The Trans-en-Provence case (1981): the craft, the trace and forty years of debate

At a glance

• When: Thursday, January 8, 1981, around 5 p.m., at dusk³.
• Where: a property on the northern slope of the Nartuby valley, about 2 km east of the village of Trans-en-Provence, south of Draguignan (Var, southern France)².
• Who: a single witness; no other came forward². GEPAN kept him anonymous in its reports, but his name, Renato Nicolaï, has been public since 1981¹².
• What: a grey craft shaped like "two plates upside down, one against the other", resting on the ground for a few seconds before leaving, and a circular trace on the ground³.
• GEIPAN classification: D, "unexplained phenomenon"¹.

What the witness saw

That Thursday, the witness was building a small cement shelter for a water pump behind his house. The weather station at Le Luc, 17 km away, recorded about 6.8 °C, an almost clear sky (2/8 cloud cover) and good visibility⁴. He told the gendarmes the next day that he heard "a slight noise, a kind of little whistle"³. Turning round, he saw a craft at the height of a large pine tree at the edge of the land, coming down towards the ground without spinning and without flames³.

He moved closer and stood against the wall of a small hut on a higher terrace. From there he saw the craft resting on the beaten-earth platform about thirty metres away³. His description was brief: the craft looked like two plates turned upside down, one against the other³. It was about 1.50 m high and the "colour of lead", with a ridge running all the way round. Underneath, two round parts stuck out by about twenty centimetres, and two other circles looked like hatches³.

Almost immediately the craft rose, still with that slight whistle, lifting a little dust. Once above the trees it left quickly towards the forest³. The witness said he saw four openings underneath, with no flame or smoke³. Right afterwards he found a circle about 2 m across on the ground, with what looked like skid marks in places³. He reported no effect on his sight or hearing³. His own first thought was a military craft, since a large training ground was nearby, and he ruled out a helicopter because of the wall².

That evening his wife thought he was joking. The next morning he showed her the trace. She called some neighbours, who advised them to contact the gendarmerie^3,2.

See the document: Gendarmerie report No. 28/1981: telex, findings, witness interview — Draguignan gendarmerie, January 9 – February 5, 1981. Telex p. 1, findings pp. 4-5, interview p. 6 (in French) (GEIPAN / CNES, droits réservés)

The trace recorded by the gendarmerie

On January 9, 1981, at 11:20 a.m., a neighbour telephoned the Draguignan gendarmerie, and officers went to the site straight away³. They recorded two concentric circles, one 2.20 m and the other 2.40 m in diameter, forming a ring 10 cm wide. On this ring, two sections about 80 cm long on opposite sides bore black striations resembling skid marks³. They photographed the site, drew a 1:10 sketch, and took soil and grass samples³. They also noted that there were no power lines, railway or electric fences nearby, and that a compass showed no reaction³.

The same day, a telex was sent to GEPAN in Toulouse. It described the marks as two arcs of a circle resembling tyre skid marks³. That word, tyre, would later be at the heart of the criticism.

The investigation also checked what was in the sky that day. The army's light aviation confirmed that an Alouette II helicopter had flown over the area at 200 m above the ground at around 4:30 p.m. The army staff reported only an inert tank shell fired more than 25 km to the north, unrelated to the sighting⁵.

See the document: Gendarmerie photo sheet: the site and the marks (photos 1 to 7) — Report No. 28/1981, pages 7 to 11 (GEIPAN / CNES, droits réservés)

Forty days later: the GEPAN investigation

GEPAN learned of the case on Monday, January 12². Heavy rain fell on January 10 and 11, and the office chose not to travel immediately: it had the samples sent quickly to laboratories instead². In the meantime, private groups alerted by the local press visited the site, and a private investigator started his own inquiry on January 13².

The GEPAN team arrived on February 17, 1981, forty days after the event². It interviewed the witness again, ran a shortened reconstruction, surveyed the ground, photographed the site¹¹ and took a new series of plant samples along a line running from the centre of the trace out to 10 m². The trace was still visible: a lighter area in arcs of a circle, with a compacted crust about 1 cm thick². Based on the reconstruction, the craft was about 2.50 m in diameter and 1.70 to 1.80 m high when resting on the ground². The witness was never more than 70 m or less than about thirty metres away, and the sighting lasted 30 to 40 seconds, a few of them with the craft on the ground².

As for the witness, GEPAN found no sign of invention or exaggeration. It noted that the changes in wording between versions came from the successive investigators rather than from him².

The final report, Technical Note No. 16, is dated March 1, 1983².

See the document: The witness's drawings (side and underside views) and the survey of the trace — Technical Note No. 16, sketch 5 (p. 24) and sketch 7 (p. 29) (GEIPAN / CNES, droits réservés)

What the laboratories found

The soil samples went to five laboratories. Their results do not all tell the same story.

Laboratory	What it found
CNES, microscope examination	A 6–7 mm compacted crust on very dry chalky soil, curved striations like "sanding", a flint pushed in and levelled, a dark deposit2
GEPAN's usual laboratory (microprobe)	No compounds typical of a hydrocarbon engine; iron (or iron oxide) plated in striations about one micrometre thick; a deposit formed between 250 and 600 °C by its estimate6
University of Toulouse (electron diffraction)	A single-crystal compound present in the ring and absent from the control soil, which heating a control sample to 1,000 °C did not reproduce8
University of Metz (mass spectrometry)	Spectra similar to "certain polymers or petroleum residues"; black particles that "seem to be combustion residues"2
Physical analysis laboratory, Pau	An ordinary clay-and-chalk soil, "not very significant" differences from the control, only extra zinc and phosphate7

The Pau laboratory went further. It suggested that the black deposit could be a black paint based on carbon black, and proposed comparing it with the paints used on the lower metal parts of heavy machinery⁷.

Technical Note No. 16 concluded that there had been strong mechanical pressure, "probably due to an impact", striations and erosion, heating that "did not exceed 600°", and possibly traces of iron, phosphate and zinc². Contrary to what is often written, it gives neither a 300–600 °C range nor a mass of 4–5 tonnes for the craft. Those figures circulate on English-language websites that wrongly attribute them to the note^17,2.

The plants: Michel Bounias's analyses

The most quoted part of the file comes from biochemistry. Michel Bounias, of INRA's biochemistry laboratory in Avignon-Montfavet, studied a wild alfalfa, Medicago minima, sampled at various distances from the centre of the trace^10,2.

It did not start well. On January 15, 1981, Bounias wrote to GEPAN that the first gendarmerie samples had reached him dried out after four days in a paper envelope, and asked for a control sample⁹. More series followed: a control at 20 m on January 23, then GEPAN's series of February 17².

His results, reproduced in Technical Note No. 16, were as follows²:

• close to the trace (1.5 m), chlorophyll A fell by 33%, chlorophyll B by 28% and pheophytin by 31%;
• in young leaves, β-carotene fell by 50–57% and violaxanthin by 80%;
• the disturbances decreased with distance from the centre, following regular curves;
• there was no analogy with the effects of nuclear radiation.

Bounias suggested that a transformation of the chlorophyll "could be linked to the action of an electric-type energy field"². In 1990 he published his work in English in the Journal of Scientific Exploration. There he argued for a radiant energy source and presented soil pH measurements intended to rule out spilled cement¹³.

The official conclusions

Technical Note No. 16 is cautious. The lack of any sign of invention "is not enough to certify" the account². The soil analyses show "qualitatively" an event of some magnitude, but their interpretations "remain too diverse and vague" to confirm the testimony definitively². The plant data confirm that a significant event took place at that spot, but "whether this matches the description given by the witness remains to be seen"².

In 1990, Jean-Jacques Velasco of CNES published an English translation of the note. It contains a shift in meaning: "qualitatively" became "in quantitative fashion", which strengthens the conclusion^12,2. In 1997, before a panel of scientists meeting at Pocantico (New York), Velasco put forward an order of magnitude of about 700 kg for the craft if it was stationary. The panel stressed the weakness of a single witness and suggested testing mundane causes, such as a metal water barrel or a loaded wheeled object¹⁴.

GEIPAN's current case record, updated in 2021, keeps the D classification: an important, unusual phenomenon occurred that day, and the investigation could not determine its origin¹.

The critics and mundane explanations

The case has its detractors too, and their arguments partly rely on the same documents.

• A tyre mark. The gendarmerie's first report spoke of tyre skid marks³. Éric Maillot, of the Cercle zététique (a French sceptics' group), points out that the word disappears from the Technical Note. He adds that carbon black, zinc and phosphates are common tyre components, and says he reproduced the microscopic look of the striations by spinning a wheel on clay-and-chalk soil¹⁶.
• A cement mixer or building machinery. Michel Figuet, of the SERPAN group, reports that an outbuilding had been built about twenty metres away the month before^15,16. The Pau laboratory had itself mentioned the paint used on heavy machinery⁷.
• A flawed method. In Les OVNI du CNES (2007), Didier Rossoni, Éric Maillot and Éric Déguillaume accuse GEPAN of breaking its own rules. They cite the visit on day 40 to a site already trampled, samples taken along a single line, and a complete "ring" that would be an extrapolation, since only the two arcs are hatched on the gendarmerie sketch¹⁵. In their words, the often-repeated image of a single, perfect circular trace is "entirely false"¹⁵.
• A hoax that got out of hand. This is Michel Monnerie's hypothesis (1984), reported by the sceptical authors: a joke played on the witness's wife that became impossible to retract once the gendarmerie was involved^15,16. The same authors quote television remarks by the witness and a reputation as a prankster^15,16. These are critics' allegations that we have not been able to verify.

Bounias responded on the cement question with his pH measurements, which varied neither with distance nor over time¹³. The sceptics consider this experiment poorly described: the proportion of cement is not given and the protocol is non-standard^15,16.

Where the accounts disagree

As is often the case, the documents contradict each other on points of detail. Some of them matter.

Point	According to the sources
Landed or hovering?	The January 9 telex says the craft came down "to about 1 metre from the ground"; the interview the same day says it was "resting on the ground"3
Dust	"no dust raised" in the telex, "a little dust" in the interview3
Noise	"silently" in the report summary, a "slight whistle" in the interview, a "fairly strong gust of wind" according to GEPAN3,2
Distance	50 m (telex), about thirty metres (interview), between 30 and 70 m (GEPAN)3,2
Size	3 m in diameter (telex), 1.50 m high (interview), 2.50 m by 1.70–1.80 m (GEPAN); the Technical Note itself notes very different proportions from one drawing to another3,2
Duration	about a minute (telex), 30 to 40 seconds (GEPAN)3,2
Shape of the trace	two circles and two 80 cm arcs (gendarmerie), a circle of about 2 m (witness), an area 2.5 to 3 m across (Bounias, 1990)3,13

What remains

More than forty years on, two readings still clash. For GEIPAN, an unusual physical event really did happen on that terrace, and nothing has established its origin¹. For the sceptics, a lone witness, shifting versions and a trace consistent with a vehicle are enough to explain the case^15,16.

The established facts are few: a single witness, a trace recorded by the gendarmerie the next day, and laboratory results that do not converge. Nobody has shown that the trace and the account belong to the same event, or that they do not. The original documents are available on the GEIPAN website, and the list below lets you read them for yourself.