Correspondence regarding UFO sighting and photographs — Marcoule, France, August 1965

This document collection details a 1965 UFO sighting reported by Rene Greenbaum, a French merchant and former French Navy veteran. On August 26, 1965, at approximately 19:15, Greenbaum, his wife, and their dog were traveling near Marcoule, France, when they observed two objects they described as hollow, elliptical, and surrounded by a luminous circle. Greenbaum claimed to have observed these objects for approximately 45 minutes and took several photographs using a Kodacolor camera. Following the event, Greenbaum contacted the local press, including the newspaper 'Havre Libre,' and subsequently reached out directly to Major Hector Quintanilla, Jr., the Director of Project Blue Book at the Air Technical Intelligence Center in Dayton, Ohio. Greenbaum expressed a strong desire to have his photographs evaluated, believing they provided indisputable proof of the existence of flying saucers. He also sought to have his account published in the American press, arguing that French authorities were ignoring the phenomenon. The correspondence includes letters from Greenbaum to the Air Force, as well as internal Air Force communications and letters from the Eastman Kodak Company, which had been involved in processing the photographs. The official Air Force response, signed by Colonel Louis De Goes and Major Hector Quintanilla, Jr., consistently maintained that there was no reason to believe the objects in the photographs were anything other than lenticular cloud formations. The Air Force concluded that the sighting was not an unidentified flying object and returned the photographs to Greenbaum after evaluation. The documents reflect the tension between the witness's conviction that he had captured evidence of extraterrestrial or unknown craft and the military's standard assessment of the phenomena as natural atmospheric occurrences.