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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.
“Headquarters”37 pages
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# Did I See a Flying Saucer-or Cigar Over Canterbury? ## By a Staff Reporter WAS there a flying saucer, a flying cigar, or anything similar that hundreds of people throughout the world claim to have seen in the sky, over Canterbury yesterday? Reporters are not paid to have hallucinations and until yesterday I did not believe that such things existed. Since 3.46 p.m. yesterday I have not been so certain. It was precisely at that time that an object which was not an aeroplane, a glider, or a balloon disappeared into a cloud bank over the foothills of the Southern Alps travelling quickly north. When we first saw it, it was gleaming brightly, and hanging motionless in the sky probably at a height of more than 10,000ft about four miles west of Coutts Island. We—my wife and I—had watched, that object for seven minutes, at least. It was cigar shaped and looked as though it might have been chromium-plated, so intense was the light it reflected. At no stage did we hear any noise in the sky which could possibly have come from it. ## Motionless We watched it for about three minutes while it hung motionless. I then looked at my watch and saw the time was 3.40. Within a minute it started to move off quickly westward towards the only cloud bank in the sky-over the Southern Alps. As it moved it emitted what appeared to be two puffs of pink vapour. During movement its shape did not change but it became smaller as the distance increased. We watched it from the road which runs from Coutts Island to the back of the Christchurch Airport and though the cloud bank was about thirty miles away and its top was at a height of 6000ft (checked with the Weather Office, Harewood) the object could be seen quite plainly when it was over the bank. It stopped momentarily over the cloud bank, circled and then headed north into the cloud. Between 3.40 and 3.45 p.m.yesterday a meteorological balloon was released from the airport. When it was released it travelled from east to west for a distance of two thousand yards and then it retraced its track. ## Not Balloon An official at the Weather Office said this morning that balloons can be seen from quite a distance with the naked eye, but they are often hard to pick up in sunshine as brilliant as it was yesterday. Balloons are spherical but this object was cylindrical. I am certain the object we saw was not a balloon. Was the object we saw a flying saucer or a flying cigar? I do not know, but in future I will feel inclined to give a little more credence to reports of strange objects in the sky than I have done in the past. FOOTNOTE: My colleagues regard me as something of a cynic. Apart from a cocktail before lunch I had an abstemious day.
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