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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.
“Hill”41 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
Squadron Leader Golding, Director of Intelligence, Wellington Dear Sir, On the night of the 1st of November,1955, I was Captain of Flight 108 proceeding from Wellington to Auckland. We departed from Paraparaumu in excellent weather, and conditions remained so until we ran into a warm front which was lying across our track at Raglan Reporting and extended out to the west where it lay in a N.E.-S.W. direction. After sunset, visability was excellent, due to a full moon and little cloud over the air route. At 2006 hrs. as I was looking towards the south-west direction, a very brilliant light caught the corner of my eye. This light was positioned above 8/8ths cloud, the tops of which appeared to be about 6000ft. and also below scattered middle cloud. My first impression was that it was a meteor, or a planet setting in the Southern declination, but after closer investigation I could see that it was moving by about 2000 ft above the cloud tops, and it was changing its light intensity from a bright hard light to a brilliant light in a cycle of approximately 3 secs and changing colour from white-yellow-orange to red. It appeared to be to the west of Waitara and at the same altitude to us. I then asked the co-pilot F/O S.Trounce, to have a look towards our tail and to tell me what he thought the light could be. At first his impressions were the same as mine, but he could not understand the change of brilliance in the light, its colour, or the fact that it was overtaking us at the same altitude. He also suggested that I open the window to eliminate any refraction error, but it made no difference to the object. I then asked him to go to the cabin and ask a Mr. Tuckett who is an Civil Aviation Officer and an experienced pilot, to watch the light and to ask if he thought it was a planet. During the co-pilot's absence I called Wellington Control and asked if there were any known aircraft to the west of New Plymouth, and their answer was negative. I next aalled them and told them there was a bright light to the west of New Plymouth and to ask Flight 135 if he could see it; the last part of my message was jammed by Wellington Control who were at that same time just doing that. I next called up and said that this bright light was changing colour, and passing to the West of us at a distance, of , if I remember rightly, of 10-15 mls, and at the same time giving them incorrect call sight flight 135. FILE
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.