This article was published in the daily newspaper Le Provençal, France, on June 23, 1966.
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Initially, at a few seconds of intervals, two small gray balls in the sky. Then, a spot of oval form, twice as big as the Moon, which took colours then dies out."
To check his say, my interlocutor refers to the standard of the fist. Arm tended in the prolongation of the shoulder: three degrees between two phalanges. A ten francs coin to circumscribe the Moon.
This is the gesture of the artillery officer checking the trajectory of the fusing shooting of his guns.
Indeed, it is precisely a senior officer of artillery who talks to me. Of a strange phenomenon that he managed to follow in the sky during the night from last Friday to Saturday.
"It was three hours fourty, he tells me. I was on the road of the Alps, a little above Aix. The night was very dark. No clouds in the sky, since one saw the stars shining there.
"I was suddenly intrigued by the appearance of a white ball, south-eastern side.
"Is this the Moon?", questioned the person who accompanied me.
"The ball suddenly lit up more, then lost its light. A greyish mass remained in place, visible in light on the dark sky.
"20 to 30 seconds later, same phenomenon, but closer, with the testimony of dimension. Inscribed compared to the first from the point of view of two convergent lines going up for approximately 45 degrees.
"At the end of the same lapse of time, at last came the most puzzling appearance of this triple succession of effects. Still in the continuation of their movement: this large spot of oval form, large like twice the Moon (diameter with my fist, 3 to 4 degrees). It appeared initially pale, a rugby ball with vague contours, as through a very heavy fog.
"Then here it is, suddenly, lighting up: red and oranges gleams, diluted, in the highersphere, of greenish nuances in its lower part.
"The colours shine approximately for 5 seconds then wash away. An oblong cloud, dark gray, is hovering against the backgorund of the sky.
"I expect a fourth projection, at the same time clearer and denser, above my head.
"It occurs, indeed, but breaking the continuation. Towards the East. And it takes approximately the dimensions as the second one.
"A quarter of an hour later, the traces of these last three phenomena were still visible, hovering at the same spots in the sky.
The man who speaks to me worked in Colomb-Béchard and Hammaguir. He knows, at least as regards explosions, the effects and the causes of the various caused phenomena.
"I thought of one moment, he tells me, of explosions accompanying the trajectory of a launched spacecraft. The orientation suggested this to me. Having checked, I managed to establish, indeed, that the azimuth of 140 degrees by which the first ball passed, skirts Corsica, crosses Sardinia and reaches the Gulf of Gabès. At the very spot where the building charged to observe the setting on orbit during launching of the latest French satellite stationed.
It did not appear to me, specifies the officer, that any object could exist inside the formed clouds. It was, at least I think it, the remainders of a combustion, as for a fusing shooting.
"But then, by jerks? By spaced projectiond, as a "cuttlefish"? ...
"By " pulso-jets"?...
"But from what machine?"
The word "saucer" was in the air. But it was not said.
L.P. SEMENE.
