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The Calvine UFO Sighting (Scotland; August 1990)

Paul_Exeter said:
Ha ha, good repsonse

But then this opens up the questions as to why no-one else saw the object or any plane spotters noted the identity of the out-of-place Harriers (or Hunters).
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Maybe they did, just not in conjunction with the UFO/fishing weight/WTF, hence didn’t remark on it. l quite frequently drive the A66 through Cumbria, and low-flying military aircraft are common enough to be unremarkable.

Also, the air distance from RAF Wittering - “The Home of the Harrier” - to Calvine is 342 miles. From memory (I’m open to correction here…) the operational range of a Harrier is only about 600 miles on internal tanks. That would mean that a Wittering Harrier would have only the briefest of “loiter time” over Calvine if the pilot didn’t want to try gliding home, or diverting to a base which might not have suitable facilities.

maximus otter
 
The parsimonious answer is that the Harriers were photo'd at some other time and place and added to the photo at a later date. The photographic expert who declared that this photo has not been manipulated has since changed his mind slightly.
A possible approach to disguising the collaging and construction of an image, either on the negative or print would be to
rephotograph a manipulated image on a coarser grain film so that a convincing and genuine grain distribution disguises
joins and artefacts of the manipulation. Whilst it is impossible to fully rule this out this would be unlikely due to the
fineness and consistency of the grain in this image.
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I'm reasonably sure this is a collage, rephotographed later. The Harriers might have been photo'd at an airshow, or something, months before. No exif data in a chemical photo.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
By the way, there is a pub called 'The Atholl Arms' just eight minutes from the Daily Record building in Glasgow.....

Dr Paul, I find it more unlikely that a big hotel receptionist would take a personal call for a seasonal dishwasher, know he was at work and then go and get him to take the call than if all the hotel staff were made to sign The Official Secrets Act
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I find it easier to believe in almost any UFO conspiracy than I do that anyone could get from the Daily Record building to the Atholl pub in 8 minutes.
 
Reverend D said:
I find it easier to believe in almost any UFO conspiracy than I do that anyone could get from the Daily Record building to the Atholl pub in 8 minutes.
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And a good bit longer going back. . . ("think about it?") :beer:
 
The plot thickens

The Search Narrows for the Photographer of the 1990 Calvine UFO Photo - Called the Best UFO Image Ever​


In 1990, two young men were walking in the Cairngorms National Park near Perth, Scotland, when they saw something in the sky. That ‘something’ looked like nothing they had ever seen before – a diamond-shaped UFO. Shortly thereafter, they saw something that was more familiar – RAF jets which appeared to circle around the UFO. Fortunately, one of the men had an actual camera (remember those?) and took a set of six color photos, including one of the UFO and a jet. That photograph has come to be known as the best image of a UFO ever taken. Perhaps that is why it has been kept in a secure classified file by the government ever since, and the two men seem to have disappeared. Last year, a retired RAF officer revealed he had kept a copy of the photo and released it to the public. This week, a researcher claimed he located a man who could be the photographer. Unfortunately, the man claims he remembers nothing. Could he have been brainwashed? Is he being threatened by the government? Is it a case of mistaken identity? Or is it something else? The mystery of the 1990 Calvine UFO takes another strange twist.
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https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2023...ine-UFO-Photo-Called-the-Best-UFO-Image-Ever/
 
It occurred to me today that should the MOD have wanted to confiscate any photos or negatives from the Daily Record at the time, it would only be a 5 minute walk to the Record building from the Glasgow MOD office...
 
From the 'Mysterious Universe' article;

They managed to locate one of the men who was now working at – get ready for this – the Ministry of Defence as a photo analyst at the same base to which the photos were sent for analysis in 1990! Is this the photographer?
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This is just really, really very strange indeed.
 
BS3 said:
From the 'Mysterious Universe' article;



This is just really, really very strange indeed.
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Agreed, what are the odds...?

Even if it proves to be the other Falkirk man they are looking for it is still an extraordinary coincidence. Is this a case of poacher-turned-gamekeeper i.e. the MoD were so impressed with his fakes that they offered him a job...? Or were the images a disinformation plant by the MoD during the Cold War to unsettle the Soviets...?

However, having read the reading the newspaper article I would disagree that a Falkirk FC supporter would necessarily have been born in Falkirk, in fact quite the opposite.
 
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Paul_Exeter said:
Agreed, what are the odds...?

Even if it proves to be the other Falkirk man they are looking for it is still an extraordinary coincidence. Is this a case of poack=her-turned-gamekeeper i.e. the MoD were so impressed with bis fakes that they offered him a job...? Or were the images a disinformation plant by the MoD during the Cold War to unsettle the Soviets...?

However, Having read the reading the newspaper article I would disagree that a Falkirk FC supporter would necessarily have been born in Falkirk, in fact quite the opposite.
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Even stranger, it says that the man they contacted stated he has no memory of the events. At all!

The two possibilities you outline are exactly the ones that came to my mind. I feel like the witness should really have come forward by now and their continued absence points to something not being quite as it seems with this case - not necessarily a straight 'hoax' but perhaps something even more convoluted.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Agreed, what are the odds...?

Even if it proves to be the other Falkirk man they are looking for it is still an extraordinary coincidence. Is this a case of poacher-turned-gamekeeper i.e. the MoD were so impressed with his fakes that they offered him a job...? Or were the images a disinformation plant by the MoD during the Cold War to unsettle the Soviets...?

However, having read the reading the newspaper article I would disagree that a Falkirk FC supporter would necessarily have been born in Falkirk, in fact quite the opposite.
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Wrote that yesterday with an end-of-(half)term hangover so have now corrected the typos...!

I feel his job with the MoD would dissuade him from going public, don't feel it would go down well with his superiors, hence the flat denial

The poacher-turned-gamekeeper scenario has famously happened in the world of cyber-hacking and fraud (e.g. Frank Abagnale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale). Could it have happened here? A 20-ish young man fools the MoD with his clever hoax, gets interviewed by the 'men from the ministry', admits his hoax and gets told - perhaps tongue-in-cheek - he can come and work for them someday if he gets the right qualifications. He then takes them up on their word after going to/finishing university...?

It is possible, and arguably eminently more possible than an alien spacecraft over Scotland... One problem with this theory is that there were reportedly two young men who witnessed the 'UFO', so what happened to the other...?
 
Well, I think the idea of a 'stealth blimp' or some sort of balloon has been floated before (if you'll pardon the expression) including on this very thread. If there is evidence BAE did test such a thing then it would certainly be a good fit.
 
Bigphoot2 said:
Possible non-ET explanation for the UFO
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The most interesting bit for me was that British Aerospace owned two test Harriers, can anyone verify this and if so, where are/were they based?

It is a good theory but why not fly this over one of the many MoD test ranges...?
 
Paul_Exeter said:
The most interesting bit for me was that British Aerospace owned two test Harriers, can anyone verify this and if so, where are/were they based?

It is a good theory but why not fly this over one of the many MoD test ranges...?
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Possibly based at Dunsfold, as that's where BAE's Harrier programme was based?
 
Early one morning I was heading north up the A6 in cumbria nothing else on the road
when I was passed at very low level by 2 Harriers one each side, they then swapped
sides and disappeared into the distance, woke me up that's for sure, I thought they
would be heading up to the ranges at Spadeadam but have no way of knowing,
I have also seen Buccaneers along the same stretch

https://www.raf.mod.uk/our-organisation/stations/raf-spadeadam/
 
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Paul_Exeter said:
The most interesting bit for me was that British Aerospace owned two test Harriers, can anyone verify this and if so, where are/were they based?

It is a good theory but why not fly this over one of the many MoD test ranges...?
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That's what puzzles me about it. Seems a long way to go to test something they wanted to keep secret and having a pair of Harriers flying about isn't exactly discreet.
 
Bigphoot2 said:
That's what puzzles me about it. Seems a long way to go to test something they wanted to keep secret and having a pair of Harriers flying about isn't exactly discreet.
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I have read that the ideal expert witness is a grey-haired, balding and bearded older man with glasses and our Professor Simon Holland fits this description to a tee and I feel this proffers him degree of gravitas for his videos that, whilst enjoyable, are really just educated guesses. In fact, I posted on this forum about the fishing float theory some days before his YT video offering the same theory and I can tell you it was nothing more than an educated guess on my part...
 
Paul_Exeter said:
I have read that the ideal expert witness is a grey-haired, balding and bearded older man with glasses and our Professor Simon Holland fits this description to a tee and I feel this proffers him degree of gravitas for his videos that, whilst enjoyable, are really just educated guesses. In fact, I posted on this forum about the fishing float theory some days before his YT video offering the same theory and I can tell you it was nothing more than an educated guess on my part...
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In the nicest possible way Holland is just one of those online sceptical types happy to throw out any theory with the veneer of authority as long as it suggests it isn't a 'UFO' (whatever one of those is).
 
BS3 said:
In the nicest possible way Holland is just one of those online sceptical types happy to throw out any theory with the veneer of authority as long as it suggests it isn't a 'UFO' (whatever one of those is).
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Indeed, and he ignores the fact that British Aerospace are not immune from UK law, eg:

https://app.croneri.co.uk/feature-articles/bae-systems-fined-80k-over-worker-s-gun-test-injury

Their activities will be insured just as you and I insure our cars, homes etc. and I somehow doubt their insurers would permit the testing of any experimental airframe over anywhere other than an approved test range.
 
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Sgt Girth said:
or Boscombe Down if we’re talking test pilot kind of stuff.
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Four years after the Calvine incident:


"On that particular night in 1994, an unusual aircraft began its take-off from runway 23. Something went wrong and the two American aircrew aborted their departure immediately. Military controllers at London Air Traffic Control Centre were alerted to the fact that a serious accident had occurred at Boscombe Down and that the runway was blocked. Later that night a witness saw a stranded aircraft at the east end of runway 23. A Tarpaulin covered the forward section and it appeared to have a collapsed nose wheel. There were a number of emergency vehicles around the aircraft. Most notable about the aircraft was the inward canting twin fins."

Continued:

https://www.military-airshows.co.uk/unex5.htm
 
BS3 said:
In the nicest possible way Holland is just one of those online sceptical types happy to throw out any theory with the veneer of authority as long as it suggests it isn't a 'UFO' (whatever one of those is).
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I don't think he is actually a professor either - not that it invalidates anything he says.
 
Beresford said:
Link to an article in today's Daily Record, naming the person who supposedly took the Calvine photograph.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scots-hotel-porter-could-hold-29380068
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The reverse of the Calvine photo:

Fqhf2mUXgAAPbxt


https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1632660260417683456

maximus otter
 
Fascinating stuff. Extensive searches have as yet failed to find him

Just a thought - definitely not Kevin and Russell i.e. the two young men involved rather than Kevin Russell...?
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Fascinating stuff. Extensive searches have as yet failed to find him

Just a thought - definitely not Kevin and Russell i.e. the two young men involved rather than Kevin Russell...?
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I suppose it's a possibility, but I thought they'd narrowed the name down to a person that worked in Pitlochry Hydro Hotel as a porter, who was believed to be from, or have moved to, Glasgow?
 
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