Dordogne, France · 2015-10-21 · from the GEIPAN archive
On October 21, 2015 at around 9:15 PM, a driver and his passenger observe for a few seconds three strong white lights, described as diffuse halos, stationary, a few dozen meters above the treetops. The witness stops observing, finishes his drive by car, then, from his home, sees the phenomena again. They are more scattered, farther apart from each other. No noise is perceptible. The witnesses alert the gendarmerie the next day: a drawing is made by the driver. No other testimony will be collected. The gendarmerie investigation indicates that no airship flew over the area at the time of the observation because of the strong wind that evening. The witness observes 3 stationary round lights, and a single red light (see witness drawing) for a few seconds. This appearance clearly suggests an airplane seen at night, head-on (3 lights + red position light on the left). The noise of this airplane may not be perceived by the witnesses who are in their car, windows closed. From this angle, the airplane's wings are invisible, because they are not lit. The presence of an airplane at low altitude in this place, far from any airfield, is unusual. But the military RTBA map (low-altitude ground network. See attached map) reveals that this area named R166 is precisely a special zone reserved for military aerial exercises at very low altitude, particularly on Wednesday evenings. The weather report indicates overcast conditions, weak variable wind in Bergerac at 9 PM (see Météociel). The high humidity of the air can explain the halo perceived around the airplane's lights. GEIPAN did not process this case quickly enough (one-month delay) to be able to verify with military air traffic control that an airplane was indeed present in the zone at that time. GEIPAN classifies this case as B: probable observation of a military airplane on exercise. The white points observed in the second part of the observation are probably other airplanes participating in the maneuver.
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This is an official case file of GEIPAN, the French space agency's unidentified aerospace phenomena office, machine translated from French. The original text and the full investigation file are at geipan.fr. We reproduce it with thanks and remove anything on request.
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