The article below was published in the daily newspaper Paris-Presse, Paris, France, page 1, on October 16, 1954.
See the case file.
|
above the Vaucluse
TWO phone calls could have made it seem, yesterday afternoon, to the aviators of the Orange-Caritat base (Vaucluse) that the flying saucers file would, thanks to them, be enriched by serious testimonies, but reality quickly made them disillusioned. The saucer which had been pointed out to them above Fontaine-de-Vaucluse and in pursuit of which, in good faith, they had immediately came, did not exist. The villagers had an imagination bigger than their eyes.
It was around 1 p.m. that the first communication arrived at the base. It came from the secretary of the town hall of Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, Mr. Boudin.
"I'm calling you," he said, "because you are fighter pilots, to point out that for about an hour, a flying saucer has stood motionless in the sky, exactly above the town hall of the village."
While it caused a certain surprise, this news was especially met with skepticism among the officers. The base commander, however, himself called the mayor, Mr. Jean Garcin, that an order prohibiting "the manufacture, transport and use of the atomic bomb on the territory of the commune" made famous in his time.
"The saucer," replied the mayor, "is motionless. It is still before the eyes of the villagers who are gathered in the square and it is at an altitude of about four hundred meters."
As pilots were soon to take off for their usual training flight, the base commander gave them the mission to head towards Fontaine-dc-Vaucluse.
In an instant, the jet planes took to the air, circled over the Vaucluse valley and returned to their base without having seen anything. They had just noticed that a large crowd had followed their maneuvers with interest. But a saucer, nope.
The incident seemed closed when at 3:30 p.m., a new telephone call signaled to the Caritat base that the saucer which had just disappeared from the sky of Fontaine-de-Vaucluse was now on the Italian border, vertically above Mont Genèvre.
But this time nobody bothered.
(Read our investigation on the problem of "saucers" on the last page.)
