Sighting in Écrainville, September 6, 2015

At about 10:40 on a Sunday morning, a driver was on the road when a shadow that seemed to hide the sun took them by surprise. Leaning forward, they made out through the windscreen a triangular shape with slightly curved sides and a lighter circle at each end. The whole thing was matt black. The front passenger, once alerted, opened the window but saw nothing. The driver kept going, and a little further on both witnesses watched the phenomenon move away toward Breteville (50). They heard no sound and saw no light. Only one witness account was collected.

The investigation favoured an aircraft. That day, 13 kilometres further west, a ceremony honoured First World War pilots, and two French Air Force Rafale jets flew over the Bay of Étretat around 10:30. One of them could have passed directly over the place of the observation. The description may fit a Rafale, with differences explained by a brief sighting made by a driver shortly before a roundabout. The lack of noise, which struck the witnesses most, is still compatible: an aircraft can sometimes go unheard, and visual surprise can suppress the perception of sound. The absence of other reports also points this way, since other people may have recognised an aircraft and had no reason to report it. Without radar data or the exact flight paths of the two Rafales, the hypothesis could not be definitively confirmed. A civil or military drone was judged less likely because the angular movement was too fast. GEIPAN classified the case as B: probable misidentification of an aircraft.