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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
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# RUSSIAN SUBMARINES IN NORTH SEA MANOEUVRES New Zealand Press Association—Copyright. LONDON, January 5 (Rec. 7 p.m.).-The Daily Telegraph says Russian submarines have been sighted in strength in the North Sea and North-West approaches. They are the first manoeuvres by a force of Soviet submarines outside the Baltic. The naval correspondent of the Daily Express said the manoeuvres in Russian submarines were held during the air-sea exercise of the Atlantic Treaty Powers during September. The Nato naval authorities kept the Red Navy manoeuvres secret but they have now leaked out because of Danish reports that a mystery submarine was twice sighted in a Greenland flord on September 22. Rear-Admiral Kjoelsen, chief of the Danish Greenland forces, has confirmed the report. He said the mystery submarines were not Danish, American or British. Unidentified submarines were also reported off the Firth of Forth and the Norwegian coast, on the northwest convoy routes and in the North Atlantic. A check of verified "submarines sighted" reports and logs of Nato submarines confirmed that some of the submarines at sea must have been Russian. All the strange submarines sighted re of the modern speed-boosted type. ssia is believed to have 820 tonal submarines of all types. NEW PLYMOUTH. January 7 (P.A.)—An unidentified object situated in the sky by an airman in a National Airways Corporation DCS near Te Kuiti at 9:27 p.m. on Tuesday, by a Nelson woman two minutes later, and by four Taranaki fishermen seven minutes earlier, was according to a New Plymouth man, a meteor. Mr. D. B. B. Robinson of Mill Road, saw the object just before 9.30 p.m. He is positive it was a meteor and feels certain that it was the same object as was reported elsewhere. A veteran of World War II, he spent four years in the Navy, and has seen numerous flying, bombs, tracers, jet fighters, and meteors at night. The time of observation, the direction and the colour corresponded with reports of the unidentified object. First report was from First-Officer K. G. Bond, co-pilot of an N.A.C. Dakota. He thought the object was travelling too low and too slowly to be a meteor. At Whangarel, Miss E. Webber, of Nelson, saw an object "slightly smaller than a full moon with a tall 6ft. to 8ft. long." It could have been a meteor, she said. She sighted it at 0.30 p.m. A Dargaville message reports that three local residents, at 9.28 last night, saw an orange-coloured spherical object moving across the north-eastern sky, at not a great height above the horizon. It was in sight for about 10 seconds before vanishing behind some trees in the immediate foreground. Plug-hole Vortex Sir,—The letter by "Veritas," needed "Novel Hypothesis," was both erudite and interesting. In passing, it seems a little strange that if flying saucers are due to natural phenomena they have only been observed and reported in recent years. But my purpose in writing is to call attention to a fallacy to which your correspondent refers. Some years ago, when in England, I read of the theory that the vortex created by water running through the plug-hole of a bath or basin was clockwise in the northern hemisphere and the contrary in the southern. I was interested, and have made many experiments in the northern hemisphere; also, within the past six months in the southern. I have noted that the vortex in either direction can and does appear in both hemispheres; and that the same bath or basin will produce either on different occasions. Further, I have observed on several occasions the creation of a vortex in one direction which was later followed by one in the opposite sense; both occurring while emptying the same bath. A experiments will be done those which are bested that there be definite evidence from the hemispheres on the continuation. If it is an effect ments which change those pested that there is refinement from the hemispherical rotation). If it is an object it would appear to be the ace.
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.