Kelmarsh, England: Motorists see lighted oblong airship with men on a platform
On the night of May 5, 1909, C. W. Allen and two other men motoring through Kelmarsh, Northamptonshire, heard an explosion and engine noise and saw a dark oblong shape with lights fore and aft, apparently carrying men on a platform.
Background
At night C. W. Allen and two other men were motoring through Kelmarsh near Northampton, England, when they heard a loud explosion in the air followed by the rumbling of an engine. Allen saw an oblong dark shape, perhaps 100 feet long, with lights in front and behind, moving at an altitude of 500–600 feet. The men dimly perceived some figures on a platform below it. It passed out of sight at about 20 mph to the northeast toward Peterborough. The East Anglian Daily Times and the Leicester Journal reported the sighting during the British airship wave of 1909. The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.