Documents / Document
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.
“Sea”47 pages
MYSTERY THREADS & GELATINOUS WHITE MATTER: My attention was first drawn to the mention of White Matter that was left behind by seven objects that landed in West Virginia on 12th September, 1952, and as the case was quickly hushed up, and was in itself outstanding; I therefore reproduce it in detail. "Weird objects scare people in West Virginia. Reporter on scene says investigation fully warranted." The American newspaper reporting the incident thought it necessary to add the following preface to their Reporter, Ivan T. Sanderson's, account of this remarkable incident. "The writer, 41 year old Author and Lecturer, was educated at Eton and Cambridge, where he took honours in Geology, Zoology, and Botany. He has travelled extensively to remote areas of the World with many Scientific Expeditions. Author of six books, he also contributes extensively to many leading National periodicals." "At Sundown,"the Reporter wrote, "on the evening of September 12th, 1952, a fleet of pear-shaped objects, glowing dull Red to White, according to their speed of travel, flew in formation over North-eastern West Virginia, less than a thousand feet from the ground, and landed in Braxton County. Everyone in the State knows about this, and thousands saw the things two persons were nearly hit by them. Eight people could have touched one, but they were too confused and frightened because something came out of one of them." On the spot investigations by this reporter also have brought to light three additional facts, overlooked in the first reports. The exact point of landing of three of the objects is now known. Apart from a terrific SMELL, which long since has gone, nothing but some WHITE SUBSTANCE, which was sent to Charleston to be analysed, has been found. One landing still has to be investigated, and another requires additional research because the area is densely wooded, mountainous, and uninhabited. Monster or Machine, the 12 foot glowing Green monster, that has been widely reported as having been seen alongside the glowing cone that landed on a mountain pasture near the tiny village of Flatwoods, in this County, was neither a man nor a monster, but some sort of machine like a Diving-bell, if the two frightened adults and five intelligent young boys who say that they saw it are not all the most experienced liars that ever lived. These youngsters were questioned separately and together, with and without their elders, for two days, and we can report definitely that they were not lying. They have drawn pictures of what they saw, and they keep saying that it was a ten foot man because the top of it was level with the branch of a tree which was ten feet from the ground, and its shape was something like the upper half of a hooded man. They said this because they had never seen a modern deep-water diving suit. What they describe is a truncated cone, with a smaller cone on top of this. This little cone had a circular transparent window in front, and from behind this two small spotlight beams shone straight out. This whole thing seemed to be floating in the air about five feet off the ground, and just as they turned and ran, it glided towards the huge glowing cone. ## NO INVESTIGATION: This Reporter has also been told locally, that although a sketch of this object made by the mother of the two boys, Mrs. Kathleen May, who was present, had been sent to Washington, the Air Force had decided not to investigate. This is the more incredible, since this whole series of incidents is so much more concrete than any other Saucer report from this country since World War 11, and there still are landings to be investigated.
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 445 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.