The Norfolk airship witnesses of May 1909

On 22 May 1909 the Norfolk News reported several people who saw an airship over Norfolk and Lowestoft, alongside an aeronaut's explanations.

The Norfolk News ran the article on 22 May 1909, on page 13. Brett Holman at Airminded summarises three independent witnesses from the Wednesday night. A well-known but unnamed gentleman from Wroxham had stopped his motorcycle late that night to check his headlight when a light flashed down on him from above for roughly thirty seconds. He saw no source and heard nothing, but had no doubt it was an airship.

Mrs. Turner of Catton described a cigar-shaped thing, long, a few hundred feet up, moving fast toward Norwich with a yellow light at each end of a framework underneath. She heard no buzzing. Mrs. Wigg of North Lowestoft told the paper that she woke early to a noise like a motor car and watched a dark shape go by quickly toward the south-west.

The aeronaut Percival Spencer of Spencer Brother offered two explanations. The more probable was that people were seeing model balloons, many of which were on sale, some lifted with petrol whose flame might glow across miles of countryside.