The article below was published in the daily newspaper Le Républicain Lorrain, France, on December 27, 1980.
Many people from Tours declared Thursday evening from 10 p.m. that they had observed a strange phenomenon in the sky.
Testimonies from people, who telephoned the regional daily newspaper of Tours, indicated that a large white-orange ball was spinning from south to north surrounded by numerous small balls. Its regular speed seemed to be very fast.
The correspondents all noticed the low altitude of this strange procession which had been seen a few hours earlier in the sky of Vienne and Deux-Sèvres. And it is perhaps from this latter department that the phenomenon started, since according to a well-informed source, a satellite disintegrated in the department of Deux-Sèvres on Thursday afternoon. This is one of the hypotheses considered. Several unidentified flying objects moving in formation were seen by numerous witnesses Thursday shortly after 10 p.m. in the southwest sky. The phenomenon was notably observed by the crews of two airliners who reported it to the Bordeaux-Mérignac air traffic control center.
The pilots of the first plane, flying between Agen and Limoges, at an altitude of 35,000 feet, saw a group of luminous objects moving at high speed in the Bordeaux-Tours axis. The crew of the second aircraft, which was south of La Châtre (Indre), also saw dots of light. The pilots said they had thought of jets with their landing lights on, but moving in reverse.
Around fifty people also called the Bordeaux editorial staff of the "Sud-Ouest" newspaper to report the phenomenon. Observers who called from various points in the Gironde, sometimes more than 100 km away from each other, gave a consistent description: a dot of light flying in formation - or a shower of light - heading from the southwest to the northeast, between 10:07 p.m. and 10:10 p.m.
Several dots of light grouped like planes flying in formation were observed above Molay-Litry, near Bayeux (Calvados), Thursday evening, around 10 p.m. by several reliable witnesses.
According to Mrs. Michèle Thomazo, 38, from Molay-Littry, "the luminous and sparkling dots looked like fireworks and made a long ascending then descending curve in the south-north direction before disappearing behind the clouds". The phenomenon lasted "about two minutes," said Mrs. Thomazo, whose family also observed the phenomenon. According to local authorities, these UFOs could be the same as those which were observed at approximately the same time in the sky of the Bordeaux region by numerous witnesses.
