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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.
“The Advance”22 pages
(COPY) C/- N.Z. Broadcasting Service, Gebbies Pass, No. 2 R.D. , CHRISTCHURCH. The Regional Superintendent, Civil Aviation Administration, CHRISTCHURCH AIRPORT. Dear Sir, The following report is made as possibly being of interest to your department, although it is not known to the writer, if any official attention is given to such matters. On Wednesday, the 9th November, at 8.18 p.m., I was sitting in my car at this station when I noticed a brightly lit object travelling across the sky. It was approximately south east of the station, and appeared to be travelling from north east to south west. I was able to watch it for four to five seconds, before it was hidden by an adjacent building. During this time, the distance travelled would subtend an angle of about thirty degrees from my point of view, or about six degrees per second. The actual speed would of course depend on the distance between myself and the object. The length of it would be comparable with say six inches at a hundred feet. The angle of altitude would be about fifteen degrees from the horizontal. Although I have been rather sceptical about such reports, and have attributed them to meteors, etc., I was convinced that this did not line up with anything I have ever seen in the sky in N.Z., or anywhere else. The main reason for not confusing it with meteors, was that it had a clearly defined outlined shape, rather than a mere source of light. I have sketched this below. It was no normal aircraft, as it was entirely illuminated, with a bluish white light, and trailed a streamer of light of the same hue. As far as could be judged, the travel path was straight and level, parallel with the ground. I heard no noise from it, but as the car windows were closed, there could have been some without my hearing it. I should not blame you if you thought that perhaps the writer was rather an imaginative type, and I should state, for what it is worth, that this is not the case. If such reports as these go to Wellington, you could, if interested, have Mr. Andrews or Mr. Dippy comment on the possibility of excess imagination in the writer. Yours faithfully, SENIOR TECHNICIAN.
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.