Cette page en français
The index page for the 1954 French flap section of this site is here.
Reference number for this case: 22-Sep-54-Dôle. Thank you for including this reference number in any correspondence with me regarding this case.
[Ref. bb1] GERARD BARTHEL AND JACQUES BRUCKER:
The two authors indicates that they talked to the witness of the observation of September 22, 1954 in Dôle. He told them to have seen towards 08:30 p.m., a fugitive gleam, very luminous which crossed the sky without stopping with a rectilinear trajectory.
The authors then quote an article of the newspaper "Le Bien Public" for September 25, 1954, which according to them does not respect the description of this witness, by describing the observation "with a plethora of details":
"Two young people of Dôle who were in the Philippe garden were witnesses of a strange phenomenon. Here is what one of them, Jacky Chapoutot, 17 years, resident with Dôle, stated: "I walked in the Philippe garden, accompanied by a comrade, André Lacour, aged 21, pupil at the modern technical college of Dôle. Suddenly our attention was drawn by a strange noise similar to a whistle. Looking up, we saw a sharp gleam of green color in the sky, coming from the North-East, moving towards the South-west. This appearance which had the size of a soccer ball was followed of an incandescent trail. The object went at sharp pace and disappeared. Hardly did we recover from our surprise that the craft again appeared above Dôle. It remained motionless at the height of the large bridge approximately 4 seconds during which we distinguished its spherical shape clearly, then it set out again suddenly on the side from where it came."
Barthel and Brucker are as usual very puzzling and not very eager apparently not to add confusions in this account which might have been simply explained if indeed they spoke to the witness and if they had taken the trouble to properly conduct a formal investigation, something completely absent in their book.
They suggest that the account in the newspaper does not match to that of the witness. Actually, it is apparent that the first observed phenomenon is described in the same manner in the newspaper and in the remarks that they allot to the witness: on the one hand "a fugitive gleam, very luminous which crossed the sky without stopping with a rectilinear trajectory" and on the other hand "a sharp gleam of green color coming from the North-East, moving towards the South-west, which had the size of a soccer ball and was followed of an incandescent trail", "passed at a sharp pace and disappeared." In both cases we have the identical description of a meteor, it is simply more complete in the newspaper, including trail, color and direction.
They accuse the newspaper of addition of "a plethora of details" (whereas they accuse the lack of details of other Press reports). But in fact, the first "added" detail is that of the strange sound. It is actually quite possible that if the witness really observed the entry of a large meteorite in the atmosphere, they could as well hear a strange noise. Sometimes, meteors experts still tend to think that it is impossible to hear a meteorite travel through the air because the speed of sound in the air is incredibly slower than that of the meteor. However, there are many cases of meteor witnesses who say that they first heard a strange sound or strange sounds, and only looked at in the sky precisely because of these sounds, and then saw the meteor there. It is the Australian specialist Colin Keay who solved the enigma: the meteor ionizes the air and this creates low frequency radio waves, which arrive at the witnesses quasi instantaneously since they travel at the speed of light. The only problem was that in theory, you cannot hear radio waves with your ears. But Keay set up all kinds of experiments to solve this mystery and in 2001, he noticed that such radio waves make all kinds of materials vibrate and emit sound, such aluminum foil, pine needles, frizzy hair etc. These are the sounds, often eerie, even varying from one person to another, that the witnesses can perceive with their ears.
The other detail that the newspaper "added" is that of the trail. It is obvious that they probably saw a trail, if it was a meteor, and that Barthel and Brucker perhaps simply omitted to question this witness seriously.
In addition, the witnesses say that the object appeared again. But this time, it had a spherical shape, no more trail, and sets out again "on the side where it had come from." Obviously that cannot be a meteor, nor the meteor which they had just seen. It was something else, which remains unidentified. It is possible that it was an embellishment by the newspaper, but the lack of Barthel and Brucker to indicate exactly what they did ask or did not ask is the reason for which one can hardly know what occurred exactly. Possibly, after seeing a meteor, they saw a plane.
And finally, it seems that neither the witnesses nor the newspaper explicitly said this was a flying saucer, and this case is completely missing in the ufological casuistry, Barthel and Brucker being the only ones to introduce it there as far as I know. Is it once again an example of the good old UFO-skeptics trick, which consists in adding IFOs to the UFOs file for better convincing their readers than any UFO is a commonplace natural phenomenon when not a hoax?
As a matter of fact, they do write this case shows that all the other cases for September 22, 1954, are explained as this same meteor. I quote the authors: "We had on September 22, 1954, 10 "UFOs" sighting; we are left with nothing. A simple investigation identified the flying objects that weren't!"
Meteor, an then possibly a plane.
(These keywords are only to help queries and are not implying anything.)
Dôle, Jura, Jacky Chapoutot, André Lacour, fast, luminous, green, trail, sound
[---] indicates sources which I have not yet checked.
