February 1956: radar and an airline crew track a giant object over Orly, while a motorist near Choisy-le-Roi meets ten small beings.
1956: February UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
Late on the night of February 17-18, 1956, radar at Paris-Orly airport picked up an echo twice the size of the largest airliners of the day, and it was moving at speeds no aircraft could match. Minutes later an Air France DC-3 climbing out toward London had to swerve to avoid a twinkling red light bearing down on it. The pilot and copilot then watched a huge dark mass pace their plane. The Orly radar-visual case is the anchor of the February 1956 UFO sightings archive, and it happened only a few miles from Choisy-le-Roi. In the middle of that same month, a woman driving home near Choisy reported a glowing, pumpkin-shaped craft hovering over waste ground, with ten small, large-eyed humanoids around and inside it. When she tried to seize one of them, a beam of light froze her where she stood.
The rest of the month is a pilot’s record. USAF F-89D crew Bowen and Crawford watched a red-and-green object circle their jet over Goose Bay, Labrador, and tracked it on radar. A USAF C-119 crew over Montélimar and a MATS C-124 crew south of Japan reported objects they couldn’t identify. An Eastern Airlines Super Constellation crew outside Houston evaded an intense white light, and Royal Navy test pilot Eric “Winkle” Brown couldn’t climb his Vampire jet high enough to reach a disc over Wales.
Date: February 1956
Location: Southwest Wales and the Bristol Channel coast (Berliner: near Fishguard)
Time: Dusk
Summary: Royal Navy test pilot Capt. Eric “Winkle” Brown, who holds the world record for aircraft types flown, was sent up in a de Havilland Vampire jet fighter to intercept an unidentified object. It was well over 40,000 feet, beyond the Vampire’s reach, and he could not identify it in the half-light of dusk. He was certain it was not a cosmic-ray research balloon, and he said the same shape was reported along the entire Bristol Channel coast that evening without any explanation. Berliner describes the object as a disc. [Full Report]
Source: Eric Brown, Wings on My Sleeve (2nd ed., 2006), as quoted in The Orkney News, April 9, 2023; Don Berliner
Date: February 1956
Location: Ludhiana, India
Time: Unknown
Summary: Thousands of people reportedly watched a cigar-shaped craft fly over the city for about 20 minutes, leaving a trail of smoke.
Source: Flying Saucer Review, May 1956, p. 23; NICAP 1956 UFO Chronology
Date: February 1956
Location: Arequipa, Peru
Time: Unknown
Summary: Four Peruvians watched a cigar-shaped craft for about 80 seconds.
Source: Flying Saucer Review, May 1956, p. 24; NICAP 1956 UFO Chronology
Date: February 1, 1956
Location: Mount Hamilton Range and San Jose, California
Time: 9:07 p.m.
Summary: Marine Air Reservist Starr Henderson watched a UFO cross the Mount Hamilton Range far faster than the speed of sound, probably over the San Joaquin Valley. It came back about half a minute later and crossed San Jose from west to east, alternately speeding up and slowing down, then made a loop and headed toward San Francisco until it was out of sight and hearing. A bright orange-white light at its front dimmed when it slowed, and a dimmer light showed at its rear.
Source: San Jose Mercury, February 5, 1956; Loren Gross, UFOs: A History, 1956; Jan Aldrich, Project 1947 NavCat
Date: February 2, 9 and 21, 1956
Location: Camp Irwin, California
Time: Unknown
Summary: Unknown. Three separate sightings at the Army’s Camp Irwin desert training center are listed as Blue Book unknowns. No case details are given in the index.
Source: McDonald list; BBU Files (BBU)
Date: February 7, 1956
Location: Keesler AFB, Biloxi, Mississippi
Time: 8:00 a.m. (CST)
Summary: Identified as three large tethered plastic balloons.
Source: Keith Basterfield; McDonald list; Saunders/FUFOR Index; NICAP 1956 UFO Chronology
Source Status: Although it appears on the McDonald list, this case has since been explained (IFO) as tethered balloons.
Date: February 11, 1956
Location: South of Japan
Time: 7:15 p.m.
Summary: A MATS C-124 air crew saw a yellow or amber object moving at about 1,000 knots (1,150 mph).
Source: Project 1947 (BBU)
Date: February 12, 1956
Location: Goose Bay, Labrador, Canada
Time: 11:25 p.m. (AST); the files also give 10:55 and 11:10 p.m.
Summary: USAF F-89D pilot Bowen and radar observer Crawford saw a green-and-red object rapidly circle their jet, and they tracked it on radar. The sighting lasted about a minute; no further details are recorded. [Full Report]
Source: Berliner; FUFOR Index; BBU Files (BBU #3969)
Date: February 13, 1956
Location: The Moon
Time: Unknown
Summary: Two bluish-white hazy lights were reported on the Moon.
Source: Flying Saucer Review, July 1956, p. 12; NICAP 1956 UFO Chronology
Source Status: This is a reported transient lunar phenomenon (TLP), a class of lunar observations that astronomers still debate.
Date: February 15, 1956
Location: Riverside, California
Time: 8:40 p.m.; the files also give 12:40 p.m.
Summary: A U.S. Navy pilot named Taylor, in flight, saw a brown, cigar-shaped object on a straight and level course.
Source: Project 1947; FUFOR Index; BBU Files (BBU)
Date: Mid-February 1956
Location: Choisy-le-Roi, France (waste ground near a bridge on the No. 7 road)
Time: 9:30 p.m.
Summary: A 41-year-old woman driving home alone saw a shining white, phosphorescent object shaped like a flattened pumpkin, hissing and hovering about 20 cm above waste ground. Eight small humanoids, about 1.30 m tall, moved around it and two more were visible inside. They wore tight grayish-blue one-piece suits and had large protruding black eyes, almost no nose and a slit for a mouth. When she tried to grab one of them, a beam of light from the craft paralyzed her. The beings went back inside, and the object rose to treetop height, turned orange and then red, and shot away. She later reported beneficial after-effects. [Full Report]
Source: Claude Raffy, quoting Geneviève Vanquelef, Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 42, No. 3
Source Status: Single, anonymous witness. The account was published decades after the event, with no exact date.
Date: February 17-18, 1956 (night)
Location: Paris-Orly Airport and the western Paris region, France
Time: About 10:50 to 11:00 p.m.; some listings give 8:20 p.m.
Summary: Orly radar picked up an echo twice the size of the largest airliners then in service, moving far faster than any aircraft. The same echo showed on a second radar screen. The tower radioed an Air France DC-3 that had just taken off for London, and the crew reported a twinkling red light racing toward them near Les Mureaux, matching the radar position. Captain Michel Desavoye changed course to avoid what looked like an imminent collision. When the tower placed the object toward Le Bourget, the copilot saw the red light again, along with an enormous black shape against the sky. He and the captain watched it for about half a minute, and it carried no navigation lights. Later accounts say the pilot, radio operator and mechanic all saw the object. [Full Report]
Source: Project 1947; FUFOR Index; BBU Files (BBU); Aimé Michel; Patrick Gross, “UFOs at close sight: Orly airport case, France, February 1956”
Source Status: The Blue Book index spells the pilot’s name “De Vaux.” French sources give it as Michel Desavoye, also spelled Désavoi. A later French newspaper dismissed the case as a radar echo off the Seine, which does not account for the crew’s visual sighting. In his own February 1956 press statement, Desavoye described only the flashing red light. The dark shape comes from Aimé Michel’s 1963 account.
Date: February 18, 1956
Location: North of Montélimar Airdrome, France
Time: 8:20 p.m.
Summary: Three USAF C-119 crewmen of the 780th Troop Carrier Squadron saw a round dot that changed color every 30 seconds, from white to red to green.
Source: Project 1947; FUFOR Index; The UFO Evidence (NICAP), Section V (BBU)
Date: February 19, 1956
Location: Houston, Texas
Time: 6:07 a.m. (CST)
Summary: The crew of an Eastern Airlines Super Constellation saw an intense white light moving four to five times faster than their airplane. The pilot took evasive action.
Source: Berliner; FUFOR Index; BBU Files (BBU #3977)
Date: February 24, 1956
Location: Taiwan Strait
Time: 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Summary: The crew of an airborne early warning aircraft noticed a number of unidentified radar tracks and shot two rolls of film of the radar returns. The USAF reviewed the radar photos and attributed the tracks to several causes: radar clutter, surface ships, ground targets and interference from other radar equipment.
Source: Project Blue Book files; Jan Aldrich, Project 1947 NavCat
Date: February 7, 1955
Location: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Time: 10:18 a.m.
Summary: A Flying Tiger Line pilot saw a brilliant object flash away to the south.
Source: Project 1947; Original Docs (BBU)
Source Status: The source dates this case to 1955. It appears here because it has long been filed with February 1956, and it belongs to the February 1955 archive.
Date: February 7, 1955
Location: Knights Landing, California
Time: 4:30 p.m. local
Summary: While watching conventional jet aircraft, the witness saw a winged UFO climb vertically and later go into a steep dive.
Source: OSI document to the FBI, found in the Project Blue Book file collection (BB)
Source Status: The source dates this case to 1955, and it belongs to the February 1955 archive. The case is known only from a single OSI document, and the original compiler rated it a distant encounter of uncertain reliability.
Date: February 7, 1955
Location: Fort Wayne, Indiana
Time: 7:55 p.m. (EST)
Summary: The pilots of American Airlines Flight 266, flying over Fort Wayne, saw five star-like stationary objects due north at an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 feet. The objects then left at tremendous speed.
Source: Unknown (BBU)
Source Status: The source dates this case to 1955, and it belongs to the February 1955 archive.
Date: February 10, 1955
Location: Bethesda, Maryland
Time: 10:03 p.m.
Summary: E. J. Stein, a model maker at the U.S. Navy ship design facility, saw a radiant yellow object shaped like a small slice of the bottom of the Moon hover for 30 seconds. Its bottom then changed to a funnel shape.
Source: Berliner (BBU #3427)
Source Status: The source dates this case to 1955, and it belongs to the February 1955 archive. The Blue Book case number is consistent with a 1955 date.
Date: February 11, 1955
Location: In flight, Miami to New York
Time: Unknown
Summary: The crew of a Pan American Airways flight saw two reddish-green objects speed past beneath the wing.
Source: The UFO Evidence (NICAP), Section V
Source Status: The source dates this case to 1955, and it belongs to the February 1955 archive.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Ghost of Orly and a Month of Cockpit Witnesses
February 1956 is anchored by the Orly airport case. Radar returns on two screens, a visual sighting by an Air France DC-3 crew, and a near-collision maneuver make it one of the strongest radar-visual reports of the mid-1950s in Europe. Captain Michel Desavoye, his radio operator and his mechanic all saw the object, and the copilot described a huge dark mass carrying no navigation lights. The same evening, a USAF C-119 crew north of Montélimar reported a color-changing light. Across the Atlantic, the Goose Bay F-89D crew’s radar track and the Eastern Airlines evasive maneuver near Houston round out a month in which most witnesses were aircrew.
The month’s close encounter comes from Choisy-le-Roi, a few miles from Orly. A lone motorist described ten small, large-eyed humanoids around a hovering, pumpkin-shaped craft and said a beam of light paralyzed her when she tried to capture one. That account comes from a single anonymous witness and was published decades later. Test pilot Eric “Winkle” Brown’s disc over Wales and three Blue Book unknowns at Camp Irwin, California complete the record. Five cases dated February 1955 have long been filed on this page and are listed at the end, noted as belonging to the February 1955 archive.
“The object they saw carried none of the required navigation lights.”
Air France Captain Michel Desavoye’s report, Orly, France, February 1956, as summarized by Patrick Gross
