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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.
“The Advance”22 pages
# They See Them Over Japan TOKIO, January 21 (Rec. 11am). Mysterious flying objects described by a large number of observers as "rotating clusters of red, white, and green light have been seen over northern Japan by American airmen from the air and ground. Intelligence reports say there are too many indications of the presence of something for them to be considered an "observation of nothing." The reports also discount the possibility that the objects are reflected light. The sightings were close to Soviet territory in the Kurile Islands and Sakahalin, where the Russians have dozens of air bases. Colonel Curtis Low, commander of the Northern Division of the Japan Air Defence Force, said the flying clusters were seen by fighter pilots and ground personnel, and were traced by radar. The commander of a United States fighter wing took detailed observations of one rotating cluster and tried in vain to intercept it in a jet. The radar reaction to objects is reported to be unlike that from normal aircraft, being "very weak and fuzzy, instead of sharp." ## White 'Thread' And 'Flying Saucer' Link? AUCKLAND.—The fine, threadlike substance found on telegraph wires, fences, and lwarts at Ongaonga, near Hastings, last week retambled matter seen to have fallen from flights of "flying saucers" over France, last yeah, said Mr. H. H. Fulton, president of Civilian Sauner Investigation (New Zealand), today. 350 far no reports of "flying saucer" observations over Ongaonga have reached the Auckland investigators. Hastings reports say the substance which is white, is not unlike candy floss and that it djsintegrates when handled. Portions of the substance have been up to five feet long. According to cabled messages on October 29 last year, 20 residents of Gaillac, in the south of France, sighted a formation of "flying saucers." These let fall a string of bright white threads, which looked like glass wool, and melted as soon as touched. The same year a dozen people at Olden, near the Spanish border, reported that "Flying Saucers" moving in paris left, "an abundant trail in their white likes flakes of cotton; wool which floated slowly in the ground, some adhering in telephone wires." Pierre Closterman, the French flying ace, reported seeing a flying saucer at close range over Marseilles with "little white flakes escaped from the rear."—PA.
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.