Dakar, Senegal: Witnesses Approach Landed 10-Meter Object That Departs with Smoke

In the first week of September 1954, outside Dakar, Senegal, on Africa's west coast, a mason and his assistant saw a 'gray object resembling a truncated millstone with a large inverted plate lying on it' in a field about 200 meters from the road where they were bicycling. The object oscillated slowly and seemed to have a closed door on its side.

The men left their bikes and ran toward the object. When they had covered roughly 50 meters, the object began to fly away. Smoke was then visible from a sort of exhaust pipe on the underside. After an oblique flight of about 15 meters, the object rose vertically and disappeared. Police later found no traces — they stated the object never touched ground, but hovered above it like a helicopter. It was about 10 meters in diameter and 3 meters in height, did not glow, and departed noiselessly, trailing smoke as it took off.