The Black Cylinder at Ledringhem

It was about 8.30 on the evening of 17 April 2011 at Ledringhem, a village near Dunkirk. A witness heard a dull turbine noise coming from the sky and looked up. An object was flying fast in a straight line, so low that it skimmed the ridge of the witness's roof. It was a black cylinder about 80 centimetres long and 20 to 30 centimetres wide. It showed no light and left no smell. It carried on towards the village and was gone.

What is on the record

GEIPAN is the unit of the French space agency CNES that investigates unidentified aerial phenomena. It holds this case as LEDRINGHEM (59) 17.04.2011 and classes it D1. Class D means GEIPAN investigated and could not explain what was seen. The inquiry was run by one of GEIPAN's first-level investigators. It found no coherent hypothesis. Its own comparison is striking: the object "ressemble à un drone, mais d'un modèle inconnu" (looks like a drone, but of an unknown model).

GEIPAN rests the classification on the witness as much as on the object. The story was told to the gendarmerie and to the investigator several times without distortion, which in GEIPAN's view lets it stand as an unidentified phenomenon. It is just as plain about the weak points. There is one witness, the sighting was very brief, and there is no photograph or video. The object's performance, GEIPAN adds, was not far from that of known machines. The page lists no investigation report, no gendarmerie record and no hypotheses tested one by one. Only the drone comparison is spelled out.

Why it sits where it does

L0 · SINGLE ACCOUNT. GEIPAN withholds the identities of its witnesses, so the released record carries no identified witness. The tier measures sourcing, not the quality of the investigation. What skimmed the roof at Ledringhem is not resolved here.