GEIPAN Case 2010-11-02702 — MANS (LE) (72) 21.11.2010

Brief

At 17h55 on 21 November 2010, a resident on the 9th floor of a Le Mans apartment building watched three lights — two fixed blue and one fixed red — arranged at the vertices of an isosceles triangle, connected by a smooth, matte-black surface described as darker than the surrounding night sky. The object approached from the NNE, passed at roughly 9th-floor height (20–50 m above ground), emitted a faint air-rustling sound only at its closest point, and disappeared beyond the roofline in under 15 seconds after covering approximately 1.6 km. Wind speed of 13–24 km/h arithmetically rules out any wind-borne object; DGAC inquiry confirmed no matching civil aircraft. GEIPAN's on-site investigation in May 2013 corroborated the witness's spatial and geometric claims, and the case was formally closed as D1 — unexplained.

Metadata

Agency

GEIPAN / CNES

Release

2007-03-22

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

6 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED

Programs

GEIPAN, GEPAN, SEPRA

Tags

triangular UAP, three fixed lights, red and blue lights, matte black surface, low altitude, high speed, near-silent, Le Mans France, 2010, GEIPAN D1, single witness

Key points

• Observation was made at 17h55 on 21 November 2010 from an open 9th-floor kitchen window in the Quartier des Sablons, Le Mans; the witness had lived in the apartment for over 17 years and was intimately familiar with the urban light environment.p.1
• Three fixed lights — one red (top/front vertex) and two blue (lower rear vertices) — formed an isosceles triangle that moved as a unit with no rotation or independent movement, their strong brilliance contrasting with every other familiar light source.p.2
• The surface connecting the three lights was described as flat, smooth, matte, cold, and black — 'plus noir que la nuit environnante' — and the ensemble was characterized as 'fin et élégant.'p.2
• The witness spontaneously counted the 15-second duration aloud from first appearance to disappearance; he repeated the count before the GEIPAN investigator, who judged it entirely correct.p.2
• Height during the closest approach was approximately 9th-floor level (20–50 m above ground); the witness noted he neither raised nor lowered his chin to follow the object.p.2
• Sound was described as a very faint 'froissement de l'air' only at the moment of closest approach; the object was completely silent before and after that point.p.3
• The object traveled approximately 1.6 km in 15 seconds, implying a minimum speed of roughly 384 km/h — between 16 and 29 times the measured wind speed of 13–24 km/h — definitively ruling out any wind-borne object.p.6
• DGAC independently confirmed no civil aircraft could account for the sighting; runway orientation at Le Mans-Arnage that evening placed inbound traffic geometrically opposite the direction of observation.p.5
• The witness reported a subjective sensation of being watched by a 'black intelligence' during the closest approach, describing it as 'elle me regardait autant que je la regardais.'p.3
• GEIPAN classified the case D1 — inexpliqué, étrangeté élevée — on the basis of a well-documented questionnaire, corroborating on-site investigation, and exhaustive elimination of conventional hypotheses.p.6

Verbatim

• le témoin a eu le réflexe d'en évaluer sa durée jusqu'à sa disparition derrière l'immeuble en démarrant un comptage en secondes ; la durée totale de l'observation a ainsi été établie à 15 secondes.

  p.2

• S'il s'agissait d'un phénomène porté par le vent, il lui aurait fallu entre 4 et 8 minutes pour parcourir les 1,6 km en question, pour un vent soit de 13km/h, soit de 24km/h.

  p.6

• Ce témoignage est de bonne consistance grâce à un questionnaire très bien rempli et une enquête de terrain qui a confirmé les éléments de l'observation. Il reste que c'est un témoignage unique avec toutes les incertitudes qui en découlent : pas d'autres observateurs connus du phénomène après interrogation, par le témoin lui-même, du voisinage et de la concierge de l'immeuble.

  p.6

• Du fait de sa bonne consistance et de son étrangeté élevée, ce cas est classé D1, comme inexpliqué.

  p.6

Most interesting

• The object covered 1.6 km in 15 seconds — approximately 384 km/h — while the measured wind speed was 13–24 km/h; GEIPAN's report makes the arithmetic explicit, noting that a wind-borne object would have needed 4 to 8 minutes to cover the same distance.
• After the sighting, the witness reconstructed the triangle's dimensions on his kitchen floor using a paper template and concluded each side measured approximately 2 m — well beyond the 60–80 cm typical of consumer-grade drones available in 2010.
• The witness had lived in the same apartment for over 17 years and could identify every familiar light source in his panoramic view of Le Mans; his long-term baseline made him an unusually reliable judge of anomalous luminosity.
• GEIPAN's on-site investigator visit occurred on 10 May 2013 — roughly 2.5 years after the observation — yet the site visit independently confirmed the witness's spatial, geometric, and trajectory claims.
• The witness independently obtained an ophthalmological opinion before filing; the examining physician confirmed he was not susceptible to phosphenes, formally excluding a retinal artifact as the source of the lights.
• If the UAP's trajectory is extended linearly southward it points toward Le Mans-Arnage airport, but GEIPAN notes that all inbound traffic that evening was using the opposite runway heading due to the northerly wind, making any aircraft-approach link geometrically untenable.
• The report's drone hypothesis — the last surviving conventional candidate — was dismissed on a combination of size mismatch, the practical difficulty of controlled nocturnal urban flight in overcast conditions in 2010, and the object's non-standard light configuration.