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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 Wash”6 pages
7th. November, 1955. The Honourable, The Minister of Civil Aviation, WELLINGTON. Dear Mr. Shand Although I note from to-day's Press that the lighted object sighted by Captain W.T. Rainbow and his co-pilot off the Taranaki Coast has not been explained, I think I should pass on the enclosed memorandum which I wrote down on Saturday evening after observing the matters referred to from Mokau. Since my return to New Plymouth last evening, I have checked the shipping movements of vessels to and from the Port of New Plymouth and these would not account for any lights in the position seen at 8.15 on Saturday 5th. inst. Yours faithfully,
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.