SAINT-AMBROIX (30) 18.01.2017

On 18 January 2017 at about 10:10, a witness watched 2 intermittent trails of gray smoke in a clear sky from a window for 15 seconds. The unusual traces did not resemble ordinary aircraft contrails and intrigued the witness. Only 1 account was collected. The sighting has little strangeness. The witness offered no strong grounds for rejecting an aircraft explanation, which the witness had also suggested: intermittent trails and lack of sound were the reservations. Such intermittent trails are fairly characteristic of military aircraft. Several factors could explain the absence of sound. The aircraft may have been high and not using afterburners, which commonly produce considerable noise. Urban noise in Saint-Ambroix may also have masked them. Although the witness reported no outside noise, the sighting occurred in the center of a town of more than 3,000 inhabitants, near the D904, a major road formerly classified as a national highway, on a weekday, Wednesday morning. The investigation ruled out a fragmented daytime fireball leaving persistent trails: the 2 smoke trails were too far apart, and the witness reported accelerations. Such an astronomical event would also generally be seen by many witnesses. The accelerations instead suggest 2 maneuvering aircraft. Although the UAP was not definitively identified, GEIPAN considers the description to leave little doubt about the misidentification. Military radar records were consulted too late to confirm or refute the hypothesis. The case is classified B: probable military-aircraft contrails.