Sighting in La Condamine-Châtelard, June 29, 1993

At around 9 a.m., two witnesses on a surveillance round for the O.N.F. saw a dark, circular shape move silently across the sky. Two tubes hung beneath it, arranged like an upside-down V. No smoke or trail could be seen, either with the naked eye or through binoculars. The object first travelled horizontally, then abruptly changed direction and climbed, disappearing into a cloud. The witnesses thought for a while that it might be a balloon, and also a helicopter.

The case, first classified D under the name JAUSIERS (04) 1993, was re-examined by GEIPAN and reclassified B. The helicopter hypothesis was ruled out: the valley is narrow and enclosed, so the object had to be close and would have been identifiable through the binoculars, if not by its sound. GEIPAN considers that the witnesses most likely saw a solar balloon or a novelty-shaped balloon. The weather was fine with little wind, which suited such an object. The inverted V, which probably led the witnesses to drop their initial idea of a weather balloon, can be explained either by a single balloon of complex shape or by three ordinary solar balloons joined together, two of them elongated. The balloon would have drifted up the Parpaillon valley on warm air rising from the lower valley, then climbed vertically in an updraft near the terrain at the valley head. It could also have been released the previous day, come back down in the cool of the evening, and resumed its flight as the morning warmed up.