ufo - UFOS at close sight: the 1954 French flap, October 14, Saint-Priest, Rhône-Alpes

Reference for this case: 14-Oct-54-Saint-Priest.
Please cite this reference in any correspondence with me regarding this case.

Summary:

Aimé Michel noted in his 1958 book on the French wave of 1954, that in Saint-Priest "in the Dauphiné, Mr. Jean Mortin of Lyon" had observed two objects in the sky beyond the Bron airport. They were incandescent green and went north at high speed.

In 1979, the "skeptical" ufologists Gérard Barthel and Jacques Brucker evoked this case, in the Isère department, giving as only information that it was a "succinct" case, not investigated; which had taken place at 6 p.m.; a Web database would indicate "06:20 p.m.".

But in 2025, I found the case in the national newspaper Combat for October 16, 1954, reporting that Mr. Jean Mortain, a resident of Avenue du Château in Lyon, claimed to have seen from the Saint-Priest way two incandescent green objects resembling discs heading toward the Bron airport.

Reports:

FLYING SAUCERS... (to be continued)

CASABLANCA. -- An engineer from Meknès, who was driving to Port Lyautey, reported being stopped on the road, in the Mamora forest, by a man dressed in a shiny suit. This man, who was about 1.2 meters tall, then walked toward a craft parked on the right side of the road. As soon as he got inside, the craft took off and disappeared at high speed.

LYON. -- Mr. Jean Mortain, living in Lyon, avenue du Château, claims to have seen, on the Saint-Priest road, two "objects" glowing incandescent green, shaped like discs, heading toward the Bron airport.

After executing a curved trajectory, the two objects disappeared at extremely high speed.

TOULOUSE. -- Mr. Roger Ramond, municipal councilor in Vielmur-sur-Agout (Tarn), reported seeing at 11:30 p.m. a craft shaped like an elongated balloon, 2 to 3 meters in length and 1 to 1.5 meters in height, orange in color. The light emitted by this object clearly illuminated, within a 20-meter radius, the surrounding vineyard stumps. The sighting lasted until 2:15 a.m., then the object rose slowly in a vertical motion to about twenty meters above the ground and finally vanished like a flash without leaving a trail.

LIMOUX. -- A landowner from Caderonne, in the commune of Eperaza (Aude), Mr. Chavignier, saw a large luminous disc at the top of the Maureille hill, leaving behind an orange and red trail. The craft made several loops at a speed that seemed dizzying to the witness, then headed toward Quillan. The luminous trail remained visible for more than two minutes.

French ufologist Aimé Michel notes that on October 14 in Saint-Priest in the region of the Dauphiné, M. Jean Mortin, resident of Lyon, observed two objects in the sky beyond the airport of Bron. They were glowing green and went up north at fast speed.

"Saint-Priest - 38 - 6 p.m.: no investigation. Enters in the series of the very succinct cases."

Godelieve van Overmeire indicates that in 1954, on October 14, in France, in Saint Priest (the Dauphiné), "Jean Mortin of Lyon observes in the sky beyond the Bron airfield, two objects of an incandescent green going at sharp pace to the north."

Luc Chastan indicates in his database that in the Rhone in St Priest on October 14, 1954 at an unknown hour, "a witness observed two objects in the sky beyond the airport of Bron. They are incandescent green and go towards the North at high speed."

Explanations:

Barthel and Brucker located Saint-Priest in the department "38", thus in the Isère. There is no commune of this name currently in the Isère, but we have "Saint-Priest, metropolis of Lyon." This Saint-Priest was indeed in the Isère in 1954, and is now included in the new entity "Métropole de Lyon".

Aimé Michel spoke of the "Dauphiné". This is not a department, but a historical and cultural entity including the departments of Isère, Drôme, Hautes-Alpes and part of the Rhône or Lyon metropolis. This suggests that Michel did not know the department, so he did not know the precise location of the case; which is a problem annoying because he spoke of "aligned" cases for that date; thus without taking into consideration all the cases he knew.

We are told that the witness was from Lyon, the phenomenon beyond Bron, the Lyon airport, so this Saint-Priest of the Lyon metropolis and formerly in the Isere should be the correct one. I noted as department "Rhône"; Saint-Priest is not, administratively speaking, in the department of the Rhône; but like Lyon, it is there geographically.

That day around 06:13 p.m., a big meteor had been widely seen passing by the Rhône Valley.

Here, everything corresponds to this meteor... except that there seems to be two meteors. There may have been a fragmentation of the meteor.

Case Nr.	New case Nr.	Investigator	Date of observation	Zip	Place of observation	Country of observation	Hour of observation	Classification	Comments	Identification
19541014			14.10.1954		St. Priest	France	18.20	NL
19541014			14.10.1954		St. Priest	France		NL

Let's note, nevertheless, this other case, in Pierrelatte in the Drôme, same day, same hour approximately, about 150 km more in the South than this case, the only one with this one to mention two objects, but where one of the objects does not seem to be a fragment of the meteor.

Keywords:

Saint-Priest, Rhône-Alpes, Jean Mortin, airport, two, object, fast, green, glowing

Version:	Created/Changed by:	Date:	Change Description:
0.1	Patrick Gross	August 27, 2004	First published.
1.0	Patrick Gross	April 8, 2009	Conversion from HTML to XHTML Strict. First formal version. Additions [goe1], [lcn1].
1.1	Patrick Gross	February 25, 2017	Addition [ubk1].
1.2	Patrick Gross	July 16, 2019	Addition of the Summary. Explanations changed, were "Not looked for yet. Meteors."
1.3	Patrick Gross	June 4, 2025	Addition [cot1]. In the Summary, addition of the information from [cot1].

The 1954 French flap:

October 14, 1954, Saint-Priest, Rhône:

Summary:

Reports:

FLYING SAUCERS... (to be continued)

Explanations:

Keywords:

Sources:

Document history: