The article below was published in the daily newspaper L'Est Républicain, France, page 1, on October 15, 1954.
Following the stir caused by a recrudescence of saucers over Switzerland, one just learned that the Territorial Air Defense has been studying the issue for five years. And that it has formed an opinion.
The conclusions of the D.A.T. are quite close to those provided by the first US report of 1947: the flying saucers are caused, for a high percentage:
(1) to optical illusions;
(2) to the observation of objects which are nothing mysterious, such as planes with delta wings or balloons, the latter increasingly used for the study of cosmic rays;
(3) to natural phenomena, such as the formation of ball lightning (unexpected things such as the formation of balls of cobwebs which, carried away by the wind and shining in the sun have also been observed, they can make believe in flying saucers).
(4) deliberate attempts at mystification and hallucinations, collective or otherwise. The US information is deliberately incomplete. To this must be added remote-controlled craft from experimental centers such as Peenemunde. Nevertheless 20% of the observations were not explained. Of this percentage, Swiss and Americans agree, which gives us 2,000 saucers.
About the passages of saucers in the United States, the Swiss have hardly anything but the information published by the Americans. They are incomplete... intentionally incomplete without doubt... and do not allow to judge. About the passages over their country, the Swiss have personal information. With several nations in Europe, they exchanged information.
The Aerial Defense of the Territory, with the exception of its own observation, only kept the testimonies of persons who, through their profession or training, were capable of a precise description. The first case of the file, which has 400 cases, is a report on the flying saucer (one of the first in Europe) detected in 1947 by the technicians of the control tower of the aerodrome of Peretola, near Florence in Italy.
The saucer was flying between 2,400 and 2,800 meters, at a calculated speed of 1,200 kilometers an hour, in a north-east-south-west direction; then the craft turned at right angles over the coast towards the South-East before disappearing.
The first observation taken as valid in Switzerland itself is that of Colonel Eggenberger, in September 1949. Colonel Eggenberger was a meteorologist and aviation instructor. Speed, altitude, the general appearance, the direction were the same in both cases.
For the D.A.T., flying saucers exist... for the sufficient reason that they are technically possible and that the first took to the air in Prague on 14 February 1945, exactly. This saucer, which was then called "the lenticular aeroplane" or "lenticular aerodyne", was the work of the German engineer Miethe. At the same time was under construction at Breslau, this one by two other German engineers, Habermohl and Schriever. One considers true the statements made about these two devices by the engineer Klein, who was then one of the collaborators of Speer, the Minister of Armaments.
Miethe is known to have collaborated in the realization of the V2. He took refuge in the United States, Habermohl disappeared, but he is believed to be in U.R.S.S., Schriever, who remained in Germany died last year, in Breslau. The very idea of the saucer is an extremely simple principle of physics: if you create a sufficiently powerful breath under a disc, this disc will rise and remain in the air, turning on itself. If you manage to channel in one direction or another the breath you have created, you will put to your disc to move as you wish.
The breath is powerful enough to lift a disc that can weigh several tons, did not exist twenty years ago. It exists today: it is the rocket. Moreover, in the field of pure aviation, one studied a lot the resistance of metals to heat and high pressures for the super sonic aviation. As for radio-piloting, it has come into common practice. These parallel research have allowed the flying saucer, which is nothing more than the application of the too famous V2.
The disadvantage of the V2 was its relative slowness. The lenticular shape of the saucer allows speeds of the order of 2,800 to 3,600 kilometers per hour. It is likely that better will be achieved but already at this speed no wind can no longer deviate it and it is practically impossible to intercept.
It is unlikely that a flying saucer ever transported a human being, but the thing is - or will be - in the domain of the possible, the only problem to be solved is the stability of the Cell and the isolation of the cabin, in order to protect the passenger(s) from high temperatures caused by friction.
For the present, the saucers seem to be only remotely guided. They are equipped with a self-destructing system by self-fire of the propellant (again nothing new), which explains why one rarely collected debris from flying saucers on the ground. However, it would be incorrect to say that they were never collected.
Miethe's lenticular aerodyne had a range of 1,200 kilometers and had been designed in such a way that it had to return to its departure place... It never came back and its remains were collected at the Spitzbergen by a Canadian commando. (Indeed it was in Canada that engineer Frost builds currently - and openly - a flying saucer to which one already gave the poetic name of "Flying bug". Other debris of saucers were collected in Bavaria in 1948, others still in Bornholm Island, in 1951.
To spot a flying saucer and judge especially its speed and altitude, you need a professionally trained eye. A layman may be mistaken in good faith and his errors of judgment go easily from the simple to the fivefold. Color issues are of little importance because they depend essentially on the surrounding environment. Radar itself is not irrefutable: some phenomena of ionization of the atmosphere create perceptible "masses" on radar.
An important factor is the general direction of the trajectories (although it is necessary to [?] only trajectories can inform us about the origin of these devices.
The Swiss D.A.T. formally refuses to believe in an extra-planetary phenomenon. The sidereal universe universe crossed, a million years ago, an extremely troubled period of which we currently perceive the distant echo, resulting in an overabundance of meteors (still an element of error!). But the flying saucer, it is very terrestrial. As for the trajectories, several constants have been observed - on which one is obviously very discreet, but which allow to situate, without great margin Of error, we were told, the different starting points of these devices "which are mysterious only because one wants it that way."
What can a flying saucer be used for? This is obviously the question that comes to mind. It is first, the D.A.T. said, a craft of first-class observation. The power it has acquired to return to its point of departure. makes it the best and fastest intelligence agent. It can photograph a settlement, troop movements, and bring back the photos. It is probably capable of detecting clouds of radioactive substances. It has been said that a flying saucer has launched leaflets (Anti-communist) in Austria; we have no details but this is possible: didn't we use shells to throw leaflets during the world war I?
In war, the saucer may be less harmless. Improvement of the V2, it would be a formidable instrument of bombardment. It could become the designated carrier of bacteriological war. Without omitting that the mere appearance of a group of saucers would doubtless suffice to spread a panic.
