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UFOs in the daily Press:

The French 1954 saucer flap in the Press:

This article was published in the daily newspaper Var-Matin - République, France, on September 18, 1954.

Alert in the Somme

The "flying saucer" was only a duck and the pranksters who put the village in agitation will be prosecuted

Amiens, September 17. -- On last September 8, the village of Estrées-Deniecourt (Somme) was in agitation. While returning from work, several workmen electricians employed in Amiens, had declared that they had just seen a flying saucer land at the edge of the wood, with a few sixty meters of the main road.

And they gave many technical details about the apparatus, and specified that many motorists had stopped to admire it.

"Come with us, they said to the villagers, you'll see if it ain't true."

But the majority of their compatriots, seized with panic, preferred to hide on their premises. There were only few brave men who risked themselves on the spot. There, there was no more saucer than there are icebergs in Senegal. Then the "witnesses" said that the metallic bird had flown away.

The gendarmes were alerted, and noted more than one inconsistency in the lies of the electricians. Subjected to a tight interrogation, the latter had to admit that they had entirely invented the story.

They did not think that the affair could take such an importance and regretted having launched such a tall story.

They regret it more especially as today, the gendarmes have just established a verbal lawsuit, which was transmitted to the court of Amiens and which is drawn up against Serge Grimbert, 20 years old, of Amiens who is the instigator of the tall story, and his comrades, Christian Coulevara, 24 years old, of Amiens, Roland Gourguechon, 22 years old, of Doublens and Rene Cleret, 20 years old, of Albert.

Case file here.

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