Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency information report (No. OO-W-24108), distributed 27 September 1952, summarizes Spanish and French newspaper accounts published between April and August 1952. It covers four glowing spheres over Almansa and a red object over Andujar in Spain. It describes a cargo ship master's sighting of an orange light off Port Gentil, Gabon, where no planes were aloft, and a string of saucer reports across Oran Department, Algeria. The material is marked as unevaluated.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
and passed directly over the ship. Night vision) skyward, the master was able to see quite clearly, on the port quarter, a very bright and phosphorescent orange light, circular in shape and moving at a great speed in a seemingly straight-line course. Standing on the wing of the bridge, and with the aid of the gyrocompass repeater, the master estimated its average direction to be about 10 degrees. He followed the light quite easily in his binoculars for about 3 minutes and lost sight of it when it moved at great speed over the Prince buoy, about 7 miles from the ship. The master was unaware of any accompanying sound and admits that it was difficult to estimate the altitude of the object, yet he judged this to be 3,000-4,000 meters. Its diameter was that of a planet. The first mate stated that before he telephoned the master, he saw that object come from the direction of Port Gentil, stop, make a right turn, and resume its initial course. As it passed directly over the ship, it repeated the same sort of gyration. The master stated that his 20 years of sea duty enabled him to affirm that what he saw was neither a known celestial phenomenon, such as a falling star or meteor, nor a current type of aircraft. Furthermore, it was confirmed that there were no planes in the air that night over Port Gentil. ## STRANGE OBJECTS SEEN IN SKY OVER ALGERIA -- Oran L'Echo d'Oran, 17 Jul 52 At 2300 hours on 15 July 1952, in the town of Boukanefis, two bakers clearly saw a plate-shaped flying object in the sky. It moved with unusual agility, giving off a greenish smoke and lighting up the sky. It seemingly did not alter its course as it increased its speed and disappeared toward the south. Similarly, in Lamoriciere on 11 July 1952, one Thomas Martinez saw a sudden illumination above and at first took it to be a falling star. Actually, it seemed more like a meteor followed by two other bodies, all trailing a yellow cloud of smoke. Then, these disappeared and out of nowhere appeared an oval-shaped, longish ball of fire. Flying at a low altitude and clearly visible, it rapidly followed a rectilinear course. STRANGE PHENOMENON WITNESSED FROM TWO POINTS IN ORAN -- Oran, L'Echo d'Oran, 26 Jul 52 Recently [presumably 25 July 1952] several inhabitants of Oran reported seeing a flying saucer at approximately the same time. At 1535 hours, Raoul Le Henaff, foreman of a local company, saw an incandescent white mass in the sky above Oran. It flew southwestward, traveling at an altitude of about 2,000 meters. There was no luminous exhaust and no smoke. After 30 seconds, the phenomenon grew hazy and disappeared. The personnel of the company office and Palacio, an employee in the Algeronaphte factory also saw the "saucer."
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 8 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.