The article below appeared on pages 7 and 14 in the magazine L'Alsace Illustrée, France, on October 15, 1954.
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WHEN America first sent us information about the luminous "saucers" seen in the night sky, we smiled. "Those crazy Americans!" we sneered.
Today, we no longer have the right to laugh. Too many serious and trustworthy people have seen these unidentified craft and glimpsed their occupants.
They only caught a vague glimpse, as the saucers depart as soon as a human approaches. This observation is certainly thought-provoking. But it does not disprove the facts. On the contrary.
Here are the facts.
North of Valenciennes, in Quarouble, Mr. Dewilde saw a spherical craft land on the railway tracks. He saw its mysterious occupants, at whom his dog Kiki barked. The investigation by the Air Police confirmed that a craft had indeed landed on the tracks. Customs officers in the North replied: "Your Martians were simply smugglers. And the saucer was a helicopter!" It's a hypothesis—just as hard to prove as any other claim. "All these phenomena can be explained by what we know of fireballs caused by lightning," said astronomer Haffner recently. He spoke on behalf of science. However, one of our Parisian colleagues reminded him of that remarkable session of the Academy of Sciences, where a brand-new invention—the phonograph—was presented, during which the Academy's most eminent member declared, without laughing, that it was a hoax and there was a ventriloquist in the room. Science didn't "swallow" the phonograph. It will be slow to digest the saucers.
The facts? Here is what "Paris-Match" stated in its October 2 issue: "America has a slightly older experience with aviators of the unknown. As early as July 1947, in the New Mexico desert, the 8th Air Army recovered a flying saucer 30 meters in diameter containing the half-charred bodies of sixteen human-shaped creatures, dressed in blue uniforms and measuring about 1 meter. These corpses are preserved in alcohol jars in a secret laboratory in Chicago."
At the Air Technical Intelligence Center, created by the Americans in 1948 (this center's mission is to unravel the mystery of flying saucers), 2,000 observation reports have been submitted in recent years. Of these, 14.3% of the cases remain unexplained. Nevertheless, the Center concluded that saucers are a myth. Major Keyhoe responded: "Lies!" And he added: "It is a scandal to withhold the truth from the American people!"
Do the American authorities know too much?
For several weeks now, France has become the main "theater of operations." At first, people laughed heartily when farmer Mazaud claimed to have been kissed by a saucer passenger. But since then, many people (precisely those who laughed) have made disturbing observations.
Even science is becoming less categorical in its denials. Mr. André Viaut, director of French meteorology, was in Rome on the day (September 17) when a mysterious craft was seen crossing the sky of the Eternal City. This craft—which thousands of people witnessed—was observed for about forty minutes by the command station at Ciampino Airport (located seventeen kilometers from the city). According to information provided by the base, it was a device in the shape of a "half-cigar," flying at an altitude of about 1,200 meters, with a speed that couldn't be precisely measured but was estimated to be low.
A trail of luminous smoke emitted from the narrower end of the craft. As soon as it was detected, the commander of Ciampino alerted the control station at Pratica di Mare (thirty kilometers from Rome), which is equipped with radar.
The observers at Pratica di Mare managed, for about twenty minutes, to track the craft on their radar. They noted the presence of an antenna in the center of the wider end of the "half-cigar," which at one point abruptly dropped 400 meters, only to immediately regain altitude, shifting from a horizontal to a vertical position.
The director of French Meteorology (a genuine scientist!) was therefore in Rome that day. Questioned by Maurice Montabré of "Le Figaro," the director of meteorology stated that he "admits the hypothesis of craft propelled by a means still unknown to us."
Let us stop there, for the moment: "Craft propelled by a means still unknown to us." That's an excellent definition of the saucer. A definition given by a scientist.
Let's call one more witness to the stand, one particularly worthy of trust: a bishop! Bishop Verhille, apostolic vicar of Fort-Rousset, wrote to the newspaper "La Presse":
"Here is what I saw at Lekety (in the Likouala-Mossaka region):
"On Friday, June 18, at 7:35 p.m., we were at dinner—Father Grimonpre, Father Lejeune, and myself—when the cook, Séraphin, came to tell us that an airplane could be heard. This is now a rather common sight, but we went outside anyway to scan the sky. We immediately spotted a luminous globe coming from the north and heading toward the Mission. We expected it to pass overhead, when suddenly it stopped, rose vertically, descended, stopped, turned, and seemed to 'flutter.'
"It wasn't entirely a ball of fire—there was a dark mass at the center, from which beams of varying lengths appeared to emerge in succession. Everyone could observe at their leisure, as the display lasted over a quarter of an hour. During this time, which seemed very long to us,
(Continued on page 14)
[Illustration caption:]
Near Bourges, late in the evening, a motorist recently surprised two "sky passengers" who had disembarked from... a saucer. The two strange individuals immediately re-entered their craft and took off. As the motorist continued on his way, the saucer followed the vehicle for a while. The motorist, who reported the incident, appears to be trustworthy... Our illustrator recreated the scene based on the witness's account. In Alsace, near Jettingue, a motorcyclist, Mr. Ott, had a very similar experience the other day.
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(Continued from page 7)
The ball of fire keeps moving, rising, descending, stabilizing for a few seconds, but not going very far, because from the place where we observe it, the horizon is limited and we do not need to move to keep watching it."
A craft propelled in a way unknown to us...
Here at home, several people have described the "sky passengers." "Giants... They looked like men made of aluminum," said one. "These individuals had no arms, were no taller than one meter, and their huge heads seemed to be made of glass or translucent metal. They wore suits similar to those of deep-sea divers," said another.
Contradictions? Certainly. Night has always cloaked the mysterious passengers of space. They have only ever been seen for very short periods. The observers were shaken by the strange spectacle that dazzled their eyes.
But these sky passengers could very well be men. That is not the opinion of British Air Marshal Lord Dowding, who concluded: "These objects exist, and no nation on Earth is capable of building them."
And why not? One nation was the first to manufacture the "V-2," another was the first to make an atomic bomb. Why couldn't a brand-new engine type have been secretly developed in a factory lost deep in a Siberian forest—an engine that is completely silent? In free countries, if a new trouser button is invented, the press, film, radio, and television are called in to showcase it! But behind the Iron Curtain, whether in the USSR or China, they remain silent. They know how to keep secrets.
- The Russians aren't that far ahead of us, surely...
There are German scientists in Russia.
The other day, Radio Moscow declared that Soviet scientists would soon be able to send a rocket to the moon "in the near future" and that rockets had already been launched to an altitude of about 400 kilometers.
Those who try to give a Russian answer to the flying saucer mystery point out two facts:
1) No saucer landings are reported in the USSR, in the satellite countries, or in China.
2) As soon as flying saucers are mentioned, the highest Soviet authorities claim they are just ridiculous products of American imagination.
The existence of flying saucers is denied too insistently beyond the Iron Curtain.
Another point raised by proponents of a "Russian answer":
The mysterious passengers flee at the approach of humans. If they had traveled hundreds of millions of kilometers, it would be to see us, to make contact. The Russians, on the other hand, would have reason to flee. For one could suppose that the Soviet saucers have a mission to gradually sow panic among the free peoples. After all, mankind is terrified of what it does not understand.
Generally, the Russian theory is dismissed because people do not want to believe it. Not so much because they fear it might be true, but because we lean toward the wondrous… It would be so much better if the sky passengers came from another world!...
