Sighting record / 1998
Friday evening, 18 September 1998. The Seine estuary, between Le Havre and Honfleur. Something was moving through the night sky. A luminous disc. Three more points of light with it. It moved very slowly. The witnesses were not passers-by. Gendarmes and police officers saw it, and so did the harbourmaster's office at the Port of Le Havre. Four separate posts, on both sides of the estuary, watching at the same moment. The authorities asked Aéroports de Paris whether a plane had been in the area. No answer was ever published.
The summer of 1998 had put French skies in the news. In August a widely covered wave of sightings centred on the Ardennes. The site ovnis-armee.org later counted about 90 cases and around 230 witnesses it judged reliable. On 12 September, France Soir ran the story of a family in the Isère who had filmed a flying saucer. Press interest was high. A small report from Normandy was about to join the pile.