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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.
" HONORARY OBSERVER. Sir,—In the light of past and present evidence one cannot fully agree with all that is in the recent report from Washington on flying saucers. In this report meteors seem to get more than their share of the blame for the seeing of saucers. The meteor theory like some others is wearing thin. Some of the explanations advanced from time to time are an insult to an observer's intelligence. The report stated that a new flying saucer "season" was coming up. The American Air Force like other investigating bodies knows that sightings reach a peak at 2 year intervals (roughly), the last being in 1952. The "season" has been warming up for some time and already the Australian sightings are over four times the number of the May to July period of 1952 and widespread too. Some saucer news may perhaps be of interest. A.F.S.B. confirms receipt of a strange substance from one of several mysterious 30ft long unidentified flying objects observed over Shepperton, Victoria, on May 12; substance not part of meteorite and being submitted for expert analysis. About daybreak on Monday May 24 three pilots of an aerial topdressing firm saw a number of strange objects flying over Eastern Taranaki. Some of your readers probably heard the interview of a pilot over the air from 1ZB about 6.50 p.m. on 25th and also news from 2ZA on 26 h. A short extract from a Press report is as follows: "They were oval in shape and looked like giant discs. They seemed to be a red orange in colour with a reddish flame coming from them. We flew on in the same direction for another three minutes and saw a number of others. They seemed to be flying in a single line formation. Suddenly they all climbed steeply at great speed and disappeared." The next day C.S.I. pointed out that these discs' behaviour was the same as hundreds of others in other parts of the world, though some fly in V formation. There were some other Important sightings in New Zealand about May 24. A Press message from Melbourne dated May 31 states that within the past 24 hours 14 people living in Melbourne suburbs have seen a flying saucer-shaped like object just over the rooftops of suburban homes. One man Mr David'Reece of East Malvern said he was talking at the gate early yesterday with five friends when an oval-shaped object as big as a railway carriage shot over the house. If this story is true then other details to it are interesting. I understand some good photographs of flying saucers have been taken in Australia and these should be in Nelson tomorrow or Thursday.I am. e'c., J. E. FLETCHER Nelson, June 8. - EFFORTS by Director of Australian Fly in James Reeve to have analyzed not yet successful chemical analysis affords evidence
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.