NZDF declassified RNZAF UFO files

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

# (By Elsie, K. Morton)

# FLYING SAUCERS ARE THEY HOKUM?

If somebody doesn't do something pretty quickly about this flying saucer business, some of us will find ourselves gibbering every time a plane leaves vapour trails streaming across the heavens, or a shooting star streaks through the sky! Next day there will be eye witnesses' accounts of new flying saucer manifestations in every newspaper in the country.

Only yesterday, just before dawn, I had to exercise considerable self-control to prevent myself from rushing outside and peering skyward as an unearthly, rumbling drew nearer and nearer. From my bedroom window I saw strange tights playing on the trees down our road . . . Back to bed, poor toon. It is only an early milk-van!

It all comes from reading every flying saucer report published in the newspapers, just to find out what people are saying is going on out there in realms of space. I never read who-dunnits, and I shun thrillers like poison; I suppose I have to get my mental excitement somehow, and this flying saucer business has to supply it.

In June last year, F.S. investigators predicted a major rush of saucers. It was believed they came from Mars, and in the peak period of the rush, the saucer-scientists said, Mars and the earth would only be forty-three million miles distant from the sun, so anything was due to happen. Sure enough, strange lights that changed colour in a remarkable way were seen over Heliers Bay in Auckland a few months later, but that didn't really get us anywhere.

## Little Men In Helmets

In August, however, things really hotted up a bit. Somebody in the United States saw a batch of flying penicils; others reported a covey of ash-trays and inverted wash-basins sailing through the sky.

In Northern France, police investigated a report, that two little men, wearing enormous helmets and overalls, had landed in a citizen's garden by night in a saucer. They were touchy little souls, and when the owner of the garden turned his torch on them, they flashed a blinding green light in his eyes, hopped back smartly into their saucer and took off into space vertically in a cloud of hissing black smoke!

Another personal encounter with a space-man provided, the most sensational story of all, about a week later. Two innocent young Norwegian girls were picking blueberries on a hillside when they suddenly came across a saucer parked in

a little grassy dell. A dark stranger, wearing a khaki uniform, without buttons but happily with a belt, approached the girls and addressed them very civilly, but in a language they could not understand. They politely offered him a tinful of blueberries, but he would, not accept them. Leaping into his saucer, which rose straight up into the air, he whizzed off into space. The police questioned the sisters closely, but although they said the girls could not possibly be lying, they could find no sign that the spot indicated

homely things like saucers and pebbles, but armies of men engaged in aerial battle, horrible visions of the dying and the dead, of fire and smoke and showers of blood! One of these spine chilling encounters is described in gory detail in an ancient book that is one of my most gresame, but most highly prized possessions.

On the last Sunday of the year 1646, according to a navigator with a vivid eye for detail, "there did appear in the sight of the inhabitants of Dublin City a prodigious armament in the firmament. There suddenly filled the sky a great host of armed men on horses and on foot, also a train of artillery with great ordnance and field pieces, as for a battle, which was, also presented, to the amazement of the beholders the gunners giving fire in such dire and hideous manner that the firemen struck the beholders dumb with terror.

Still more, terrible, was, a "great, wonder" saen in the heayens shortly after the Battle of Edgehill, the following year, in which 5000 men were slain.

## The Game Of, Death

On the Saturday before Christmas Day, about midday, the roll of drums was heard afar off, and the noise of soldiers giving out their last dying groans. Then, suddenly appeared in the air a great company of the slain. With ensigns displayed, drums beating, horses neighing, muskets firing and canons, discharging, the first act in this dreadful game of death struck up, and so, to it, they went pell-mell, until two or three in the morning. On Christmas night, the same scene was again enacted, and the spectators much terrified, withdrew, to their houses, be seeching. God to defend them from those prodigious enemies."

Reading these weird old stories was like walking often eyed into a nightmare. They were based, of course, on superstition, ignorance, and utter credulity beyond present-day belief.

Yet one cannot help wondering what the weird on edging sancors will be in fifty years time.

He insulted that the object, a brilliant flight the size of a saucer, could not have been a star nor a planet as it was a long way below their level. Mr McKenzie on Monday night was ploughing about 9.12 o clock by artificial light from his tractor. On reaching the brow of a hill he saw a brightly lit object coming toward him from the west. He stopped his tractor and switched off the lights.

He was not able to hear any noise, but saw the light execute a circle. The light maintained an even altitude, and disappeared to the north-east after about four minutes of level flight. Mr McKenzie said that when he reached the brow of the hill, he saw a bright light similar to a motor-cycle headlamp approaching him. It was roughly the size of a saucer, and when it executed its circular movement he noticed from the side view that a beam of light was emitted from a following object.

Mr McKenzie is definite that what he saw was not a star, planet, or meteor, but something travelling much lower than these which he cannot explain. He estimated the speed of the object at 400 miles an hour.

# FILE

# "Strange" Objects Seen In Hamilton Sky: Several Observers WATRATO TIMES

Reports of strange objects lying in the sky over Hamilton on Wednesday night have been received from two sources. Mr S. L. Vale of Hillcrest, and his son, first noticed a bright light in the south-western sky, when in their car coming down the Hillcrest hill at 7.47 p.m.

They watched the light for some distance and, as they neared a store, pulled up and the customers in the store and the owner of the store, Mr D. Hawke, were called out and they confirm seeing two lights in the sky.

Mr Hawke, a wartime pilot, said this morning that he definitely saw, with the other people two strange lights, which were moving. They could be likened to pin-points of searchlights on clouds. He was not prepared to offer any opinion as to what they actually were.

Mr John Vale, in describing the strange objects, said he had no idea what they were but they definitely looked solid, something like an inverted saucer, and they traveled fast and smoothly. There was only one object at the start and as it was nearing the northern horizon it was joined by the second object seen by Mr Hawke and ushered the store.