The Trans-en-Provence landing trace

Trans-en-Provence is a village in the Var, around 5km from Draguignan. The Canjuers military camp lies nearby. In 1981 France had an official body for unidentified aerial phenomena, GEPAN, within the space agency CNES.

Renato Nicolaï lived on terraced ground just outside the village. Sources call him a farmer, a retired mason or a retired worker. Early publications named him "Renato Collini" to protect his privacy.

Thursday, 8 January 1981. About 17:00. Nicolaï was behind his house, building a small concrete shelter for a water pump. He heard "a sort of faint whistling." He turned and "saw a device in the air at the height of a big pine tree." "This device, which was not spinning, was coming lower toward the ground." It set down on a lower terrace about 50 m away. "I clearly saw the device resting on the ground."

"The device had the shape of two saucers, one inverted on top of the other." It was the color of lead, with a rim around its circumference, about 2.5 m across and around 1.5 m high. Two rounded parts projected about 20 cm beneath it. Underneath, he saw openings like hatches.

"Right away it lifted off, still emitting a slight whistling sound." It rose vertically, tilted above the terrace and sped north-east toward the Trans forest. No flame. No smoke. Just a little dust. The whole sighting lasted perhaps 30 to 40 seconds. Nicolaï's first thought was an experimental military device from Canjuers.

Afterwards he found a circular mark about 2 m across where it had rested. His wife saw it the next day and told a neighbour interested in UFOs, who alerted the gendarmerie. On 9 January, gendarmes from Draguignan interviewed Nicolaï, photographed the ground and took soil and alfalfa samples. They measured two concentric circles about 2.20 m and 2.40 m across, with two opposite sections of black striations "resembling tyre skid marks."

GEPAN reached the site around 17 February 1981, roughly 40 days later and after heavy rain. Jean-Jacques Velasco photographed and studied the trace. The analyses described a slightly crusted, compressed ring, heating estimated at 300 to 600 °C and deposits of iron oxide. Michel Bounias of INRA found chlorophyll in the alfalfa 30 to 50% lower than expected, with effects varying with distance from the centre. He suggested pulsed microwave or high-frequency electromagnetic exposure.

GEPAN Technical Note no. 16, dated 1 March 1983, found no clear signs that the witness was lying. It concluded that a large-scale event had mechanically deformed and heated the ground. Velasco published in English in 1990. Bounias followed in 1994 in a journal of the Center for UFO Studies. Popular Mechanics called it "perhaps the most completely and carefully documented sighting of all time."

Sceptics returned to the tyre marks. The trace lay on a track used by vehicles. Éric Maillot argued the mark was "two arcs," not a circle, then braked his own car on clay-limestone ground and said the deposits matched GEPAN's microscope images. Some suggested a concrete mixer used for the building work. Critics also cited the 40-day delay, the rain and uneven sampling. Michel Monnery and Jean-Michel Abrassart proposed a joke that got out of hand. Michel Figuet argued the marks lent credibility to a single, uncorroborated witness. Remarks attributed to Nicolaï, reported second-hand by Maillot, fed the doubt without proving a hoax.

Nicolaï repeated his account on camera in 1984 and reportedly again in 1992 and 2007. GEIPAN still lists the case as D, unidentified. One witness. One ring in the earth. And more than four decades of argument over what made it.