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.
“The Advance”22 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# "SAUCERS" DID NOT AUCKLAND STAR # "SAUCERS" DID GET COMETS Expert laughs at suggestion LONDON, Friday. Suggestions that the Comet which met disaster in the Mediterranean in January might have been hit by "flying saucers, gremlins, or any other strange things of the air" were dismissed by the director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, Sir Arnold Hall. At the official inquiry in London today, the Attorney-General, Sir Lionel Heald, asked "Is there any possibility the Comet could have been shot down by an aeroplane from, say, Mars?" Sir Arnold raised laughter by replying, "Unless they use ammunition very different from ours, I would have expected to find some evidence of that in the wreckage." Experts were closely questioned at the inquiry on cracks alleged to have been formed during manufacture of the plane found in the metal of the Comet which crashed in January. Sir Arnold Hall said his scientists found the cracks when they examined the wreckage of the Comet called Yoke Peter. He said he believed they had been formed during the process of manufacture because they had been drilled to stop their propagation. Of the cracks he said, "They have accelerated the onset of fatigue, but I do not think they caused the accident in any direct sense at all. I cannot eliminate that fatigue might have been brought on a little earlier." Both the Comets which met disaster (with the loss of 56 lives) had flown longer than their "safe fatigue life." The inquiry was adjourned till Monday.—N.Z.P.A.—Reuter. ## Round the bend PORT ERIE (Ontario), Friday. Mr Herman Eldridge, aged 51, of Buffalo, New York, wrecked his car on October 11 when it went off the road at a curve near Port Erie. He was fined this week for careless driving. He drove back in a new car to collect the bail money he had put up when he was arrested. He approached the same curve and wrecked the second car. The shaded area in the diagram shows pieces of the Comet airliner recovered from the sea near Elba and pieced together at the Farnborough research station. (Picture by radio and air.)
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 445 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.