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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.
“Christchurch”32 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
FLYING SAUCER REPORTS Minister Suggests An Explanation Sir,—From time to time people report having seen unexplained objects in the sky which have come to be called "flying saucers." There have been many explanations of them—the sun shining on high-flying aircraft meteorological balloons—imagination, etc. There is another possibility that may account for some of them, which has not been suggest I, so far, as I know. On known dates in each year, the earth passes through meteorstreams. These are the remains of meteors that have disintegrated in outer space, but which continue their original paths round the sun in the form of streams of solid particles and meteoric dust. The fact that the earth moves round the sun in a fixed path and th. these debris of meteors also move round the sun in fixed pa. means that the paths of the earth and of some of these meteoric streams intersect each other on a series of dates which are the same each year. The earth sometimes takes a number of days to pass through the more important of these meteoric streams. The dates of maximum meteoric activity are: January 3, April 21, May 4, June 8, June 30, July 28, August 10-13, October 10, October 20-23, November 3-10, November 14, November 16, December 11-13. I have lists of the dates over the last several years on which people have reported having seen "flying saucers" in Australia, and have compared them with the dates on which the earth passes through the principal meteoric streams. There appears to be a noticeable relationship between these two sets of dates. By this I mean that there tends to be a grouping of "flying saucer" sightings round about the meteor-stream dates that it is hard to believe is by chance. And again, there is a relative instance of "flying saucer" reports during the principal gaps between meteor-stream dates. For instance, the minimum meteoric activity the year is between January and April. These are also the months in which fewest "flying saucers" have been reported in Australia. I do not suggest that this evidence is by any means complete; or that it is, at best, more than a partial explanation of "flying saucer" phenomena. All that I suggest is that there is some evidence that people seem to report otherwise unexplained objects in the sky round about the dates on which the earth passes through the principal meteor-streams, and there seems to be a lull in the reporting of "flying saucers" in between these dates. I do not suggest any more than that what I have said may be an explanation of at least a proportion of the "flying saucer" reports. R. G. CASEY. Minister for External Affairs. Melbourne. Some evidence suggest that " Sawers are standing by during meteor showers . ( harkens knocking out the whiffles. ) may be your excuse my literary or whether ?
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