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UFOs in the daily Press:

FLYING SAUCERS IN THE 1954 FRENCH PRESS:

The article below was published in the daily newspaper Var-Matin - République, Toulon, France, June 3, 1954.

Above Boston, a "flying object" intrigues a US pilot

"It cannot be a weather balloon ", he stated

New York, June 2. -- A flying object of white color, in the shape of a disc, was seen at 16 km approx. in the north of Boston, by an American pilot, Captain Charles Kratovil, employed since 1935 by the Trans World Airlines company, who controls a four-engined plane on the line Paris-New York. Captain Kratovil declared to the journalists on his arrival at the international airport of New York, that it could not have been a weather balloon, whose radio message, has it says, had been announced to him above the area. [sic]

"It would really be the first time, he said, that one of these devices flies against the wind".

The pilot told that he had initially seen the object moving parallel to his plane, to then disappear in the clouds. He asked his copilot to survey the sky. A few moments later the object reappeared. The mechanical engineer on board also saw it.

It was, he said, a diaphanous spheroid of the size of a basketball balloon. Informed by radio, eight employees of the Boston control tower answered that they also saw it and warned the military authorities. A flotilla of jets took off.

The pilot, the copilot and the mechanic of the four-engined plane had seen the "object" during ten minutes. Captain Kratovil stated to have received then two messages of the military authorities. The first indicated that at the time when the fighter planes approached it, the object gained altitude.

It was approximately 3 000 meters above them, although they had reached 15 000 meters and continued to go up quickly. The second message warned that a weather balloon had been released above the air base of Crenier at 4 o'clock local time and was with at 10:19 above the Boston airport and had reached the altitude of 24 000 meters.

It would correspond roughly to the given and description its diameter was approximately 33 meters.

Note: see here for case #34.

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