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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
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
- Photographs Of photographic evidence little needs to be said. There is nothing in the world more easy to fake than a photographic film or plate and the majority of photographs which have been seen certainly invite suspicion. There are the few pictures that have been published in the press from time to time which are obviously of natural phenomena, such as mock moons and suns, and which emphasise the probability that the objects in the others are faked. Radar "sightings" constitute the remaining source of flying saucer reports and these reports, generally speaking, fall into certain explainable categories. ## Radar Echoes Radar echoes can be produced by a variety of objects, not all of which are visible to the human eye. The majority of solid objects which return radar energy produce responses on the radar operator's tube which are easily recognised: moving objects such as aircraft and birds are normally readily identifiable by the size and shape of the response and by the velocities, altitudes and movement they exhibit. Meteorological balloons might also be included in this group of identifiable objects as they normally produce quite distinctive echoes, particularly as many of them carry reflectors specially designed to assist in the plotting of their course by radar. However, some balloons, such as those used for ionospheric sounding, fly at altitudes beyond the reach of aircraft and travel with the upper winds at speeds often in excess of 100 m.p.h. Radar returns from such balloons, when first encountered, could mystify a radar operator and give the impression that a flying saucer has been sighted. On the rare occasions when reports of unidentified objects have their origin in one of these solid bodies it is usually a comparatively simple matter to identify the object be enquiries addressed to the appropriate authority. Within a group of radar targets which are not controlled or released by man can be included birds, meteorological and astronomical targets. Birds are of little concern as their smallness prohibits responses from them except at very short ranges but, from the other targets, responses with quite unusual characteristics may be obtained. Echoes from Precipitation Radar echoes may be produced by condensed water vapour in the form of raindrops, ice crystals or snow, a/
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