A huge unidentified flying object which appeared as a hole in the sky as it hovered near Napier was watched for up to 20 minutes by the headmaster, teachers and more than 400 children at Richmond School, Maraenui, yesterday afternoon.Now we get into the guts of it:
Witnesses to the sighting said there was an unearthly quiet as the usually noisy children stopped their play and watched awed and fascinated by the saucer shaped object.
The headmaster, Mr. W. Billing, said he was watching the children playing in the school grounds when he noticed the object move in from the South.
I thought it was an aircraft at first, then I realised it had stopped moving and it appeared as an extremely brilliant object in the clear sky, he said.
From there, a mini sub heading line keep us engaged with: Glistening Object.
Then the article continues:
As he drew his teachers’ attention to it, the children also spotted the object and stopped their play.
It was like a huge, wingless plane with the sun glistening on it. But what amazed us was that it was also glistening on the side away from the sun, Billing said.
The object seemed to be hovering in an area between Westshore and Tongoio.
We were watching it when a plane came into view and landed. There was definitely no comparison between the object and the aircraft, Billing said.
The next sub heading reads: Like Round Ball.
And keeps the article going.
After hovering for 3 or 4 minutes, the object began to move away.
It then moved at right angles, and the next thing we knew it was like a round ball with the middle a transparent like sheen. It then flattened out again and continued to move away in a straight lune to become like a bright star.
Then it seems to light up again, like an extremely brilliant planet, and then fade again before it moved away at speed, Mr Billing said.
The object was last sighted about 2:23 p.m..
Yet another mini sub heading reads: Appeared Solid.
The article continues:
It wasn’t a weather balloon, which you wouldn’t see change from a round to an oval shape, Mr. Billing said. It was also definitely a solid object, and you seemed to get the feeling it was metallic.
One of the teachers, Mr. A. Coveny, said he had read reports of people sighting unidentified objects but he had always been rather skeptical, until yesterday.
We thought half of Napier would have seen it, here at the school, everyone was standing with their mouths open trying to work out a logical answer to it. A pupil had come to him for an answer. He asked me if it was a flying saucer and I said yes because I couldn’t give any other answer, Mr. Coveny said.
The final sub heading in the article reads: Hole In The Sky, and continues with:
The sighting had stopped the usual sounds of noisy play. The whole area seemed to be so unnaturally quiet that it was uncanny, he said.
It was not only the movements of the flying saucer which were unearthly, but also the appearance of the craft when it changed shape.
There was an iridescence from it, and it looked as though it was an actual hole in the sky, just as if you were looking through it into another dimension, Mr. Coveny said.
On the continuing page of the newspaper, there was even a picture. I would normally be ashamed to publish something so poorly imaged, and I will be obtaining a better copy, but for now it is all I have.
Luckily the caption is clear, and it reads:
Other than two similar newspaper articles with similar, but less detailed, accounts of the sighting, this is all I have.
All except these drawings neatly placed on the one page by either the school teachers themselves, or by interested parties thereafter. Bryan Dickenson has kindly supplied me with this image from his files.