Mirage IV night encounter near Chaumont (Giraud and Abraham)

7 March 1977. A Dassault Mirage IVA of the Forces Aériennes Stratégiques, a supersonic nuclear-capable bomber, was flying home from a night navigation and bombing exercise.

Major René Giraud was the pilot. Captain Jean-Paul Abraham was his navigator. They cruised at 9,750 metres and Mach 0.9 on autopilot, bound for Luxeuil air base, over the region of Chaumont in Haute Marne. The time was 20:34. Visibility was excellent. On the radio was the military radar controller at Contrexéville.

A light appeared off the right side. Level with the bomber. On a collision course. "A gleaming light arrives toward us," Giraud recalled. "It is identical to the signalisation headlight of a Mirage III jet fighter." He called the ground. "I warn the ground controller, but he says to me that there is absolutely nothing." The controller asked the crew to check their oxygen.

Giraud turned right. "And it remains inside my turn, stuck to my trajectory." He tightened to 3 to 4 g. Turns left and right ruled out a reflection in the canopy. The light was the front of a dark solid object. "I have an impression of a shape and an important mass behind us, much larger than my Mirage." It slid onto their tail, "as taking position to shoot us down!" Giraud reversed his turn, and the thing left "at an unbelievable speed", heading north-west at an estimated Mach 2.

Giraud sensed it was not over. "I feel that I am being observed!" An identical light appeared at 3 o'clock. Full thrust. A 6.5 g turn. "The object plays the same game again." It settled about 2,000 metres behind them, then went west "with a fantastic acceleration, producing some sort of a trail." Each pass lasted about 40 seconds. "When we landed at Luxeuil, we were shaken."

The radio exchanges were recorded and transcribed, but no transcript has been published. Internal Air Force discussion noted that the object must have been supersonic, yet no boom was heard. The lack of radar contact was called highly anomalous.

In 1999 the COMETA report took up the case. Written by a private association of former senior officers and experts led by General Denis Letty, it went to President Chirac and Prime Minister Jospin. Its figures differ slightly: about 21:00, abeam Dijon, 9,600 metres, and 45 seconds between the passes where Giraud recalled 30. It named the lights A1 and A2, leaving open a second object. Only a combat aircraft, it concluded, could have matched their speed and manoeuvrability. Later it cited the Mirage IV case as an act of intimidation.

The oxygen check hinted at hypoxia. A combat aircraft was COMETA's only conventional candidate, yet there was no known traffic and nothing on radar. No published sceptical analysis has been found. Giraud would not speculate. He said only that it manoeuvred "as if an intelligence piloted it."

Journalists Jean-Claude Bourret and Robert Roussel first revealed the testimony. In 1998 Bernard Thouanel published Giraud's account in VSD as "Je me sentais observé", and Giraud told the story on TF1 in 1999. Richard Hall listed it in The UFO Evidence, Volume II. Some retellings call the pilot Hervé Giraud. Thouanel ranks it among the most important French cases.