UFO Flashbacks: Aerial survey of the Northern Rhodesia Copperbelt

What was reported

The second Flying Saucer Review item describes a bright, flickering object that raced through the evening darkness of 9 August 1956 over the Copperbelt, being sighted above Ndola, Kitwe, Chingola and Bancroft as though surveying the mining towns. Men were fetched out of Copperbelt bars, laughing at what they took for a joke, and stopped laughing when they looked up and saw the object hovering and then darting away. No flights were scheduled over that irregular route, and it was not a meteorological balloon, which in any case would not have shown up in the dark. The Rhodesia Sunday Mail commented that, whatever the scoffers said, a mystery object had certainly been in the sky that week.

What Hind made of it

Reprinted as a flashback; the Sunday Mail's conclusion that a mystery object was present is quoted.

Explanation offered
Scheduled aircraft and meteorological balloon considered and rejected

In their words

• without the faintest shadow of a doubt, there was a mystery object in the sky of Northern Rhodesia this week.

Cross references

• Flying Saucer Review, Vol 2 No 5, Sept/Oct 1956
• Rhodesia Sunday Mail

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 5 (January 1992), spread 16