Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency foreign press report, distributed 27 September 1952, compiles unevaluated newspaper accounts of unconventional aircraft seen in Spain, Algeria and French Equatorial Africa in 1952. It describes four glowing spheres over Almansa, a red saucer over Andujar, and a luminous object that a cargo ship's master and first mate watched maneuver over Port Gentil, Gabon. Most items describe a wave of saucer sightings across Oran Department in July 1952, reported by police, a priest and a cadi.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
At 0400 hours today, Raymond Botella, a Public Works Department employee in Tlemcen, saw a flying object moving rapidly north and trailing a whitish smoke cloud. A half hour before, the mysterious saucer had been seen in Oued Taria, traveling at the same speed and, like the saucer observed yesterday, making abrupt turns and changes of direction.
On the night of 30 July, in Sainte Barbe du Tlelat, a police adjutant, two policemen, and a cadi observed a luminous flying object for about 30 seconds. The daily police reports will henceforth include all such observations by the police.
In the morning of 30 July, a resident of Algiers saw, for several seconds, a shining black disk on the horizon. It made a rapid vertical descent, then suddenly moved in a horizontal direction.
Two observations were made in Lodi. On 25 July, at about 2130 hours, a yellowish object flew at a dizzy speed in the sky, and on 28 July, at 2150 hours, a much larger object appeared for several seconds; it had the shape of an inverted cone.
OBSERVE UNUSUAL FLYING OBJECT FOR OVER A MINUTE -- Oran, L'Echo d'Oran, 1 Aug 52
At 1130 hours on 31 July 1952, an Gran resident and his wife, while driving on the road between Saint Denis Du Big and Le Tielat, saw something flying in the sky about 1,000 meters up. They stopped the car and watched its course for about $ \frac{1}{2} $ minutes. It was spindle shaped and tapered at both ends. It differed from ordinary aircraft in that it showed no exhaust smoke, made no noise, and had a great speed. Not linked to a story yet.
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. 4 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.