This article was published in the daily newspaper Le Méridional, France, page 22, June 8, 1983.
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The sighting was made in the night of Monday to Tuesday, between 10:50 p.m. and 10:55 p.m., precisely. Several people including members of the services of the gendarmerie of air transports, alerted the control tower of the airport around 11 p.m. to report a strange lengthened "cigar", surrounded by a large luminous halation. At the same time, a similar appearance was spotted in Toulon, Aix, but also in Paris and Bordeaux in particular at the control towers of the various airports.
Several details leave the observers perplexed: first of all no radar echo was recorded. At the controltower of Marignane, it is noted that radar cannot pick up some craft located at low altitude. But the appearance of the evening before yesterday appeared, on the contrary, to move at very high altitude according to many collected testimonys.
In addition, the descriptions correspond to the standard profile of the current UFO and, moreover, they agree the ones with the others except for some some minor inaccuracies: a shining metallic lengthened form. At the rear: a pencil of light, that come testimonys identified as a large projector, or even as flames. An apparently fast displacement, silent, in direction of the North-East, i.e. from the sea towards the land.
The craft released, moreover, an intense gleam, quite dazzling. This "aura" of light would have been, according to a testimony, about ten times larger than the object itself. All the observations collected to date by the gendarmerie of air transports in charge of the investigation, were very short: about five seconds, even ten seconds, the longest having been of thirty second. Then, the witnesses tell, the machine disappeared, appearing to die out for some, for others leaving the field of vision quickly.
It is not the first time that in Marignane, in particular, passing of UFOs are reported. These last years, several appearances of the same type were noted. The radar was mute each time, including the day when a craft, very luminous too, landed on the airport strip, as many witnesses had explained it at the time.
No flying machine outside the standards, plane or weather balloon for example, was officially announced in the sky of the area for the moment.
The gendarmerie of the airport gets busy, now, to gather testimonys, to confront the details. An investigation where hard evidence is non-existent and on which it will be quite difficult to make all the light.
C.I.
Note: this is all an obvious description of a meteor, or burning space junk.
