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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.
“Open Minds”13 pages
The following is an extract from "Intelligence Digest" No. 180 of November, 1953. This report comes from our best observer in Berlin. He holds an important postition there and is not a man readily susceptible to sensational rumour, as he has been trained to evaluate reports. Our observer says that he himself did not witness the event reported. The news was brought to him from the Soviet zone by a man who he has known both personally and officially for many years. There is only one eye-witness to the happenings here reported, and he has not yet been able to escape from Soviet controlled territory, where he is lying low. He is very badly wanted by the M.V.D. ## Flights of extraordinary objects. The story begins on July 19. Between then and July, 26th (1953) the inhabitants of some of the towns and villages on the German Polish border along the Baltic coast- especially in the neighbourhood of Stettiner Haff and the mouth of the Oder- observed flights of extraordinary objects, which appeared to be round. They generally flew in groups of six or more, with many abrupt twists and turns, and at what seemed to be very high speeds. Most of the appearances were towards evening and in the early morning. At night, too, people observed strangely glowing objects streaking across the sky at high speeds. The frequency of these appearances was so great as to be called almost regular. Reports of this kind were made from such places as Kolobrzeg (Kolberg), Koszalin, Stargard, Goteniow, Odra Port, Stettin and places in Eastern Germany such as Pasewalk, Heringsdorf and Usedom. A large number of people in these places reported seeing these peculiar objects. Reports were made to both the East German and Polish police, as well as to both Intelligence services. On July 19 and 20, both these services showed great interest in the reports, and sent observers. On the afternoon of July 20, there was a sudden and complete change of attitude on the part of the local services. Both police and Intelligence began flatly to deny the evidence. They declared that nothing of the kihd had happened, and threatened people who made reports that they would be dealt with as imperialist rumour-mongers if they did not stop talking. This was enough to put a stop to all open talk; but it did not prevent people from continuing to see the strange objects flying about. ## A very strange happening. From the evening of July 26 to the morning of July 29, no more of these objects were sighted; But during the early hours of July 29 to August 1, the flights were resumed. The strangest happenings of all took place on July 31 at 7p.m between the towns of Miedzyzaraje and Wolin. The two towns are connected by 24 km of railroad. Leaving Wolin the line goes due north for 13km then turns sharply west towards Miedzyzaraje. Two and a half k.m. east of that turn, a strange object landed - at the time stated above- on a country road running roughly parallel to the railroad. The landing took place with very little noise, so that little attention was attracted. No one was actually on the spot when the object landed. A short distance away, however, five Poles and two Germans were working. Their curiosity was aroused by
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.