Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency report (No. 00-W-24639), distributed 24 November 1952, compiles unevaluated translations of French and Spanish newspaper items from July to October 1952. It covers sightings of luminous disks and other unidentified objects over French Morocco, Algeria, Tangier, Spain, Mallorca, Durban in South Africa and Abidjan. Most items describe the object seen across Morocco on 21 September 1952, including a close pass reported by a tourist pilot named Creze. One newspaper suggested that object was probably a meteor.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
The object was variously described as an orange-colored ball of fire, an arrow, or a cone-shaped object trailing a bright green-blue cloud of smoke, heading from east to west and parallel to the coast, and moving at the speed of a conventional plane at an altitude of about 1,000 meters. The object was visible for only a few seconds. After it passed a thin, white trail of smoke remained visible for about 5 minutes. GIVE DETAILS ON MYSTERIOUS OBJECT FLYING OVER IVORY COAST -- Abidjan, La Cote d'Ivoire, 8 Oct 52 Three members of a family in Abidjan declared that shortly after 0130 hours on 3 October 1952, a bright green light flashed from the east across the sky, seemingly the exhaust of some craft. The latter was momentarily motionless, at which time it seemed orange red in color. Then it revolved about itself in a ring of fire, zig-zagging upward and remaining in the same area of the sky. As it moved, it assumed various shapes, flat, round, and oval. Its color varied then from purple to gold. After many rapid, noiseless turns, it dwindled in size, turned green, and disappeared -- that was at about 0200 hours. The three observers gave the impression of being quite level-headed.
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.