The article below was published in the daily newspaper L'Est Républicain, Nancy, France, page 7, on November 4, 1954.
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In "Forces Aériennes Françaises," the French Air Force magazine, from September 1953, Lieutenant Plantier published a curious article on the possible construction of "interplanetary craft." Plantier starts from an assumption: there exists an unknown energy in space. There is also a way to release it by transforming it. This craft would take the form of a disk and could travel at extraordinary speed. Plantier elaborates at length on "silence, thermal resistance, changes in appearance and habitability." All these theories correspond to the various sightings of "flying craft" but currently seem to be nothing more than intellectual speculation.
In 1947, the German doctor Eugen Saenger, one of the world's leading experts in jet propulsion, was brought to Paris by the military police of the French Air Force. He had been hunted across Germany by both Russian and American secret services. Stalin, after examining Saenger's plans, had ordered that he be taken, willingly or not. Saenger had designed a rocket-plane, which he called the "Messerschmitt 183" or "Komet" [false]. This bomber [false] was supposed to ascend to 250 km [false], then descend back to 40 km [false], bounce off the upper layer of the atmosphere, and continue further. This craft, meant to advance in leaps, was supposed to be round and flat [false]. Perhaps this is the origin of our flying saucer [false].
Another engineer living in France, Coanda, has declared that he is ready to build a flying saucer. The craft would be a disk about 10 meters in diameter, with its upper surface featuring 120 flow channels with deflectors for the gases ejected by turbo-compressors. A mixture of air and hot gases would create a vacuum above the saucer, lifting it like a giant suction cup.
Thus, the hypothesis of remotely controlled Russo-American experimental craft cannot be entirely dismissed. But one then wonders why these saucers, which appeared before the end of World War II, were not used in the conflict. It would also be surprising if the Americans or Russians were sending their craft over all the countries of the world. It seems that such a secret would have been revealed either by one of the defectors crossing the Iron Curtain or through some American espionage case.
