1965 July 1, Martinique, MA1 443
“It was during their layover in Fort-de-France one fine evening, by a dark sky and clear weather, that a large UFO arrived slowly and silently from the west, flew to the south, made two complete loops in the sky over the French vessels, and vanished like a rapidly extinguished light bulb.
The person who told me about the case, Michel Figuet, was at the time first timonier of the French fleet of the Mediterranean. This helmsman observed the arrival of the object from his position on the deck of the submarine Junon. He had time to go up to the conning tower, where he grabbed six pairs of binoculars and distributed them to his companions. There were three hundred witnesses including four officers on the Junon, three officers on the Daphne, a dozen French sailors, and personal of the weather observatory.
All witnesses aboard the Junon, whose bow was pointing east, saw the object as a huge ball of light or a disk on edge arriving from the west at 9:15pm. It was the color of a fluorescent tube, about the same luminosity as the full moon. It moved slowly, horizontally, at a distance estimated at ten kilometers south of the ships, from west to east. It left a whitish trace similar to the glow of a television screen.
When it was directly south of the ships the object dropped toward the earth, made one, two, and three complete loops, then hovered in the midst of a faint “halo”.
Figuet told me that he observed the last part of this trajectory through binoculars; he was able to see two red spots under the disk. Shortly thereafter, the object vanished in the center of its glow “like a bulb turned off”. The trail and the halo remained visible in the sky for a full minute.
At 9:45pm the halo reappeared at the same place, and the object seemed to emerge as if switched on. It rose, made two more loops and flew away to the west, where it disappeared at 9:50pm.
The next day Figuet compared notes with a communications engineer who had observed the same object from the Navy fort. Together, they called the weather observatory at Fort-de-France. The man who answered the call had also observed the object. He confirmed that it was neither an aircraft, nor a rocket, nor a meteor, nor a balloon, nor a disintegrating satellite, nor a plasma phenomenon such as globular lightning.
It is very difficult to say that such an observation never happened, or that it was a hallucination. The witnesses were competent observers who were dispersed over a wide area. They were trained in night surveillance (Michel Figuet had received particularly high marks for his ability on watch) and the sighting lasted long enough for my informant to go up to the conning tower, take the binoculars, and distribute them to other personnel.
Yet if we agree that there was an object, as the facts seem to dictate, then as scientists we have to face another kind of challenge. Specifically, if the object was ten kilometers away, as the witnesses estimated, then it represented a disk ninety meters in diameter, a formidable device indeed, given the remarkable maneuvers it exhibited. The entire sequence suggests control and purpose.
Furthermore, it is possible to compute the total energy output of the object based on the distance and luminosity estimates given by the witnesses. The resulting figure is 2.3 megawatts (MW).”
The person who told me about the case, Michel Figuet, was at the time first timonier of the French fleet of the Mediterranean. This helmsman observed the arrival of the object from his position on the deck of the submarine Junon. He had time to go up to the conning tower, where he grabbed six pairs of binoculars and distributed them to his companions. There were three hundred witnesses including four officers on the Junon, three officers on the Daphne, a dozen French sailors, and personal of the weather observatory.
All witnesses aboard the Junon, whose bow was pointing east, saw the object as a huge ball of light or a disk on edge arriving from the west at 9:15pm. It was the color of a fluorescent tube, about the same luminosity as the full moon. It moved slowly, horizontally, at a distance estimated at ten kilometers south of the ships, from west to east. It left a whitish trace similar to the glow of a television screen.
When it was directly south of the ships the object dropped toward the earth, made one, two, and three complete loops, then hovered in the midst of a faint “halo”.
Figuet told me that he observed the last part of this trajectory through binoculars; he was able to see two red spots under the disk. Shortly thereafter, the object vanished in the center of its glow “like a bulb turned off”. The trail and the halo remained visible in the sky for a full minute.
At 9:45pm the halo reappeared at the same place, and the object seemed to emerge as if switched on. It rose, made two more loops and flew away to the west, where it disappeared at 9:50pm.
The next day Figuet compared notes with a communications engineer who had observed the same object from the Navy fort. Together, they called the weather observatory at Fort-de-France. The man who answered the call had also observed the object. He confirmed that it was neither an aircraft, nor a rocket, nor a meteor, nor a balloon, nor a disintegrating satellite, nor a plasma phenomenon such as globular lightning.
It is very difficult to say that such an observation never happened, or that it was a hallucination. The witnesses were competent observers who were dispersed over a wide area. They were trained in night surveillance (Michel Figuet had received particularly high marks for his ability on watch) and the sighting lasted long enough for my informant to go up to the conning tower, take the binoculars, and distribute them to other personnel.
Yet if we agree that there was an object, as the facts seem to dictate, then as scientists we have to face another kind of challenge. Specifically, if the object was ten kilometers away, as the witnesses estimated, then it represented a disk ninety meters in diameter, a formidable device indeed, given the remarkable maneuvers it exhibited. The entire sequence suggests control and purpose.
Furthermore, it is possible to compute the total energy output of the object based on the distance and luminosity estimates given by the witnesses. The resulting figure is 2.3 megawatts (MW).”
- Confrontations, p. 28-30.