the manner its author claims to explain tje embarrassing silence of helicopters. Keep in mind that this explanation of the absence of noise refers observations of this day in general, not this one. For this one, it seems that the fact the object was reported to be silent was simply omitted.

Here thus what I learned from this explanation concerning the “attenuations of sound”, or “lack of sound”, which seems to be a general explanation for the observations of November 29, 1989 in Eupen, quoted as coming from the same unpublished text, by a “skeptical” author among those who are said to work over again this text:

It appears that a noise (admittedly not loud) was heard during part of the sightings and the weather records indicate that there was indeed a temperature inversion on the November 29 evening.

The locations:

Left:

Pavée street in Eupen. The witnesses came out of a shop on that street.

Above:

Part of Eupen in aerial view. The witnesses left a store giving on Pavée street, with a view towards the barracks of police force and Verviers street.

Short discussion:

It is quoted as example of a case for which the author of the text found that the explanation of the sighting was a helicopter or probably a helicopter.

Here the quote which was given to me as well as to some dozens other ufologists on the same occasion:

It can be observed when this quote is considered:

It is alleged here that the witness thought that it was a large helicopter. This is fraudulent, since he actually stated that he initially thought of a helicopter but that it was not a helicopter.
It is mentioned that the witness saw the lower part of the object, but no word is said on the fact that the witness also reported to have seen the profile and the dome on top of the object.
It seems that the author of this unpublished text had considered to have shown that it was a helicopter. But no explanation or demonstration is available to date. In the quote, not even an opinion of the author is produced on this case, we only have a “version” of the report, which could be incomplete in the original, or incomplete in the quote.
One observes, in this quote, that important information is eliminated: not one word is said as on the fact that the object was clearly reported to be silent, and clearly described as having a shape that was clearly not that of an helicopter. All this is purely and simply missing in the quote.

One might be lead to believe that the author of the text had a confirmation that the object was nevertheless a helicopter.

But here what the “skeptical” author exposed of the results of the proceedings of the author of the unpublished text about “the helicopter” at 05:30 p.m. in Eupen that day:

About the question of the noise, i.e. in this case, the silence of the purported helicopter, it is still another mention of this unpublished study that might put to us on the track of the explanation given by its author to explain the rather embarrassing silence of helicopters. Keep in mind that this explanation of the absence of noise refers to observations reported in Belgium during the flap in general, apparently including but not only, this one, and others un Eupen that day. For this particular sighting, it seems that the silence of the helicopter might have been simply omitted although the observation report explicitly tells of a silent object.

Here thus what I received about this explanation concerning the “attenuations of sound” or “lack of sound”, which seems to be a general explanation for the observations of November 29, 1989 in Eupen, quoted as coming from an unpublished text, by a “skeptical” author among those who are said to finalize this text:

It appears that a noise (admittedly not loud) was heard during part of the sightings and the weather records indicate that there was indeed a temperature inversion on the November 29 evening.

No, you are not dreaming! At least two “skeptical” ufologists apparently believe that a temperature inversion obstructs and even blocks the passage of sound (*)! This gem makes me very impatient to finally see this long-advertised study!

Of course, this explanation of helicopters silence might be removed when it finally comes out.

(*) Note for the readers who never heard of the “temperature inversion” argument, a true magic powder for “explaining” UFOs:

A temperature inversion is simply a weather situation in which a mass of air is hotter than the one below. Usually, the higher you go, the colder the air is, as every mountain hiker knows. This is because the pressure, the density of the air decreases with altitude. But it can happen that a hot mass of air can be above a mass of colder air.

As it is an opposite situation to the usual situation where the weather is colder in altitude, one says: “a temperature inversion”. In this situation, the air can play, very faintly, little like a glass plate, which does not “block” light or dim light, it simply deviates its direction at a tiny angle. With the air, this deviation is not clear-cut, it is diffuse, because the border is not clear cut like that of a glass plate, but it can give vague attenuated secondary radar echoes of some object, or seem “to place in the sky” one radar echo of something which is in fact on the ground, like a boat, a truck. These vague echoes are then located “at the wrong place”, and/or are not echoes of aircraft in the sky but those of objects on the ground. In practice, the echoes of the ground itself that are created like that are filtered out: suffice to display only moving echoes to eliminate any echo from the ground itself. Radar operators know well these phenomena of abnormal propagation of radar waves, obviously, this is why these phenomena by no means prevent them from continuing to effectively use radar to accurately determine the position of aircraft in a reliable way, obviously something essential to avoid aircraft collisions in the civilian air traffic and to detect intrusions of enemy aircraft in the military context. Understandably, if radar were unreliable and radar operators not qualified in their use, the consequences would show!

A situation where one speaks a little awkwardly of “temperature inversion” can occur for example under a cloudy night. The layer of clouds absorbs the heat released by the ground, the heat accumulated in the ground during the sunny day. Without the clouds, this heat would be essentially lost upwards in the sky, but if it is blocked by the clouds, a layer of air a little hotter than if there were no the clouds is created between the ground and the clouds.

But here, it is about sound, and it is a great error to believe that layers of hot or cold air in the sky block the sound of a helicopter, especially when it is so close that no such “inversion of temperature” can even be located between the witness and the object. The sound is not blocked at all by differences in temperatures in such a context! To believe that a “temperature inversion” there in Eupen made helicopters silent or low-noise is total ineptitude. It is a bit like if you would look at a helicopter passing in front of your open window in winter, and claiming it became silent because there is an inversion of temperature - enormous in this case! - because the temperature is warm in your room but cold outside!

Because water and the air, for example, have a different index of refraction, because of their (very!) different density, the waves, at the border between these two mediums, which constitutes a dioptre, are deviated. Deviated, not attenuated. The sound of a helicopter can naturally be dimmed by the distance, or by obstacles that are then also visual obstacles, or by strong winds in the suitable direction, but a claim that a temperature inversion constitutes an acceptable explanation of the silence or low sound volume reported in the observations of Eupen is without base.

The above is brief; a more general article on this matter will follow, including quantitative parameters.

Document history.

Version:	Created/changed by:	Date:	Description:
0.1	Patrick Gross	April 28, 2008	Creation.
1.0	Patrick Gross	April 28, 2008	First publication.

This page was last updated on April 28, 2008.