Sighting record / 1979
Sunday, 23 September 1979. About six in the morning. Dawn had not yet come to Maubeuge, in the far north of France. Several people watched a point of light cross the sky toward the north-east. It glowed green and red. It made no sound. A few moments later, their car was flooded with light. The glow covered the whole road. Then it went out, all at once. One witness saw a shape climbing into the sky at 45 degrees. Silent. Trailing a red flame. GEPAN, the French space agency's unit for unidentified phenomena, investigated on the spot. It found nothing. The case remains unexplained.
Maubeuge is a town in the Nord department, about 9 km from the Belgian border. In 1979, France had a civilian body for reports like this one. GEPAN, a unit of the French space agency CNES in Toulouse, investigated unidentified aerial phenomena. It later became SEPRA, and then GEIPAN. Its file on this morning carries the number 1979-09-00661, under the plain title "MAUBEUGE (59) 1979".