French Now Decide to Keep Check on UFOs
The Washington Post
April 20, 1968
By Paul Ghali
Chicago Daily News Foreign Service
PARIS - Flying saucers intermittently reported in the skies of France are described as something "worth investigating" by the official military review "Forces Aeriennes Francaises" (French Air Forces).
The review, edited by high ranking officers of the French Air Force general staff, has asked the government to appoint a special commission composed of military representatives and scientists to investigate the subject of UFOs in France.
There already is a voluminous file at the French Defense Ministry in Paris containing all the evidence collected since the war concerning flying saucers.
So far, the French high command has been extremely skeptical about the existence of such objects, and has refused to co-ordinate any official enquiry into the matter.
The general staff has been content with examining any "unusual" manifestations and declaring whether or not it is "explainable," but it does not follow it up.
The only body in France that so far has shown any interest in flying saucers is a privately supported organization that calls itself the "Study Group of Air Phenomena and Unusual Space Objects."
This group collects all the information it can about unexplainable airborne objects, which it passes on to the general staff. There its job ends.
Now the French have made up their minds that they ought to try to find out more about UFOs.
Although the French Air Force cannot match the American Air Force average of about one flying saucer report a day, its crop is fairly abundant.
Military experts here say that about once a month in winter and several times a month in summer they get reports of strangely shaped objects circling the French skies.
Checks with local airfields usually are negative.
Last September two Air France pilots claimed to have seen a flying saucer over the city of Draguignan, west of Nice in the south of France.