Sighting in Harponville, September 7, 1954

At about 7:30 a.m., two witnesses were cycling to work along a local road when they noticed a circular shape in a field roughly 200 metres from the road, swaying with an oscillating motion. The weather was clear, with no fog. Both described a dark cylinder with a slightly domed top and an opening running around its edge.

Curious, they moved to within about a hundred metres of it. The object then rose without a sound, first at an angle for about fifteen metres and then vertically. During the climb, the witnesses saw blue-grey smoke coming out of a pipe. The sighting lasted four to five minutes, until the object vanished into the sky. Frightened, the witnesses went straight to the gendarmerie.

The investigation found no marks on the ground in the field the same day. One of the witnesses, who had seen helicopters before, stated that this was not one. No other witness came forward, and the witnesses' credibility was not questioned. GEIPAN classed the case as D (unexplained), describing it as a strange to very strange phenomenon of medium to high consistency.