Sighting record / 1975
20 December 1975. Around nine in the morning, in broad daylight, near Dampmart in the Lagny area of Seine-et-Marne. A teacher, Mme Perdrillat, was out with 19 pupils. Something appeared in the sky. It looked as large as a setting sun. For eight minutes it stayed there. Then it crossed the horizon in a few seconds and was gone. The witnesses gave statements to the police. The paper called them formal. Days later, La Liberté de l'Est ran the story under the headline 'A UFO in Seine-et-Marne seen by 20 people'. Then the trail goes cold. No file, no photograph, no explanation. Only twenty witnesses and one short clipping.
December 1975. France had no official body to receive reports of strange objects in the sky. GEPAN, the UAP study group of the French space agency CNES, would not be founded until 1977. A sighting went to the police and, with luck, to the newspapers. Dampmart lies in northern Seine-et-Marne, beside Lagny-sur-Marne, east of Paris.