Loire-Atlantique, France · 1980-01-20 · from the GEIPAN archive
On January 24, 1980, between 6:05 p.m. and 6:25 p.m., a witness claims to have observed the arrival and departure of an unidentified flying object. At the beginning of his observation, he described the object as cylindrical with two small dark-colored fins on the side. As the object came closer, the craft then stabilized at 200 meters in height and was then located about 300 meters east of a water tower. The witness then noticed that the object was oval in shape, lit by a bright yellow-orange light, with the fins having disappeared. During the observation, which lasted 7 minutes, this person noted that his radio-telephone handset crackled abnormally, and he made several sweeps with a portable spotlight. The object moved away suddenly, quickly gaining altitude. The frightened witness left to notify the gendarmerie. A malfunction of the electrical circuit of his vehicle's dashboard was noted. No other information was gathered on this phenomenon, which remains unexplained.
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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.
Anomaly