Report from W S Van Heerden, Sunnyside, Pretoria: object over Lourenço Marques bay

What was reported

W S Van Heerden, then South African Consul-General in Mozambique, was being driven along the Lourenço Marques seafront with his boat-building friend Arrie Mastenbroek at about 15.00 on Friday 13 December 1968. On a brilliantly clear day, rounding Ponta Vermelha with the bay in view, he saw a large dark-grey object hanging still roughly above Xefina island, then a military post. It looked like two plates joined with their convex sides outward, seen edge-on so it tapered at both ends; solid, sharp-edged, without portholes, perhaps 150 to 200 metres above the sea and comparable in size to an ocean-going ship. He watched for under 30 seconds before trees and the Clube Naval buildings hid it. When the road climbed past the Polana pavilion the object had left its station and flashed across the sky as a circular disc, climbing fast to the south-west over the city. Only the car could be heard; no flame or colour.

What Hind made of it

Printed as a previously unreported case under 'Some Unusual Cases' without editorial comment.

In their words

• No sound other than the sound of our moving car was discernable and there was no flame or colour.

• It was solid, with clear-cut lines and no fuzziness at all such as cloud or smoke.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 1 (July 1988), spread 12-13

In the archive

This case became a story on this site.

1968 · Mozambique

The consul and the island

Rounding Ponta Vermelha on a blue December afternoon, a diplomat saw two plates pressed rim to rim, the size of a ship, hanging over the island in the bay.

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Single witness