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.
“Nevers”58 pages
## FLYING SAUCERS PAGE 6 of which 10% are listed as unsolved. Sightings have been made in all parts of the World. Within the past few days, a new sighting caused a stir in England. Two Royal Air Force jet pilots reported that they were flying at 20,000ft when they spotted a circular object which was much higher and was moving at a tremendous speed. They said it was either reflecting or emitting a bright light. The object was tracked on radar, and was seen from the ground by many observers. British officials said it might have been a giant balloon released by scientists. A possibility also was advanced that it might even have an American Balloon that drifted that far. The sighting remains unsolved. The same pattern applies to many of the unsolved American sightings. The description of a circular object emitting some sort of a glow is a familiar one. The objects have been described as displaying different colours, such as red, green blue and orange. SOME CIGAR SHAPED. there has also been descriptions of cigar-shaped objects larger in size than the disc-shaped ones. The evidence was sufficient for the Air Force to undertake a special investigation. After 6 years,"Project Saucer", as it is termed, still is incomplete. The Air Force neither affirms the existence of saucers, nor does it deny it. Intelligence officers have had many mystifying cases to puzzle over. One of the earliest was the tragic death of Capt Thomas Mantell. On the afternoon of Jan 7, 1948, hundreds of people near Madisonville, Ky reported sighting a huge glowing object. It later appeared over the Godman Air Force base, and, as it appeared to hover there, Capt Mantell and three other F51 pilots who were flying past on a routine flight, were contacted by radio and asked to investigate. TREMENDOUS, SAYS PILOT. A short time later, Mantell called back that he had sighted the object. He reported that it was tremendous and appeared metallic. It had started to climb, Mantell said that although it appeared to be equalizing or exceeding his speed, he would follow it to 20,000ft and then abandon the chase if he came no closer. Those were the last words ever heard from Mantell. Later that day his body was found near his plane some 90 miles from the field. Theories that he wasx"chasing" the planet Venis or the Moon were advanced but not accepted by intelligence officers. The case is still unsolved. A high-level Air Force officer that served with Mantell during the War told the Herald that Mantell was an intelligent seasoned pilot whose judgment was sound. He said that although it appears that he blacked out from lack of oxygen, he certainly should of known how high he could of climbed safely. There have been many other similarly puzzling reports, some of cause were attributable to hoax or honest mistake. Others were found to have been caused by natural phenomena, climatic conditions, conventional aircraft or, sky-hook balloons. But still there are about 20 per cent of all the reports that cannot be explained by the Air Force. The Air Force believes that insufficient information on reports may account for some of the unsolved sightings."In the early days", commented Lt Robert White, Air Force public information officer,"this caught us unawares". It often was some time before reports could be investigated, and then frequently it was too late to arrive at anything conclusive. We are now set up so that often an intelligence officer can investigate a report immediately after it is received. To obtain more information on the elusive saucers, the Air Force has distributed a specially-constructed "grid" camera to bases throughout the country. It is to be used to take pictures of any unknown flying objects that may be sighted. The camera is designed to separate light into its component parts and record them on film. Ben Stern, Director of the CAAL's airplane information office, said that most of the sighting reports -
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.