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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.
# CLOUD OF WITNESSES Flying Saucers With Strings PARIS, Oct. 28 (Rec. 1.30pm). About twenty residents of Gaillac, in the south of France, reported today the presence of a formation of white circular objects surrounding something like a giant flying saucer. As the objects passed overhead they let fall a string of bright white threads which looked, like glass wool and melted away as soon as they were touched. A police officer said two of his men reported picking up the thread-like substance, but it melted. The observers said the objects slightly swollen at the centre, spun across the sky in formations of two and were over the area for nearly half an hour. On October 17 a dozen residents of Imoron, in the Lower Pyrenees, reported that they saw "flying saucers" surrounding a long cigar-like object flying in the clear sky at about 6000 feet. ## This One Made A ## Noise DUNEDIN, Today, (PA).—A "flying saucer" was seen over the suburbs of Dunedin yesterday morning, flying at a height of approximately 5000 to 6000 feet, according to a man who stated this morning that he and his wife watched it for 20 minutes. The observer was Mr. J. P. Burke, an experienced pilot with eight years' flying to his credit, and a former club captain of the Otago Aero Club. He said he was awakened at 2.45am by a ringing metallic noise, very similar to that made by a jet engine with the throttle back. The next minute, as he was wakening his wife, he saw the "flying; saucer" through his bedroom window. For fully two or three minutes it flew a straight and level course under 6000 feet, then it began a gradual climb, disappearing out of sight when it reached the cloud base, which he estimated to be at 10,000 feet. The "flying saucer," he said, looked exactly like an inverted cymbal used by a dance band drummer. It had a raised portion on the upper centre portion, and directly underneath, was an oblong part. The whole machine, making a ringing noise, was covered with a greenish blue phosphorescent light, and was about the size of a Douglas Dakota aircraft.
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.