The 1954 French flap:

Busy weekend for the flying saucers
who lose all discretion

A hundred testimonies in their favor in the region
of Annoeuillin, where they spend 25 minutes

One of them lands in a garden

Certainly the "saucers" invade our skies. More than a hundred people from Bauvin, Annoeuillin, Provin and the surrounding area, 20 kilometers from Lille, saw one or more luminous objects moving slowly, Sunday, between 8:45 p.m. and 9:10 p.m.. One of them saw the object land slowly in a garden and approached a few meters from the craft. But let's look at the facts.

A "saucer" came down
from the sky

Mr. Gaston Lecoeuvre, a miner domiciled on rue Georges-Mortelecq in Annoeuillin, smokes a cigarette on the doorstep. A bright spot appears on the dark screen of the sky and falls slowly: a shooting star, our man thinks. But now the fall of the star continues. It turns into an object that spins, it seems and, without noise, lands in a garden a few meters away.

Mr. Lecoeuvre rushes forward: a dome about three meters high and shining like a piece of nickel. The craft does not rest on the ground - no traces have been found. On the upper part there is a small dome, but there is no visible opening.

The miner stopped, as if petrified, a few meters from the "thing", his little dog barks with rage. And now a panic fear takes hold of the man who runs away shouting up to the Parsy cafe, a hundred meters away, where a dozen people consume or play billiards.

"Come, a saucer!..." the miner shouts. The players are rushing into the street.

Mr. Gaston Lecoeuvre is considered by his entourage as a serious man.

The sarabande of "saucers"

Fifteen men, women, and children are outside. The object is gone, after 15 or 20 seconds, Mr. Lecoeuvre estimates, because he declares to have perceived a whistling sound during his distraught run.

But here the residents of Annoeuillin distinguish in the direction of Provin, not one, but three brilliant objects. One of them was almost motionless, two others circles slowly around the first one: this is the version that several people spontaneously give us.

We interview Mr. Bourbotte, a young office worker who, despite the general fever, remains calm. When he joins his neighbors who, for a quarter of an hour, have observed the "phenomenon", he no longer distinguishes three, but two objects. Mr. Bourbotte checks his wristwatch: it is exactly 9:00 p.m. The "saucers" seeming to present an angle of approximately 45 degrees with respect to the horizontal, slowly following circles, he specifies. They turned in opposite directions and, at times, they appeared only in the form of a red dot. Then they got closer and one could better distinguish their swollen shape and their red-orange color.

This silent sarabande continued until 9:10 p.m., hour at which the spectators, who passed binoculars from hand to hand, saw the objects disappear behind a curtain of trees, in direction of Provin.

Other testimonials

At the other end of rue Georges-Mortelecq, Mr. Louis Deleflie hears a noise similar to that of an "airplane engine" and sees a luminous object rising above a haystack, three hundred meters away. He's going to get his wife. The object is still there, but one no longer hear any noise. Their cousin will join them soon, then a neighbor, Mr. Claude Loyez, retired from the mines, 45 to 50 people finally contemplate the silent object, "red like fire but not lighting" which oscillates sometimes and moves away slowly, then disappears behind trees, still in the direction of Provin.

In this locality, the mother of the town hall secretary observed the passage of a "luminous object" and heard a noise of "engine:" other residents made identical statements to the gendarmes. In Bauvin, a worker, Mr. Vankenkiste, reportedly saw, like the first group of Annoeuillin residents, three "saucers".

These are the testimonies collected from men and women of different ages, of all social categories.

In total, a hundred people watched the strange saraband for 25 minutes. Simple "images"... Are we going to start doubting it? If not, what clear and soothing explanation of the "phenomena" could we give?

Barrels, pots,
croissants
and other flying objects

Sunday evening, around 9:30 p.m., in Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, a craft with the shape of a pot and spinning was seen in the sky by two people. It gave off a reddish glow and moved quickly.

At the same time, a craft which, this time, had the shape of a crescent, was noticed in the sky, in Liévin. After hovering for a few minutes, the crescent split in two. The upper part remained motionless, while the other landed in a field, between two haystacks. Soon after, it flew away to go reattach the stay-in-air part.

Also on Sunday evening, around 11:15 p.m., on the road to Monmoreau-Villebois-Lavalette (Charente), Mr. Jean Allary, 22, saw very clearly, in the light from the headlight of his moped, a sort of barrel about 1.80 m. high, studded with golden nails, which dangled on the side of the road. When Mr. Allary had passed the mysterious craft, he looked back, at a distance of about 10 meters, but saw nothing.

Between Annoeuillin and Provins, near Lille, around one hundred people saw "flying crescents" in the sky.

A miner from Annoeuillin, Mr. Gaston Lecoeuvre, had alerted the customers of a cafe, telling them that he had just seen a crescent-shaped luminous machine, about 3 meters high, land in his garden. When consumers left the cafe, the "flying croissant" was flying through the sky with two other similar craft.

Soon a hundred people, both in Annoeuillin and in Provins and in the neighboring villages, were gazing at the three objects which only disappeared after twenty-five minutes. The gendarmerie brigades of the region have already collected numerous testimonies.

Saucers, cigars, discs, balls and other "flying" objects were seen in Chancelade (Haute-Vienne), Willer (Haut-Rhin), Gouesnach, near Quimper-Beautignecourt, Ambazac (Haute-Vienne), Dijon, Marcoing, near Cambrai, Pommier (Indre), Rouen, Ajaccio, La Rochelle, Quimper, Cholet, Valves.

In the Nord,
a hoaxer reportedly
built over a thousand
of "flying saucers"

A retired miner from Beuvry-lès-Béthune (Pas-de-Calais), known in his town as a joker, did not miss the opportunity offered by the mystery of the flying saucers to have fun at the expense of neighboring localities.

Inspired by the hot-air balloon system, the happy retiree made devices that reached 3 meters in diameter. The envelope was made up of sheets of strong gray paper, carefully glued. At the base of the "saucer" was a small receptacle in which rested a tuft of tow soaked in a flammable liquid. It was then enough to ignite the tow to see the machine rise and disappear with the winds, surrounded by yellowish and orange reflections.

It was following the discovery, near a stack of straw, of one of these devices, which had almost set fire to it, that the gendarmes were led to suspect the pensioner.

One was actually to discover at the latter's many models of "flying saucers" prototypes that their inventor was preparing to launch in the northern sky.

The hoaxer claimed he had already built and launched over a thousand of these devices. The ex-miner will undoubtedly be condemned to tickets for dangerous amusement.