The article below was published in the daily newspaper La Croix, Paris, France, page 2, on October 26, 1954.
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SUNDAY was not a "saucer" day. It is true that the weather was not encouraging... Even for a "Martian".
One reported, Saturday evening, a saucer-cigar in the sky of Alsace.
Consumers seated in a café in Wittenheim saw, around 11 p.m., at an altitude of about 500 meters, a circular craft spinning rapidly and moving at a moderate pace. The night was very clear, and witnesses noted that the craft was animated by a horizontal rotational movement which gave it the appearance of a saucer and it also rotated around a central core, thus evoking the shape of a cigar.
After about ten minutes of maneuvers, the craft, whose outer edges had passed successively from red to brown, then to bright red, and whose incandescent central core was surrounded by sparks, quickly disappeared.
A truck driven by a hardware store man, in Thénezay (Deux-Sèvres), who was accompanied by Mr. Dribault, was driving last night near Chalandray (Vienne), when suddenly the two men saw a bright light of different colors, emitted, they thought, by a flying saucer.
Dazzled, the driver lost control of his vehicle, which crashed into a tree bordering the road. The two occupants were slightly injured. The truck suffered extensive damage.
The testimonies collected for more than a month about the "flying saucers" and flying "cigars" seen in the sky of the peninsula, were the topic of a press release from the Italian Ministry of the air Forces.
So far, the press release said, radar devices have not detected any such craft, with the exception of airplanes and weather balloons whose characteristics are known.
Special instructions were given to the heads of the detection stations to intensify surveillance during the twilight and night hours, during which, according to witnesses, the "flying discs" are seen, the statement added.
As for the documentation on the flying "discs" owned by the Italian Air Force, it is only a few testimonies from officers who have seen these craft above the Tyrrhenian coastline, moving in a south-north direction at a speed greater than 2000 kilometer per hour."
During the Congress of the National Union of Friends of th ancients of the Passive Defense, which was held in Nantes, under the chairmanship of Mr. Conombo, Secretary of State for the Interior, the delegates in particular asked that scientific research do what is necessary to elucidate the mystery of the flying saucers in order to put an end to the psychosis of fear which sometimes takes hold of some people.
