The article below was published in the daily newspaper L'Oise-Matin, Beauvais, France, page 12, on October 16, 1954.
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If they seem to sulk the Oise with persistence, the "flying saucers" have shown themselves, say various testimonies, more numerous than ever during the last 24 hours in the rest of France. Two witnesses have witnessed, they say, curious demonstrations on the part of these machines and, in the sky of Avignon, two French jet fighters have unleashed a futile hunt for "saucers."
It is a barrel-maker from Graulhet, who first declared to have witnessed the explosion of a saucer. A silvery ball, he declared, then seemed to escape from the mass of the craft and continue on its way, while the debris of it fell in several pieces, like sheets that hovered in the sky. Fragments of material were collected; they come in the form of agglomerated silvery filaments which crumble when touched.
The second witness, a resident of the village of Méral (Mayenne), declared that he witnessed the takeoff of a saucer, which quickly disappeared towards the north. At the place where the object had landed, assures the witness, there was a kind of shining cloud which fell slowly to the ground.
When he got home, he said, he noticed that his clothes were covered with a white layer of something a little sticky, like paraffin.
Finally, it is near Avignon, at the fountain of Vaucluse, where the residents in turmoil report that a white disc was hovering above the small town. The neighboring Caritat air base, alerted, immediately directed two jets which, according to the Secretary of State for the Armed Forces (air), returned without noticing anything abnormal.
Also said they saw saucers, cigars or other bizarre contraptions in the sky: two people returning to their homes, a few kilometers from Nîmes; an inhabitant of Montargis, on the national road n ° 7; inhabitants of Marseille, in the sky of Rove; a farmer from Angle, in Vendée; workers from Casablanca, above the city; a representative and his friend, between Niffer and Kembs (Alsace); an eight year old child and her parents, near Martigues, and a baker boy from Calais, on the road to Saint-Omer.
Despite these numerous testimonies, the British Air Ministry in London has let it be known that it does not believe in saucers.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, official spokespersons for the English ministry said, natural explanations were found for similar appearances reported in Britain: they are most often sounding-balloons. When no explanation can be given, one adds at the Air Ministry, it is generally for lack of insufficiently [sic] precise testimony.
Spokesmen further indicated that no bizarre craft have been reported in Britain in recent weeks.
