Flying spheres with green trails over Belgrade, Zagreb and other Yugoslav towns

Autumn 1954. A wave of flying saucer reports was sweeping Europe. On the same day as the Yugoslav sightings, Prague radio reported saucers and loud detonations over Czechoslovakia. Austria logged sightings at Vienna, Graz and Judenburg. In Italy, objects were reported from Spoleto to Ostia.

Monday, 25 October 1954. Around 6 a.m. Residents of Belgrade looked up and saw strange objects at very high altitude. Over Zagreb and several other towns, people reported the same thing. Large flying spheres. Each one leaving a fluorescent green trail. The Belgrade evening paper Večernje novosti carried the story, and Yugoslav radio spread it. The press spoke of multiple mysterious craft, flying at high altitude, at high speed, and often in formations.

At Zemun airport, then Belgrade's airfield, staff were among the witnesses. A regional account names two of them. Vladimir Aivas, an aeronautical engineer. Stjepan Đitkol, an Air Force captain.

A later catalogue puts the time at the Belgrade airport at 6:15 a.m. At least four witnesses there sighted over twenty UFOs. One large cigar shaped object. Some high speed circular and egg-shaped objects. Reportedly, they were seen by hundreds.

In western Bačka, the morning had its own version. At Apatin, about 6:30 a.m., students and instructors of the local machine and agricultural school watched a formation of glowing objects cross the sky at high speed. In the centre was a larger elliptical luminous mass. On either side, two smaller light-blue bodies. Somborske novine reported it on 5 November 1954 under the headline "Leteći tanjiri nad Somborom i Apatinom". Sombor itself was named among the places touched that morning.

A Yugoslav commission examined the Belgrade event. The science writer Milivoj Jugin said he sat on it. He remembered "fireballs" flying high over the city in the early hours, though he placed them in "mid 1954". The commission's answer was a "stroboscope effect". Intermittent clouds had poured into one long continuous line, and "due to complicated mirages" they looked to people on the ground like a "flying saucer". Jugin also said a photo "appeared the next day in one of our newspapers as a first-class sensation". It has never been found.

Not everyone accepted the verdict. Observatory scientists reportedly said the objects were not meteorites or ordinary celestial bodies. Across the Atlantic, Project Blue Book is said to have filed the case as "Flying Saucers Over Yugoslavia" and classed it as insufficient data.

The cloud explanation leaves questions open. The reported speed. The similar descriptions from cities far apart. The close timing. A bright meteor in twilight would fit a green trail, great height and near simultaneous sightings across about 500 km. The observatory verdict, if accurate, counts against it. In a later article for BBC News na srpskom, Vladan Ducić, a professor at the Faculty of Geography in Belgrade, spoke of cumulus clouds lined up along an air front, and of thousands of reports.

The story travelled fast. Le Berry Républicain ran the Belgrade dispatch on 26 October under the heading "Dans le ciel Yougoslave". La Croix followed on 27 October. Later reviews added Niš, Šabac, Ruma, Sarajevo, Bugojno, Split and Ljubljana to the map. The original Večernje novosti article has yet to be found. So has the photograph.