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An Unidentified Missile Over Hampshire, Southern England, Circa 1981-1984

markrkingston1

Ephemeral Spectre
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Location
London, England
This is a report of a missile escorted by two chase planes that I observed in a somewhat unusual location many years ago.

Background, location, and when:-
I was out on a trip with my parents and two family friends. I was aged somewhere around 10-13 so this event would have occurred somewhere around 1981 to 1984 (maybe a little before or a little after, but not much either way).

The five of us had gone to a picnic spot in southern England, probably somewhere in Hampshire. I do not now recall the exact location (although I may be able to identify it again if I study a map for long enough). The location was on an A or B class road with a layby/parking space. As I recall, the road ran roughly north-south. The parking area was on the eastern side of the road. A fairly steep, grassy hill ran up from the parking space to a forested ridge.

Details:-
My parents, family friends and I were walking around the grassy hill, looking for somewhere suitable to set up our picnic. I remember hearing the sound of an approaching low altitude jet aircraft and looked up.

To my surprise, what I saw was a missile being very closely followed/observed by a fighter. A short distance behind was another fighter. The entire ensemble shot across my field of view and disappeared from sight quickly (i.e. within a few seconds).

Sorry, no pictures. There wouldn't have been time to take a photo even if I'd had a camera in my hand.

The ensemble was flying from east to west, a few hundred yards to my north. This meant that I was able to clearly see the missile and both chase planes from their left hand sides. Their altitude was low, a few hundred feet above the top of the nearby ridge. Speed was very difficult to tell but definitely subsonic.

As I recall, the missile looked like it was of an anti-shipping type. Something very much like a Sea Eagle in configuration and size[1], but even at the time I could not be sure.

The first chase plane was flying to the right of the missile (i.e. was further away from me than the missile) and was slightly trailing the missile but overall was very close to it (probably around 30 feet away from the missile). As I recall, in terms of my line of sight, the cockpit of the first chase plane appeared slightly above the missile. Frustratingly I cannot now remember what type of aircraft the first chase plane was: It was either a Sea Harrier or a Phantom I think, but I cannot now recall which.

The second chase plane was a second or two behind and I recall was also a Sea Harrier or Phantom. I recall that the two chase planes were definitely different types, so it could have been "Sea Harrier then Phantom" or "Phantom then Sea Harrier".

And that was it. I saw it and then they were gone.

The other four people with me heard and vaguely saw the aircraft but were not quick enough to properly observe what they saw.

A bit about me:-
I was then (and still am) rather interested in military technology. There was no doubt about what I saw. The missile was not, for example, on a pylon on the nearest aircraft; it was definitely in free flight in a location where you would definitely not expect to see a missile in free flight.

Why was this odd?:-
This area of southern England is rural but is nonetheless populated with towns and villages. It's just not the kind of place you'd want to intentionally launch a missile (not even with, say, a dummy warhead or a telemetry package).

I was left considering two possibilities: (1) It was an intentional missile test (despite the potentially dangerous choice of location), or (2) it was an accidental launch. Neither of these possibilities seemed likely to me but I nevertheless saw what I saw and I could not (and still cannot) think of other plausible explanations.

(Just for the avoidance of doubt, I only saw the missile in free flight. I did not see it being launched.)

It should be noted that Salisbury Plain is about 40 miles (roughly) to the west of the area where I think this sighting took place, i.e. the missile and two aircraft were heading in roughly that direction. If what I saw was an intentional test (unlikely though I think this is due to safety reasons) then it is possible that the target area was on Salisbury Plain.[2]


And so that's it. It's only taken me 30+ years to write this down. What do you make of it?




Footnotes:-
1: Sea Eagle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Eagle_(missile). Length about 13 feet, wingspan about 4 feet.

2: Salisbury Plain is a large area of central southern England used as an exercise area, primarily by the British Army. Live firing occurs in this area. However, to the best of my knowledge it was not and is not normal for long range missile tests to occur on or terminate on Salisbury Plain. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury_plain
 
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P.S. I posted the above in the Ufology subforum because I wasn't sure where else it would be appropriate.

To be clear, I think the missile I saw was of normal Earthly origins, most likely in fact Royal Air Force or Royal Navy.
 
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It's a pity you didn't see it land. Do you remember hearing an impact, an explosion in the distance, possibly? Smoke?

What would an unarmed warhead do eventually, anyway?
 
It's a pity you didn't see it land. Do you remember hearing an impact, an explosion in the distance, possibly? Smoke?

Definitely no smoke or explosions. The ensemble simply flew out of my range of vision.

If it was a Sea Eagle then it would have had a range of 60-70 miles, so it could well have finally crashed far outside of my hearing.

What would an unarmed warhead do eventually, anyway?

If left to its own devices then the missile would eventually run out of fuel, glide for a bit, and then hit the ground (or sea, if it got that far). Devoid of fuel, there would be no explosion or fire; it would just end up as a pile of bent metal in a hole in the ground or at the bottom of the sea.

Just occasionally, test missiles with dummy warheads or telemetry packages actually make unguided but smooth landings after running out of fuel. However, the configuration of the Sea Eagle, with cruciform fins, would mean that it would probably dig in and break up on landing.

If it was under control of some sort then presumably it could have been directed to crash wherever desired.

If it was an accidental launch then the chase planes could perhaps have been waiting for a suitably remote area to shoot it down. Salisbury Plain would have been ideal for this if the missile's fuel could last out for that long, although the chances of an accidentally launched missile fortuitously but randomly overflying Salisbury Plain seems remote to me.
 
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Do you have any recollection of either fighter being a 2-place (2-person) version rather than the usual single-pilot version?
 
Was there anything in the local news? It should have been picked up by Southampton Radar? Did anyone else see it?
 
Do you have any recollection of either fighter being a 2-place (2-person) version rather than the usual single-pilot version?

I recall that the Sea Harrier I saw was a single seater. (In fact I'm not aware of there being a two seater Sea Harrier variant. There were two seater Harrier variants but not two seater Sea Harriers as far as I know).

The Phantom would certainly have been a two seater as the Phantom was definitely only made with two seats.
 
Was there anything in the local news? It should have been picked up by Southampton Radar? Did anyone else see it?

Nothing in local news that I know of. However, my parents and I were from London so not local.

The two family friends lived more locally but we never heard anything from them afterwards about the sighting.

It seems to me that if it had got to local news then I'd have expected it to get to national news too. But there was nothing that I was aware of.

This being pre-Internet, if other people saw it then there would not necessarily have been any way for them to directly let other people know on a large scale.
 
Off the top of my head ...

There's always a chance it was a runaway live munition. This possibility has so many variations I'll have to set it aside. It would be no surprise if a runaway 'live' missile incident went unreported in the press / media, so long as it didn't kill anyone or cause major damage.

The reason I asked about 2-seaters relates to the timeframe and the fact the lead jet was closely 'escorting' the missile.

One need not escort a runaway live missile as closely as you describe, and one shouldn't for safety reasons.

I suspect what you witnessed was a test / evaluation flight involving an unarmed missile. The object of the test / evaluation may have been the missile itself or one of the planes following it.

The 2-seater aspect relates to having a back-seater monitoring the test missile and / or standing ready to destroy it by remote control.

If the mystery missile were an early cruise missile (e.g., Tomahawk; who-knows-what else) it would definitely fit the early 1980's timeframe. Above and beyond the monitoring / range safety functions already noted for a back-seater, some early cruise missile tests were done with a missile controller ('pilot') sitting in the back seat of a chase / escort plane.

One other possibility comes to mind ... It may have been some sort of training mission for the trailing plane, performed against an unarmed drone missile escorted by the lead plane.
 
The fact that both planes could keep up with the missile is interesting. Surely a missile would fly much faster than a sea harrier?
 
The fact that both planes could keep up with the missile is interesting. Surely a missile would fly much faster than a sea harrier?

That's another reason I tilted toward the training drone / cruise missile sort of angles. An air-to-air strike munition doesn't fly that slowly (e.g., Sparrow missiles travel at over Mach 2).
 
Early experimental drone or UAV?
 
Might even have been a towed drogue target, they were commonly used in the 1970's for ground to air gunnery practise and the towing plane was a long way ahead of the drogue, think 1000 yards or more.
 
Navy air bases for Harrier jets at the time in southern England were Culdrose in Cornwall and Yeovilton in Somerset.

Harrier jets were stationed at Yeovilton [the main base for aircraft carrier training in the UK] until very recently and regularly flew all over the south & west on training exercises - we regularly heard sonic booms and even once saw a commercial-size airliner with a pair of fighter jets shadowing it, to this day we don't know if it was a real Big Cheese person on board or just training!

Live in any rural area with sparsely scattered towns and fewer cities and you'll get used to all the military training flights :) In my back garden in c.2002 in a very rural area we had a friendly Chinook fly around and buzz us after me & my disabled uncle enthusiastically waved to them on their first run over!
 
The reason I asked about 2-seaters relates to the timeframe and the fact the lead jet was closely 'escorting' the missile.

One need not escort a runaway live missile as closely as you describe, and one shouldn't for safety reasons.

This is a good point. It lends strength to it being an intentional test, although it still begs the question of why they were doing this over a relatively heavily populated area when the UK has at least one missile test range off the coast where it could have been tested safely. More on this below.

I suspect what you witnessed was a test / evaluation flight involving an unarmed missile. The object of the test / evaluation may have been the missile itself or one of the planes following it.

The 2-seater aspect relates to having a back-seater monitoring the test missile and / or standing ready to destroy it by remote control.

If the mystery missile were an early cruise missile (e.g., Tomahawk; who-knows-what else) it would definitely fit the early 1980's timeframe. Above and beyond the monitoring / range safety functions already noted for a back-seater, some early cruise missile tests were done with a missile controller ('pilot') sitting in the back seat of a chase / escort plane.

Yes, as above, it seems most likely that I witnessed a test of some sort.

I agree that the timing would be about right for a Tomahawk[1]/Gryphon[2] test but, to be clear, the missile was not a Tomahawk or Gryphon. I was very familiar indeed with the shape of these missiles at the time and would undoubtedly have recognised one in flight if I had seen one.

Furthermore, although I can't remember any markings on the aircraft, the Sea Harrier involvement meant that it was almost certainly a British exercise but the Royal Navy did not operate Tomahawks until the late 1990s. The UK has never operated the Gryphon.

( I do not intend to tell you stuff you already know but I point this out for clarity and for the avoidance of doubt: On a technical point, the type of missile that I think I saw (an anti-ship missile) is technically a type of cruise missile. A "cruise missile" is, broadly speaking, any missile that flies a horizontal path like an aircraft. Thus the Tomahawk/Gryphon is a cruise missile and so are anti-ship missiles of the era such as the Sea Eagle[3], Exocet[4] or RBS-15[5].

Unfortunately and confusingly, the phrase "cruise missile" has rather been appropriated by the infamous Ground Launch Cruise Missile version of the Tomahawk (the Gryphon), as infamously based in the UK in the 1980s.

And so, to confirm, what I saw was most certainly some type of cruise missile but was (I think) an anti-ship cruise missile, not necessarily what the public thinks of colloquially as a "cruise missile". )​


I've been pondering why an intentional missile test would take place over land when the UK has at least one over-water missile range available to it, and a possible reason might be that what I saw was a test of a land attack version of an anti-ship cruise missile. A land attack version of Sea Eagle was considered but after the timeframe in which this sighting occurred.

I should also note that the timeframe of the sighting was about right for testing of the Sea Eagle itself, but this still doesn't address why it was being tested over land in a relatively heavily populated area. If over-land testing was needed, there were and are far less heavily populated areas of the UK to use!



Footnotes:-
1: Tomahawk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_(missile).
2: Gryphon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-109G_Ground_Launched_Cruise_Missile. This is the infamous "cruise missile" that was operated in the UK by the USAF in the 1980s.
3: Sea Eagle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Eagle_(missile).
4: Exocet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocet.
5: RBS-15: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBS-15.
 
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Replying to multiple posts here.

The fact that both planes could keep up with the missile is interesting. Surely a missile would fly much faster than a sea harrier?

No, not at all. The type of missile that I thought I saw, an anti-ship cruise missile, would have been subsonic. Many of the common anti-ship cruise missiles at the time with a configuration similar to what I saw (missiles such as Sea Eagle, Exocet, RBS-15, Harpoon) were subsonic. Any normal jet fighter aircraft could keep up with most of them in flight. Of those, the Exocet was fastest but still just subsonic.

I am certain I didn't see an Exocet, although it was operated by the Royal Navy in that timeframe.

My money at this stage is on it being a Sea Eagle, or some development version of a Sea Eagle.

As an aside, there would be no point developing a new anti-ship missile today that was not supersonic or even hypersonic since subsonic missiles are too vulnerable to modern defences but, back then, western anti-ship cruise missiles usually did fly at normal subsonic jet aircraft speeds.

Early experimental drone or UAV?

Could be. Note that the drones and what we now called UAVs have been around for a long time. The UK operated Jindivik[1] target drones from the 1950s!

However, Jindiviks in the UK were fired as target drones at Aberporth in west Wales, over the sea. (And what I saw was definitely not a Jindivik).

And that's why I find this sighting so weird: The UK has over-sea missile test ranges. So why test what appeared to be a missile (or drone) over land and in particular over the relatively heavily populated south of England? It doesn't make sense.

Might even have been a towed drogue target, they were commonly used in the 1970's for ground to air gunnery practise and the towing plane was a long way ahead of the drogue, think 1000 yards or more.

Good thought but I would still have seen and heard the towing aircraft. Also it was dangerously low for a towed drogue: The height above ground would have been way less than the length of the tow line. But, then again, testing a missile over southern England is hardly what you would call sensible or safe. And yet there it was.



Footnote:-
1: Jindivik: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAF_Jindivik.
 
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Navy air bases for Harrier jets at the time in southern England were Culdrose in Cornwall and Yeovilton in Somerset.

Harrier jets were stationed at Yeovilton [the main base for aircraft carrier training in the UK] until very recently and regularly flew all over the south & west on training exercises - we regularly heard sonic booms and even once saw a commercial-size airliner with a pair of fighter jets shadowing it, to this day we don't know if it was a real Big Cheese person on board or just training!

Live in any rural area with sparsely scattered towns and fewer cities and you'll get used to all the military training flights :) In my back garden in c.2002 in a very rural area we had a friendly Chinook fly around and buzz us after me & my disabled uncle enthusiastically waved to them on their first run over!

Absolutely. Low flying military aircraft are a common sight in country areas. Several years after this sighting I had the pleasure of living in an area of south Wales with some interesting low flying activity.

BUT... a free flying missile is definitely not a common sight, at least not above the rural (but nevertheless relatively heavily populated) areas of southern England.
 
Reminds me of the Ghost Rocket sightings in Sweden after WW2. Classic, stereotypical rocket shape (sometimes with fins,) flying at sub-sonic speeds, sometimes slowing down and turning before landing or crashing into lakes.
 
What is it about picnics that attracts uninvited guests? ;)

V1_Bomb.jpg
 
BUT... a free flying missile is definitely not a common sight, at least not above the rural (but nevertheless relatively heavily populated) areas of southern England.

Definitely not! But also very exciting/scary - you've seen something very rare!
 
The Falklands war occurred in 1982. Several ships were damaged or sunk by anti-ship missiles. I'd guess this is a post-Falklands anti-ship missile exercise, training pilots to intercept subsonic missiles - (though this does seem an odd place to do it).
 
(though this does seem an odd place to do it).

Quite so. This is what is odd about any intentional test/exercise scenario. There are lots of better places to do it than over land over the south of England.

I think that's what is Fortean about it: The very odd location for what I saw.

The Falklands war occurred in 1982. Several ships were damaged or sunk by anti-ship missiles. I'd guess this is a post-Falklands anti-ship missile exercise, training pilots to intercept subsonic missiles

Certainly the timing was around the time of the Falklands, either somewhat before or after. However, as with EnolaGaia's point that getting that close to an accidentally launched missile would have been unwise (and unnecessary), there is no need to get that close to a missile you are practising shooting down. Neither a guns shot nor an air-to-air missile shot would need to be anything like as close. Of course, I may have seen the aircraft when they were simply transiting to a location that was more suitable for gunnery or missile practice.

But we still come back to the issue that, no matter what the intention, launching a missile over land (and over the relatively heavily populated south of England at that) would be dangerous, especially when over-sea ranges are available for exactly that sort of practice.

Unless some pilots come forward one day and explain what happened, I guess we'll never know for sure. Or does anyone want to try a FOI request?
 
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... But we still come back to the issue that, no matter what the intention, launching a missile over land (and over the relatively heavily populated south of England at that) would be dangerous, especially when over-sea ranges are available for exactly that sort of practice. ...

Bear in mind that the two fighters each represented a destructive crash risk (to anyone on the ground) themselves - a risk that was greater than that associated with an unarmed missile.

I can think of 2 possible explanations why a missile test was being done over land:

(1) Ease / reliability of recovery. Replace an active warhead with a pop-off parachute pod, allowing the spent missile to drift to the ground. If the test had occurred out over the sea, the missile might have sunk and the test would have been wasted.

(2) This is one of the reasons I suggested a prototype cruise missile (-type device) ... Early cruise missiles didn't navigate by GPS alone. They were following a pre-recorded 'tape' of terrain data plotted with respect to their intended path over land. Testing this early navigation motif couldn't be informatively performed out over the essentially featureless 'terrain' of the open sea.
 
Bear in mind that the two fighters each represented a destructive crash risk (to anyone on the ground) themselves - a risk that was greater than that associated with an unarmed missile.

Absolutely not so, I would say. Low altitude flights by military aircraft are quite common over much of rural England. I was not overly surprised to see low flying military aircraft in that location. There is a crash risk, of course, but it's quite low in practice.

In comparison, a missile is a vastly greater risk than manned aircraft. It will run out of fuel sooner, it is, overall, more likely to fail mechanically or electrically than a manned aircraft, and well... it's just not done over populated areas in the UK (and rural southern England certainly qualifies as populated in this sort of context).

Even drones/UAVs (such as flown at Aberporth) have, until very recently, had very limited permissions to overfly land in the UK due to the greater safety risk of unmanned aerial vehicles compared to manned aircraft. The reason that Aberporth was selected for drone flights was so that they could be launched from land but fly out over the sea. In this context, the idea that permission was granted back in the early 1980s for what appeared to be an anti-ship cruise missile to intentionally overfly southern England at low altitude seems wholly incredible.

I can think of 2 possible explanations why a missile test was being done over land:

(1) Ease / reliability of recovery. Replace an active warhead with a pop-off parachute pod, allowing the spent missile to drift to the ground. If the test had occurred out over the sea, the missile might have sunk and the test would have been wasted.

(2) This is one of the reasons I suggested a prototype cruise missile (-type device) ... Early cruise missiles didn't navigate by GPS alone. They were following a pre-recorded 'tape' of terrain data plotted with respect to their intended path over land. Testing this early navigation motif couldn't be informatively performed out over the essentially featureless 'terrain' of the open sea.

Oh absolutely, both of these are most certainly plausible explanations for a missile test in their own right. Indeed, I mentioned earlier the possibility of a land attack version of the Sea Eagle as well. However, they still don't explain why such tests would have been carried out over southern England. As I mentioned in an earlier post, if the hypothetical tests/exercises absolutely had to be carried out over land then there were far less populated areas of the UK over which it could be done much more safely.

If anyone else had seen a missile (or even a large drone, at the time) being flown over southern England then I would have said that it was utterly implausible due to the unnecessarily excessive risk of flying missiles over such an area. And yet I saw it myself.

And it is this implausibility due to enhanced risk compared to manned aircraft that makes it so inexplicable to my mind.

Clearly there IS an explanation and, as far as I can see, it has to be either erroneous launch or intentional test, but both these possibilities in that particular location have massive improbability factors, so to speak.

It's a weird one but there it was. On the balance of probabilities, I tend towards it being an intentional test. But I think that it is not something that, even in the far less safety-conscious early 1980s, would have been admitted publicly when carried out in that location area due to the inherent danger of firing missiles (or even drones, if that is what it was) over such an area. Too many towns, too many villages, too many people, too much infrastructure. Other parts of the country would have been much safer if over-land flight was needed. As I say, a missile or drone has a much higher risk factor than manned aircraft.

It is the incredible improbability of it being a test in that location that caused me to consider that it might have been an erroneous launch but even that possible explanation has its problems.

I can only conclude, as far as any conclusions are possible, that the Royal Navy (the Sea Harrier presence makes it likely to be a RN activity) thought they could get away with an intentional test. And I guess they did get away with it! I am certain they would not try such a thing today over southern England.
 
In the context of doing a risk assessment, a probably fuel-exhausted missile (especially one equipped with an emergency drop chute) represents a lot less potential damage on the ground than a certainly-fueled Harrier or Phantom.

I think you're overestimating the military's risk threshold for overflying populated areas.

In any case, you provided the most likely explanation for overflight of that particular area in your original post - i.e., they were headed for Salisbury Plain.
 
In the context of doing a risk assessment, a probably fuel-exhausted missile (especially one equipped with an emergency drop chute) represents a lot less potential damage on the ground than a certainly-fueled Harrier or Phantom.

No, these are not comparable risks. The point is that a missile is bound to crash eventually (and is far more likely to fail unexpectedly than a manned aircraft) whereas a manned aircraft is not bound to crash at all. Whilst military aircraft crash more often than commercial aircraft, it is still relatively rare.

This is why low altitude flights of military aircraft are quite common over rural England but, in comparison, it is not an exaggeration to say that (long range/cruise-type) missile flights are officially unknown over most land areas of the UK.

I think you're overestimating the military's risk threshold for overflying populated areas.

No, really I'm not. It is utterly unthinkable (then or now) for the armed forces to openly or legally carry out free flying missile tests over an area such as southern England. As I mentioned, it is only very recently that the rules for drone operations over land (i.e. unmanned aircraft that are not actually supposed to crash at the end of their flight) have been slightly liberalised, and this is when drones have been operated by the UK armed forces for over 60 years!

If the missile was an intentional test then I am certain it was breaking a great many rules at the time (and still would be).

In any case, you provided the most likely explanation for overflight of that particular area in your original post - i.e., they were headed for Salisbury Plain.

It is certainly a possibility that Salisbury Plain was the target. Since there was a missile there, where there should not have been one, it means that Salisbury Plain was a plausible target. But, like everything else about this, it would be surprising (to say the least).

I called Salisbury Plain a large area but it's only large on the rather compact scale of southern England. That is to say, it's actually rather small when we're talking about a missile with a 60 mile range that is vastly more likely to malfunction than a manned aircraft. It is not for nothing that, to the best of my knowledge, long range missile tests are officially unknown on Salisbury Plain. The area just isn't big enough to do that sort of missile test safely.

Weapons fired on Salisbury Plain usually include small arms, tanks and anti-tank missiles. The longest range weapons normally fired there would be some artillery. I have heard of the Rapier short range surface to air missiles being fired there. But nothing with a massively longer range.

So you can see that, although Salisbury Plain's proximity and direction compared to the sighting location is suggestive, it is not much more likely as a destination than anything else.

Nothing makes sense about this sighting, and that is what I find frustrating about it. If this sort of missile testing was common then it would be much better known, but I know it's not common (that is to say: it is utterly unknown to the best of my knowledge, except for my sighting). But that just means (if it was an intentional test) that I was incredibly lucky to see it at all, and that is statistically unlikely in itself.
 
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