Incident · 23 January 1982 · A10 motorway near Trancrainville, Eure-et-Loir, France
Gendarmes on the A10 motorway follow a light that lit up the landscape
Also known as Trancrainville 1982, A10 gendarmes UFO, Orléans 1982
Before dawn on 23 January 1982 two gendarmes of the motorway patrol, driving the A10 south of Paris, watched a pale luminous mass in the sky that lit up pylons, sheds and trees along their route for about 30 km, while they drove and when they stopped. The nearby air base had nothing flying and its radar switched off.
GEIPAN, re-examining the case decades later, found the lighting too focused and too far below the cloud base for a helicopter searchlight, and the case consistent enough to class D, unexplained. It rests on the gendarmes’ report; no field reconstruction is now possible.
Source: GEIPAN (CNES), case 1982-01-00913, classified D (unexplained)
Facts and claims
- documented Between 4.35 and 4.55 am on 23 January 1982 gendarmes of a motorway patrol on the A10 saw an undefined pale mass in the sky and a strongly lit area on the ground, and kept seeing it, moving or stopped, over some thirty kilometres; they heard no noise and at the end saw the glow linger on copses beside the motorway. Source: cnes-geipan.fr (archived)
- documented The gendarmes contacted the Orléans air base (BA123), 7 km away: no aircraft or helicopter was flying and its radar station had been shut down since the previous evening. Staff of the motorway company saw nothing. Source: cnes-geipan.fr (archived)
- documented GEIPAN’s re-examination rejected planets and judged a helicopter searchlight above the cloud too improbable (the clouds were too high for the searchlights of the time, and the beam would have had to be focused “un peu comme le ferait un laser”), and classified the case D, unexplained. Source: cnes-geipan.fr (archived)
Connected files
Organizations
- GEIPAN (CNES, France) (investigated by)
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