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This is a New Zealand Defence Force public release of RNZAF file AIR 39/3/3, "Flying Saucers," which covers 1952 to 1955 and was declassified in September 2010 under the Official Information Act. It collects sighting reports from the public and military personnel, press clippings, and a table of 1952 sightings. It also holds Carter Observatory opinions attributing some reports to meteors. A large part covers the inquiry into lights seen from National Airways Corporation Flight 108 on 31 October 1955, which the RNZAF could not fully explain as Venus.
“Christchurch”32 pages
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# Strange Object Seen Hovering Over Sea By Two Dunedin Men Two Dunedin men may have been the first people outside California to sight a strange phenomenon. The men, motoring near Green Island last Saturday night, saw a ball of brilliant white, tinged round its perimeter with a sulphur colour, hover over the sea, pause for a few seconds and then rise slowly into the sky. The men could see the object plainly in the moonlight, but neither heard a sound. Mr D. A. Metcalf, Dunedin president of the Civil Saucer Investigation group, an international body studying flying saucers, said this morning that the object did not fit the descriptions of saucers, but said everything indicated that the ball was of the type sighted in great numbers over California in 1952 and 1953. The ball seen by the men fitted, almost exactly, a description distributed by Professor Lincoln La Pas, of the California University, chief scientist working with the American air force on "Operation Blue Book," a Government assisted investigation into the presence of flying saucers. Mr R. Stewart, a farmer, of Saddle Hill, one of the men who saw the fire ball (or saucer), described the few seconds it was within their vision, thus: "It looked at first like a brilliantly lighted ship out at sea, but later it came closer and hovered over the water. It appeared to land, stayed about five or six seconds, and took off again. It was like looking at the inside of a whitehot furnace. It made no sound, and seemed to float on a plane with the surface of the sea." Mr Metcalf remarked that the Californian fire balls, also were the same colour, and followed the contours of surrounding hills. Like the local one, the balls moved horizontally as well as vertically. FILE
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