This short article was published in the regional daily newspaper Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace on Saturday, July 5, 1947. It closely follows the famous observation of the civil pilot Kenneth Arnold, whom it mentions, and precedes by one day their forwarding of the Roswell Army Air Field that they recovered a flying saucer.
We learn there that the "flying saucers" would be a simple mirage, because planes seen in the distance resemble dots when seen by "witnesses flying in tight formations [sic]." Flying dots being round, and flying discs being also round, then inevitably...
To excuse the newspaper, let us note their systematic use of the conditional, and let us remember that the article is nothing more than the resumption of an official statement by the Associated Press about some American scientist persuaded to have definitively ended the "flying saucers" nonsense that hit the news a few days ago.
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NEW YORK (AP) - It seems that certain laws of optics can explain the mystery of the "flying discs" which are still reported to fly in various areas of the United States.
In extreme limits of vision, any object, whatever its real dimensions, ultimately appears in the shape of a more or less luminous point.
When we deal with an object reflecting the light as it is the case in the majority of the phenomena we refer to, the eye almost always sees a tiny circle.
Planes flying in the distance appear like a round and luminous dot to the eye when they are struck by the sun and that would be the explanation of the "discs" seen by witnesses flying in tight formations.
