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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.
“Hill”41 pages
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a phenomenon which has been put to good use in civil aviation to assist pilots in avoiding dangerous cloud formations. Responses on a radar tube from these targets may cover a considerable area, exhibit irregular, diffused boundaries and have a rapidly fluctuating intensity. Movement will generally be related to the speed of the main air current in which the rain is situated, and it may be anything from zero to 100 m.p.h. or more, whilst the target altitude may range from ground level to 40,000 ft. Generally the nature of the target is obvious by its size and by the pattern of the responses, but the picture changes with time and may appear unusual and confusing to an inexperienced operator. ## Non-Standard Atmospherical Conditions Under certain meteorological conditions inhomo- geneities occur in the atmosphere, and those may be responsible for some unusual radar echoes. The required condition can occur up to heights in the order of 200 miles, but the strength of signals returned from such nebulous targets is likely to be too low to produce a distinguishable response except on very rare occasions. Perhaps it is this very rarity which assists in the creation of another saucer, Unusual meteorological conditions can also cause radar signals to be returned from objects at distances far in excess of the normal range of the radar equipment. Responses caused by this anomalous propagation are superimposed on the usual radar picture of the area and can lead to confusion. The effect occurs most frequently in tropical and sub-tropical areas and usually persists for an appreciable time, sometimes for an hour or more. The effect is well known and because of its relative stability and duration would not normally give rise to unusual reportings. ## Ionised Gasses It has been suggested that ionised gas clouds in the atmosphere produce a type of radio echo which may be confused with those from tangible objects. Although radio energy is undoubtedly reflected and refracted by ionised gases (long distance, short wave communications depend on this very fact) the effect falls off very rapidly above, say 30 Mc/s, whilst 60 Mc/s appears to be the upper limit at which it has been recorded. Some of the early radar equipment still in use does operate within these frequency limits but it is quite incapable of the definition necessary to contribute to the notion of/
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