This article was published in the daily newspaper Le Méridional, France, page 1, on February 19, 1956.
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PARIS. -- The radars at Orly detected the other night, on their screens, the presence above the Paris area, of a machine which could not be identified, and whose dimensions, according to the size of the echo reproduced on the radarscope, would be twice larger than the commercial aircraft currently in service.
The spot which appeared on the radar at 23 hours immobilized per moment, letting suppose that it was an apparatus which can hover in space: during its fastest displacements, the technicians calculated that it reached the speed of 2.400 km/h.
These observations were confirmed by a pilot of Air France which, commanding a planebound for London, saw a red light flickering above him and emitted by the announced craft.
Flying on his D.C. 3 at 1.300 meters of altitude, the pilot having been informed by the local control of Orly of the presence in the vicinity of an unidentified craft, noted indeed, whereas he was at the vertical of les Mureaux, that a red light moving towards him ignited and died out at a few hundreds of meters above its plane.
Changing course to avoid the obstacle, he lost sight of the red light, but found it a few moments later, after control had signalled him that the mysterious object moved towards Le Bourget. The light, once again, appeared above the D.C. 3 before disappearing definitively in the clouds.
The observatory of Paris, questioned about the "object" seen above the aerodrome of Orly, declared that nothing abnormal had been announced during the other night.
The strongest reservations are expressed about the "mysterious machine", but the astronomers announce that american weather balloons, currently released in Germany, can reach diameters going up to 30 meters. These bulky balloons are carried by airstreams, the "jet streams", particularly fast and turbulent.
One however points out, in the aeronautical circles, that the enormous speed of the "apparatus" (2.400 km/h.) could not have been reached by balloons.
Moreover, these balloons pass on France at a very high altitude;however the machine of Saturday was relatively low.
