The 1954 French flap:

NEW APPARITIONS
OF FLYING SAUCERS
In our region

A luminous globe in the sky of Brive

Brive (P.C.) - It might have been ten o'clock in the evening when, on Monday, Mr. Marcel Mazouaud, a painting contractor in Brive, saw from his window moving at a very high altitude and at high speed a mass of a blinding brightness.

He did not believe his eyes at first, but having taken the binoculars, he accepted the obvious, it was indeed a luminous globe and it could in no way be a shooting star, or a jet plane.

M. Mazouaud estimated at several kilometers the altitude at which this machine moved in a straight line without tracing any trajectory.

Mrs. Mazouaud, his wife, was able to attend this strange display, and the next morning a rumor spread in town, a resident of Brive had finally caught sight of something that looked like a flying saucer.

A "flying cigar" in the Corrèze

Tulle (C.P.). - On Monday, around 4 p.m., a brilliant object was moving in the Corrèze sky at a very high altitude and imagination helping, many witnesses identified it as a flying saucer; whereas it was actually only a jet airplane.

But two hours later another much more troubling phenomenon was observed above Forgèse [sic, Forgès], flying at a low altitude. A silent machine in the shape of a cigar moved slowly. Many people saw it and examined it at length, especially in the two villages of Chammard and Brugieux. Two witnesses told us that this curious machine seemed to have a propeller at the front.

At the end of a few minutes the flying cigar suddenly dove vertically and disappeared quickly leaving all those who had followed its evolutions until then literally stupefied.

A BRIVE

Lundi soir à 22 heures, M. Marcel Mazouaud, a painter entrepreneur of Louis-Mie street, saw something moving in the sky of Brive, approximately just above the school of domestic arts, a kind of luminous ball which light illuminated the sky. This ball disappeared in the direction of the toad to Bordeaux after Mr. Mazouaud kept it in sight during 4 to 5 minutes. He had the time to get binoculars to observe it and to alert his spouse, as well as his neighbours Mr. and Mrs Gagnebe [...]

OCT. 4

Monday evening at 10 P.M., M. Marcel Mazouaud, an art dealer of Louis-Mie street (Brive) saw something moving in the sky, apparently just about over the school of domestic science. It was a sort of luminous ball which lighted up the whole sky. It disappeared, after M. Mazouaud had watched it for 4 or 5 minutes, in the direction of the Bordeaux road. He had time to take his field glasses, and to notify his wife and his neighbours, M. and Mme Gagnebe, who also saw it perfectly. (Presumably there was more, telling what he saw through the glasses).

Descended from his "saucer" in Loctudy (Finistère)

A MARTIAN, SMALL, HAIRY AND UGLY, TAPPED ON THE SHOULDER
OF A COURAGEOUS BAKERY APPRENTICE

... While in Paris, a cardboard salesman sees a "flying disc" above the Porte Dorée

AGAIN a Martian. Each department will soon have its own. It was in the Finistère that the last specimen of the species appeared. This time, he showed himself without a helmet, with his face uncovered. He was not pretty.

A baker from Loctudy, Mr. Pierre Lucas, saw him disembark yesterday at 4 a.m. in a saucer flying three meters in diameter, in the courtyard of the bakery.

- He was no more than 1 m. 20 tall, he says. He approached me and tapped me on the shoulder with unintelligible words.

"I managed to keep my cool," continues the courageous bakery apprentice. The visitor followed me into the bakery. In the light, I could stare at him. His face was covered with hair and eyes the size of a crow's egg. I called my boss, but the Martian, when he arrived, was already gone. And the saucer was gone."

That same night, a Concarneau beer merchant saw two luminous round tables in the sky, extended by a sort of tail.

In the Nord, one did not see a Martian, but the gendarmes of Beuvry-les-Béthune wrote up a report against a manufacturer of flying saucers. He is a pensioner, named d'Oliveira. He is not Martian, but Portuguese. A whole stock of saucers was found in his attic. In fact, they were paper balloons 1 m. 50 to 5 meters in diameter, and of all colors.

I launched thousands of them, he said. It was so beautiful. In the evening, it looked like fireballs...

The saucer factory is now closed. The industrialist will be prosecuted for "having set off flaming devices within 100 meters of the homes".

Bad day yesterday for the saucers in the Nord: an investigation, carried out at Bray-Dunes, near Dunkirk, allowed to establish that the craft seen in this region were jet planes from the Belgian base of Coxide.

"Flying tram"

A resident of Haubourdin however observed a "flying tram", and a child saw a saucer land at Cheny, near Lille; which left traces "like that, he said, of a frog man". The gendarmes examined these traces; they looked very similar to those of horse hooves.

Paris, which the saucers have neglected until now, was favored by an appearance yesterday afternoon. A flying disc, followed by a plume of smoke, flew at 4:30 p.m. over the Porte Dorée under the eyes of Mr. Allouis, cardboard salesman. Several other people confirmed his testimony. But a spoilsport suggests that the flying disc, which he also observed, was, it seemed, a flying wing.

One saw yesterday a good twenty saucers, cigars, fireballs, light globes, at Limoges, at Brive, at Azat-le-Ris and at Magnac-Laval (Haute-Vienne), at Forgès and Le Mazin (Corrèze), at Payzac (Dordogne), at Chàteau-Chinon, at Nassier, in the Poitou marshes, at Vix (Vendée), at La Rochelle, at Albi.

Near Clermont-Ferrand, two saucers which, in passing, gave off a smell of nitro-benzine; near La Rochelle, another one that left oil stains when it landed in a meadow.

Finally, a technician from the weather station at Mans-Arnage observed yesterday morning at 6:08 a.m. two strong dark red lights.

- They were, he said, neither planes, nor sounding balloons, nor meteors. But I will not go so far as to claim that these are flying saucers...