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The Pelletier Sea Serpent Photo (1936; Strait Of Hormuz)

Here's another possible complication ... What if the airplane's silhouette in the photo is its reflection on the sea's surface rather than its shadow? If conditions permitted a visible discrete reflection on the water's surface it wouldn't necessarily overlap, intersect or otherwise match up with the plane's shadow.

You can only see your own reflection in a flat surface if your line of sight is perpendicular to the reflective surface.

Given that the surface of the sea is horizontal, a person sitting in an aeroplane would only be able to see the reflection of the plane they were in from directly above. Then they would have to be taking a photo through a window in the floor of the plane, or hanging out of the window.

All a shadow requires is for the light source, the object, and the surface to be in any straight line in that order. It must be a shadow.

What we can tell from the reflection is that is very sharp and is aeroplane shaped.

The sharpness implies that the plane is not very high, `otherwise the shadow would be blurred by the penumbra. Aeroplane shaped implies that the shadow is not foreshortened by the sun being at a low angle. Therefore, the photo is taken when the plane is "more or less" above the shadow which implies maybe an hour or two either side of noon.

So, if this is a genuine untouched photo, I think it was taken from fairly low altitude, an hour or two either side of noon.

The fact that the shadow is plane shaped rather than distorted gives us both the LOA and wingspan of the plane as guides to the size of the supposedly anomalous object in the photo.

Back in my days in fraud management, we used an ABCDE tool for making a preliminary assessment of whether a claim was high or low risk for fraud: that is, whether it required further investigation or could be accepted at face value. We considered the Actions, Behaviour, Convenience, Discrepancies, and Evidence. I plan to write this up as a discursive article for this forum some time.

For now, I'd say looking at the cropped photo, the general vagueness about times and dates, the convenience of the aeroplane's shadow being in the photo next to the anomaly, the apparent discrepancies over angles and times, and the poor quality of the evidence generally, I cannot accept this report at face value.
 
You can only see your own reflection in a flat surface if your line of sight is perpendicular to the reflective surface.

Of course! The reasons why Pelletier's account accommodates such a thing relate to the following points ...


Given that the surface of the sea is horizontal, a person sitting in an aeroplane would only be able to see the reflection of the plane they were in from directly above. Then they would have to be taking a photo through a window in the floor of the plane, or hanging out of the window.

Pelletier's description of the circumstances at the moment he snapped the photo not only accommodates these conditions, but actively suggests they could well have been in effect.

First, let's review ...

Pelletier was seated on the right (starboard) side of the aircraft, in the forward passenger compartment. The compartment's partition or bulkhead was directly behind his seat. Outside his side window was the rear portion of the starboard engine nacelle, which partially blocked his lateral view.

He'd seen what he identified as Hormuz Island on the horizon, and he wanted to see if he could photograph some of the ruins on the island.

According to his published account these are the circumstances leading up to his first sighting of the anomaly ...

Around 8:10 am, appeared on the horizon the small island of Hormuz and the southern extremity of the island of Kichm or Tawilah, the long island. Two or three tiny sails seemed motionless before Hormuz.

I took out of a box which contained a few clothes - the box placed above me in the baggage net - my camera to capture on a film what remained of the ruins of Hormuz ... The island already appeared, ocher red, with veins like dry leaves, veins miraculously white and shiny, those woven at the bottom of the roots by deposits of rock salt from elsewhere exploited: one more photo to add to the forty films impressed since my departure from Saigon!

I slid the window on my right. (I occupied the third armchair on the right, the second being empty and the naval officer occupying the first. Our companions were in exactly symmetrical places.) I leaned an elbow on the (bulkhead; partition; divider) and, with the rangefinder in my eyes, I stood up. I applied myself to frame the image I wanted to capture.

Here are some points regarding this scenario, taken at face value:

- He identified Hormuz Island in the distance, and wished to photograph the historical ruins on the island.
- By the time he'd unpacked his camera he was close enough to describe the island's fabled ochre deposits and strata.
- He prepared to take this photo through the window at his seat (3rd seat; starboard side; forward compartment).
- He "slid the window" beside his seat. {1}
- He braced himself with his elbow against the bulkhead (behind his seat) and stood upright to frame a picture.

Owing to the engine nacelle immediately outside his window standing erect would afford an advantage for obtaining either of two perspectives on an intended target:

(a) getting a clear view over the nacelle toward a target off at a distance, or ...
(b) obtaining as unobstructed a view directly downward (between fuselage and nacelle) as possible.

I suspect version (a) was his original reason for standing up, so as to photograph Hormuz Island from some distance offshore. However ...

Nowhere does Pelletier claim the foamy / bubbling arc-shaped eddy or swirling that initially caught his eye and at or near which the alleged beast appeared was close to Hormuz Island. This spot was out to sea at some indeterminate distance from shore.

This leaves open the possibility he stood to look outward toward Hormuz Island, but eventually exploited his stance / position to capture a photo of something on the sea surface more closely beneath the plane.

This notion that the beast photo was taken while looking nearly straight downward is consistent with his statement that:

I can't tell if the walking undulations are vertical or horizontal, due to the acuity of my visual angle, but the monster was surely progressing in undulations.
(Emphasis added)

{1} Even after trying multiple translation tricks and resorting to a dictionary to seek synonyms, I wasn't able to translate this as meaning anything other than he moved or opened the window in some sense / in some manner. I can find no textual nor any graphic evidence that the side windows on a Potez 62 were movable in any way. The only sliding / movable windows I can confirm on a Potez 62 were the side windows in the cockpit (which Pelletier never mentions he visited, but only says he viewed from behind through the open cockpit door). The only interpretation that makes sense to me is that he was referring to sliding the window's curtains out of the way.
 
... What we can tell from the reflection is that is very sharp and is aeroplane shaped.
The sharpness implies that the plane is not very high, `otherwise the shadow would be blurred by the penumbra. Aeroplane shaped implies that the shadow is not foreshortened by the sun being at a low angle. Therefore, the photo is taken when the plane is "more or less" above the shadow which implies maybe an hour or two either side of noon.
So, if this is a genuine untouched photo, I think it was taken from fairly low altitude, an hour or two either side of noon. ...

Agreed ...

As I mentioned earlier, I don't believe the plane was flying as high as its service ceiling. I'm not confident it was even flying as high as its spec cruising altitude (2000 m / 6562 ft).

The apparent lack of substantial foreshortening suggests the plane's silhouette couldn't be significantly offset laterally from the plane's vertical location, and this doesn't align with the (tentative) time of day and sun position parameters.

I've re-run the Planet Calc calculations for sun azimuth and elevation using the following modifications to maximus otter's initial runs:

- Location = Hormuz Island (27°04′N 56°28′E)
- Time = 0820 (insinuated in Pelletier's December 1936 article)
- Time Zone / Standard = IRST / TMT (local) = UTC + 3h 25m 44s = UTC + 3.429h

These changes yield the following:

Solar Azimuth = 115.69 degrees
Solar Elevation = 35.22 degrees

... and, by implication, ...

Planar / Compass 'Direction' of Shadow Projected = 295.69 degrees
WNW = 285; NW = 315

These tweaked parameters don't change the fact the airplane's shadow on the surface would be offset by a matter of miles.

Without knowing the flight altitude we can't be sure of the degree of such lateral shadow offset. We can, however, be sure that there's no way the aircraft's shadow lay essentially directly beneath the aircraft at the alleged time.

Without knowing flight heading at the moment we can't be sure whether the alignments of the apparent shadow, the solar azimuth and the aircraft's flight direction correlate.

To make matters even worse, we can't be certain the orientation of the enlarged / cropped image reflects the scene as it appeared to Pelletier riding in the airplane.

This is why I raised the issue of the aircraft silhouette being a reflection rather than a shadow. If the alleged time of image capture (circa 0820) is sound, the silhouette can't be the (same) plane's shadow. If the silhouette is in fact the plane's shadow, the photo couldn't have been taken at 0820.
 
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What do we know about this guy? ...

I've never been able to locate much information about Laurent Pelletier. He was a French military veteran (presumably of WW1). He seems to have been a civil engineer - perhaps an inspector of bridges and / or roads. He owned a rubber plantation at 'Canlo' in Indochina. I believe this is probably Can Lộc (district and / or town) on the north central coast of Vietnam.

In one or another account relating to the sea serpent sighting I recall reading that the 1936 trip was the first time he'd traveled back home to France via air. He elected to try the air route after determining it would save him something like 3 weeks compared to traveling by sea. I don't know if this was the first time he'd ever flown.

I also recall a comment that he'd not been back to France for some time prior to his autumn 1936 trip.

One would think that he was relatively affluent, being a plantation owner. He could afford a state of the art Zeiss 35mm camera.
 
I'm uncertain if this might be helpful, however, I have used Google translate and copied from the original article, in French:

A "sea monster" photographed in 1936
Christophe Kilian Christophe Kilian


This photo illustrated a newspaper article published in 1936

This story is first and foremost that of Mr. Laurent Pelletier, as it is related in this article in the West Flash on Sunday, which appeared on December 13, 1936.

This engineer from the Bridges and Roads Department left France a few years earlier for Saigon. There, he managed several plantations, in addition to his work for the colonial administration. Mr. Pelletier cannot return to France every year, it is too far, but now there is this newly created airline, Air France, which offers an air link. He does the math quickly, these countless flea jumps in the air (the number of stopovers is indecent), all the same save him ... 3 weeks compared to a sea trip!

On October 1, 1936, there was still a long way to go from France, when he took his seat in this small plane that took off from the modest runway in the town of Djask, in what is now Iran. In the aircraft, there are two other passengers, and there are the two crew members. 5 people in total. The cockpit is very close, and it is not separated from the rest of the plane. Laurent Pelletier attentively follows the maneuvers performed by the pilots, then he gazes at the sumptuous landscape offered by his window.

The trip is going to be long and boring he thinks, then he sees Hormuz looming. This island was already an important trade hub 500 years ago, and it is home to many historical remains. Not wanting to miss the opportunity to take a snapshot of these ruins, he digs into some cardboard box suspended above his seat by a net, and grabs his camera. Because Mr. Pelletier, we can give him infinite grace for that, is a photography enthusiast. As proof, at the end of his journey, he will have impressed around forty films!

The plane now flies over the island of Ormuz and Mr. Pelletier is captivated by this bright ocher coast, dotted with white ribs, these piles of rock salt in the hollow of the ravines. With his eye in the camera's viewfinder, his right hand on the focus ring, Mr. Pelletier is about to capture this moment. But something stops him, and calls out to him. Now let him tell us about his observation in his own words:

"It was then that the most exceptional event I have ever witnessed in my entire life occurred!

I saw it first, quite far from the coast - at a distance I could not appreciate - a long bubbling foam, surprising the dead calm in the middle. This eddy moved from west to east, in a wide arc.

My Contax still in hand, I followed this inexplicable curve with my eyes. When at a certain distance from her, I saw a dark, very long wavy shape spinning then disappearing, something that moved ... meandering, something much larger than the largest cetaceans that we can meet in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.

From this distance, such a disproportionate appearance testified to a monstrous reality!

No one on the plane was paying attention to me or what I was looking at… (…)… I didn't want to stop staring at the sea where this white swirl still seemed to be. Even, I was ready to trigger my lens and waited passionately for the phenomenon to happen again.

My hope was not in vain ... for the second time I saw a sort of snake emerge from the bubbling, this time very black, although submerged. You know that from an airplane you can clearly see what escapes ordinary observation, up to several tens of meters below the surface of the sea. The beast was soon fully visible. I quickly took two photos.

I could make out a small bulge, the head undoubtedly, a very long neck, then a more pot-bellied ring - exactly like these photos of a boa digesting a sheep - finally a very long tail, much longer than the neck, almost equal even to the length of it plus what I call the belly. I cannot tell if the ripples in the step were horizontal or vertical, due to the sharpness of my visual angle, but the monster was progressing steadily in ripples.

A small stream of foam followed the anterior end for a moment, probably the beast stuck its head out of the water at that moment. "


The article entitled "News from the sea serpent" comes from the archives of the National Library of France, which we thank because it has been kindly digitized at our request. It is now freely available here.
Mr. Pelletier is convinced that what he saw is the same type of creature as the Lochness monster, (born just 3 years before) in which he had hardly believed until then. According to the newspaper, Mr. Pelletier provided the original photograph which technicians and photographers meticulously inspected and enlarged. They are formal, there is no trace of trickery or rigging. This photograph is real. Its interpretation is necessarily open to debate, but it is astonishing that this document has gone completely unnoticed for nearly a century.

Because, we can agree, the supposed photos of sea monsters are very, very rare. This is far from anonymous, and accompanied by a testimony from someone curious and educated. There is even a certain precision made as to the location of the shooting location: 56 degrees east longitude, 27 degrees north latitude.

The only trace that I have found, subsequent to the publication of 1936, is in an article on the appearances of sea snakes which appeared in the review Indochine, in 1943. Mr. Pelletier's observation is baptized "Le serpent de mer de the Air France plane ”. Then it looks like the Ormuz sea monster has completely disappeared from radar.

Ideally, the original film should be found, because it did not a priori remain the property of the newspaper but that of Mr. Pelletier.

A case, once again, to follow ...

https://strangereality-blog.cdn.amp.../10/09/un-monstre-marin-photographie-en-1936/
 
All of the windows on the aircraft shown appear to be vertical panes of glass. I assume they were not double thickness for insulation like on a modern airliner, but nevertheless they are vertical.

It would be very difficult to take a photo of something immediately below the plane, or very nearly so, through a vertical window, even with a modern compact camera. Almost certainly, part of the frame would be in the shot, and there may be reflections off the inside of the glass. (I understand the photo shown is cropped, but nevertheless...)

Also, standing and manoeuvring the camera against the window to get exactly the right angle to take that photo clearly — and yet not alerting anyone else on the plane, either by saying, "Look at that down there," or one of the other passengers expressing polite curiosity? I find that hard to believe.
 
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... It would be very difficult to take a photo of something immediately below the plane, or very nearly so, through a vertical window, even with a modern compact camera. Almost certainly, part of the frame would be in the shot, and there may be reflections off the inside of the glass. (I understand the photo shown is cropped, but nevertheless...) ...

This is why it would be invaluable to see the original complete photo from which the published one was enlarged and (IMHO, certainly ... ) excerpted.

If you look closely at the published photo (such as it is ... ) the lower left-hand corner seems to include a small snippet of darkness slightly angled across the corner. If it were confirmed that this small inclusion represents the window border / boundary it would be a significant clue, because it would mean the airplane 'shadow' is oriented nearly perpendicular to the long axis of the plane within which Pelletier was standing. This would strongly suggest the photo wasn't what it was claimed to be.

If you enlarge the published photo and look more closely at the 'shadow' it seems to offer a hint of minor foreshortening, in that the apparently starboard wing is slightly larger than the apparently port wing - suggesting the 'shadow' was slightly offset laterally (relative to the plane's ground track).
 
A couple of comments about Pelletier's vantage point within the cabin ...

His account of seeing Hormuz Island and the eddy / arc / vortex on the surface at a distance would make a lot more sense if he weren't sitting by a side window looking out at the rear half of the engine nacelle.

There are two ways he could have obtained a broader vista on his surroundings:

- being positioned so as to look out the broad cockpit windshield / windows or ...
- moving back into the rear passenger compartment where the side windows' views weren't obstructed by the engines.

The Potez 62 cockpit 'flight deck' is elevated above the cabin floor to its rear, and there's no mention of Pelletier getting up and walking forward to peer through the open cockpit door.

Similarly, there's no mention of Pelletier moving to the rear compartment to get a better view. At face value, his account indicates he stood up from his seat twice - once to get his camera from the overhead luggage net, and once again to allow him to frame his photo looking radically downward.
 
If this was 1936 would that be the height of nessimania or would it have died down by then?

Or the French not read the DM or the Inverness Courier??
 
If this was 1936 would that be the height of nessimania or would it have died down by then?
Or the French not read the DM or the Inverness Courier??

Nessie and other contemporary sightings were still 'current' at the time.

The author of the December 1936 article mentioned Loch Ness and another sea serpent sighting at Halong Bay (p. 4).
 
And you say our man was the owner of a plantation on the coast in Northern Vietnam/French Indochina as was? :thought:

Yes. However, Pelletier himself didn't seem to be the one who'd mentioned the Halong Bay sighting(s).
 
Yes. However, Pelletier himself didn't seem to be the one who'd mentioned the Halong Bay sighting(s).

19687-004-1903D04A.jpg


Hạ Long Bay has an area of around 600 sq mi, including 1,960–2,000 islets...

The name Hạ Long means "descending dragon"
.”

There’s unsurprisingly a legend about the bay involving dragons. Interestingly, one of the many islands has a name that could be regarded as relevant to M. Pelletier’s photo: “...the place where the dragon's children wriggled their tails violently was called Bach Long Vy island (Bach: white-color of the foam made when Dragon's children wriggled, Long: dragon, Vy: tail)...”

maximus otter
 
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