This article was published in the daily newspaper Le Télégramme de Brest, France, on October 30, 2002.
Several witnesses claim to have seen a UFO Monday, in the sky of the Lorient area. And as always, in similar circumstance, one wonders about the origin of this phenomenon.
To help the investigators in their investigative work, one allows oneself to raise an assumption: couldn't it be related to an armoured vehicle? Admittedly, at first sight, the suggestion can seem eccentric. But it is it definitely less when one knows about the funny episode which occurred Sunday in Wales.
So, as everybody knows it, Englishmen are cheaters but valiant fighters. And Sunday, in spite of a hell of a weather, the British army was in manoeuvre at Tredegar, a desolate place under the sovereignty of the Prince of Wales, the one that always has two large auricles on the head. To give all its realism to this exercise, the army had produced a quite uncommon manoeuver accessory: a inflatable battletank, a faithful reproduction truer than the real item, which was to be used as bench mark during this exercise.
You can guess what follows: with gusts of wind reaching 140 km/h, the battletank realeased its ropes and ended up the the air. Since then, the army launched a search, involving helicopters, but in vain. The battletank was gone.
Given the direction of the winds, it could have very well happened that the inflatable battletank flew over Lorient, guided by this atavism which always pushes the British flying fortresses above our naval bases. But it could be also that the machine falls down in your own garden one of these days, like a bottle thrown to the sea arrives on a beach of the Atlantic.
Of two things one: either you urgently call His Gracious Majesty's, or you keep it as war benefit waiting for the next summer. Because this is for sure: while invading the beach with your inflatable battletank, you should have at least as much success than the Queen Elizabeth on her jubilee day.
René Perez
Copyright © Le Télégramme 30/10/2002
