THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP SIGHTING REPORT

1952: Two Disc-Shaped UFOs Seen by a Marine Engineer in Kerkrade, Holland

Just past midnight, marine engineer Will Jansen watched a domed disc swoop low over Kerkrade, Holland, hover, and zigzag before speeding off — and he wasn’t finished. A second craft, its outline nearly identical to the first, appeared hovering farther away, then tilted vertical and shot straight up out of sight.

What lends the account its weight isn’t drama — it’s who was doing the watching. Jansen wasn’t a casual passerby; he was a working marine engineer and designer, professionally trained to notice structure and form, and both objects he described shared the same distinctive detail: a “cabin” or superstructure protruding from the underside. The report wouldn’t surface formally for another twelve years, arriving only through NICAP researcher Richard Hall’s own 1964 letter to the Civilian Saucer Investigation of Los Angeles — but the specificity of an engineer’s eye is still there in every line of it.

Date: August 7, 1952 (night of August 6–7)

Sighting Time: Just after midnight (12:02 a.m. per an independent cross-reference)

Day/Night: Night

Location: Kerkrade, Netherlands

Urban or Rural: Not recorded in the surviving sourcing

Entity Type: Not Applicable

Entity Description: Not Applicable

Hynek Classification: NL (Nocturnal Light) — point or extended luminous source observed at night

Duration: Not recorded

No. of Object(s): 2

Size of Object(s): Not recorded

Distance to Object(s): Not recorded

Shape of Object(s): Disc-shaped, with a visible superstructure or “cabin” protruding from the underside of each object

Color of Object(s): Not recorded

Number of Witnesses: 1 (Will Jansen)

Special Features/Characteristics: Witness was a marine engineer and designer, giving the account professional technical credibility. The first disc swooped to low altitude, hovered, and zigzagged before speeding away. A second, similarly outlined disc-shaped object was then seen hovering farther off; it tilted vertically and shot straight up out of sight. Both craft displayed a protruding “cabin” or superstructure on their underside.

Case Status: Insufficient Data — a single witness account not formally documented until Richard Hall’s 1964 letter to the Civilian Saucer Investigation of Los Angeles, twelve years after the event; no physical evidence or second witness is on record

Source: NICAP / Richard Hall, 1964 (from a letter to CSI of Los Angeles)

Summary/Description: On the night of August 6–7, 1952, Will Jansen, a marine engineer and designer, was visiting Kerkrade, Holland. Just after midnight, a disc-shaped craft with a visible superstructure swooped down to low altitude, hovered, zigzagged, and sped away. A second disc-shaped object, similar in outline and also showing a protruding underside “cabin,” was then seen hovering farther away before it tilted up vertically and shot out of sight.

Related Cases: Not Applicable

Detailed Report

The Kerkrade case reaches this archive through a specific documentary chain: NICAP researcher Richard Hall’s own 1964 letter to the Civilian Saucer Investigation of Los Angeles, itself reporting an event that had occurred twelve years earlier. That gap is worth noting, though it does not by itself undermine the account — Hall was among the more careful and methodical UFO researchers of his era, and his letter treats the case as a documented report rather than a secondhand rumor.

Jansen’s professional background as a marine engineer and designer is the single strongest credibility marker in this brief case file. A trained engineer’s account of an object’s shape, behavior, and structural detail — specifically, the protruding “cabin” or superstructure visible on the underside of both objects — carries more descriptive precision than a typical lay observer’s report, though it remains a single, uncorroborated witness account.

The sequence itself is notably composed for a midnight sighting: a low approach, a hover, a zigzag departure, then a second object behaving similarly before an near-vertical ascent. This progression — approach, maneuver, and a distinct vertical departure — recurs across a number of this archive’s 1950s disc reports, though this case’s specific combination of two sequential objects with matching underside structural detail is less common.

RESEARCHER’S NOTES

Kerkrade, Netherlands — 1952 and a Technically Credentialed Single Witness

A twelve-year gap to formal documentation: The case reaches the record only through Hall’s 1964 letter, more than a decade after the event — a gap this archive flags rather than treats as disqualifying, given Hall’s own reputation for careful case handling.
Professional credibility, still uncorroborated: Jansen’s engineering background lends his structural observations (the underside “cabin” detail) more descriptive weight than an untrained witness’s account would carry, but professional credibility is not the same as independent corroboration — no second witness is on record.
A structurally detailed, matched pair: Both objects reportedly shared the same underside structural feature, a specific and consistent detail across two separately observed craft, which is worth noting as internally consistent rather than treating each sighting as an isolated data point.
Minimal physical parameters recorded: Size, distance, and color were not preserved in the surviving source material, which limits how precisely this case can be compared to other 1952 disc reports on those dimensions specifically.

Seven decades on, what survives of that Kerkrade midnight is a trained engineer’s plain account of two discs, one after the other, each carrying the same odd structure on its underside before the second one simply went straight up and was gone.