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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.
MELBOURNE folks are puzzled at mysterious lights in the sky, which are getting them all lit up at night. Naturally they have investigated the more obvious causes. But there remain a number of other factors. This illumination may be due to the Southern Lights, nocturnal radiation, or a new satellite. Most people know the Southern Lights when they see them, although it is usually somebody else who sees them and one hears about it next day. As for nocturnal radiation, at this very moment experts are investigating this mystery. It is well known that there are unexplained types of luminescence in the night sky apparently not so very far from the world itself, say 10,000-20,000 miles away. This has no connection with star light. It has also been observed many years that some clouds appear up in the night sky. Why, what clouds, is still a matter of interest among experts. Usually lights last form of night lighting is far from powerful. It is difficult to detect unless one knows for what one is looking. As for the advent of a new satellite to assist the moon, this may well occur sooner or later. Calculations show that it would not be impossible to design a satellite and to propel it sufficiently far away from the earth for it to continue to rotate round the earth for ever. Distances of some 10,000-20,000 miles from the earth have been suggested. The object has to be sent far enough away to be removed from the retarding effect of the atmosphere. However, nobody quite knows how far this would be, as the atmosphere tails off and does not end abruptly. Satellite stations have been considered the first requirement for any space ship that may be devised. It would be used as a jumping-off place for space travellers, where they could get a last stirrup cup and take on a load of rocket fuel. Just how they would land on the satellite is another matter and what would stop them falling off is also another matter. The strange night lights in the Melbourne sky may be a passenger who has fallen off a satellite that wasn't there. The result would be much the same, because the passenger would become a satellite rotating round the world for ever and ever, or at any rate till struck by a shooting star. These days almost anything could happen up in the sky, and it might well be that this strange luminance that is worrying people in this house is no more than a flying saucer flying into a teacup or even a bear hug.
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.