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The UK's X-Files: MOD Files / Condign Report / Etc.

Ronson8 said:
azuredoor said:
rynner said:
Huge rise in British UFO sightings

The number of UFO sightings reported to the MoD is up from 97 to 135
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Well its quite staggering really, an increase of 38, oooooo
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For a moment there, I thought your arithmetic was staggeringly out, but I guess you meant 38, ooooow!
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These newspaper journalists are worthless, do they not even read what they write or check it up? If you compare the ufo reports in 1997 to 2007, rather than 2006 to 2007, there has actually been a huge fall! What is the most significant thing of all, IMO, is that there was a huge fall in sightings after Sept 11. Ufo reports to the MOD now, are almost near normal levels.

Link*

*EDIT: Link shortened by WJ
 
Airliner had near miss with UFO

A passenger jet bound for Heathrow Airport had a near miss with a UFO, Ministry of Defence files reveal.

The captain of the Alitalia airliner shouted "Look out" to his co-pilot at the sight of a brown missile-shaped object shooting past them overhead.

Civil Aviation Authority and military investigations could not explain the 1991 incident near Lydd in Kent.

The unsolved close encounter features in UFO-related military documents made available by the National Archives.

After ruling out the object flying past the Alitalia jet being a missile, weather balloon or space rocket, the MoD closed the inquiry.

Nineteen files covering sightings between 1986 and 1992 are being made available online.

Almost 200 such files will be made available by the MoD over the next four years.

The current batch also includes a US Air Force pilot's account of being ordered to shoot down a UFO that appeared on his radar while he flew over East Anglia.

There is also an MoD request that army and navy helicopters not take photographs of crop circles, because of concerns about undermining the official line that the military did not investigate unexplained phenomena.

And the files also contain a letter from a woman claiming to be from the Sirius system who said her spacecraft - also containing two "Spectrans" with "Mr Spock ears" - crashed in Britain during World War II.

UFO expert and journalism lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, Dr David Clarke, said the documents would shed new light on relatively little-known sightings.

He said some conspiracy theorists would already have decided that the release of the papers was a "whitewash".

He added: "Because the subject is bedevilled by charlatans and lunatics, it is career suicide to have your name associated with UFOs, which is a real pity.

"The National Archives are doing a fantastic job here. Everyone brings their own interpretation.

"Now you can look at the actual primary material - the stuff coming into the MoD every day - and make your own mind up."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7679145.stm

Includes video: Dr David Clarke talks about this incident and other UFO sightings (includes library footage)
 
They've found Clarke have they, now? All they could rustle up for the Today programme was Nick Pap. Waking up with him pontificating down your lug-hole is a bit alarming. :shock:

More from The Grauniad

Odd, intriguing and alarming UFO files released

• US pilot was ordered to fire missiles at blip on screen
• MoD makes papers public after enthusiasts' pleas

Ian Sample, science correspondent

The Guardian, Monday October 20 2008

On a cloudy night in Kent, Milton Torres, a US air force fighter pilot based at RAF Manston, was scrambled to intercept a UFO. Ordered to go full throttle towards East Anglia, within minutes he was 15 miles from a mysterious blip that looked as big as a B-52 bomber on his screen. He was ordered to fire a full salvo of 24 missiles, but before he could, the object vanished.

Details about the incident, on May 20, 1957, appear among 19 files released by the Ministry of Defence and newly revealed by the National Archives. It is the second tranche of UFO files to be made public since a handful were released in May.

The reports range from the bizarre to the intriguing. There is the Alitalia pilot who shouted to his co-pilot to "look out" as a brown, missile-shaped object shot past the cockpit, and a sketchy self-portrait of a pointy-eared woman in a gown, who told the MoD she had crashlanded on Earth during the second world war, having left her home planet of warrior women.

The MoD released the files, covering 1986 to 1992, after a flood of requests from enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists who are convinced the truth is out there.

Details of the East Anglia event only emerged after Torres, who was warned never to mention it, did discuss it with a military historian at a reunion at RAF Manston in 1988. The MoD, whose policy until 1967 was to destroy UFO files every five years, had no data on the event.

An account from Torres, now 77 and living in Florida, describes his anxiety at failing to fire after struggling to read codes on a scrap of paper in the cockpit of his F-86D plane. "It was totally black and the lights were down for night flying. I used my flashlight, still trying to fly and watch my radar. To put it quite candidly, I felt very much like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest," he said.

David Clarke, a UFO expert at Sheffield Hallam University, said: "If the UFO had turned out to be a civil aircraft that had strayed off its course, it could have been a major international incident, and yet it's been airbrushed out of history."

He believed the pilot was a guinea pig in a test of the Palladium system, developed by the US to make "phantom" aircraft appear on Soviet radars.

Another incident in Britain, in April 1991, recorded a captain of an Alitalia airliner, flying at an altitude of more than four miles on route to Heathrow from Milan, seeing a missile-like object. At first this was labelled "cruise missile?" but it was quickly found not to be a military weapon. There were a number of similar sightings within the next six months. Four passengers on a Dan Air Boeing 737 spotted a "wingless projectile" flying under their plane.

Other papers reveal the MoD's sensitivity to military helicopters taking pictures of crop circles, which they feared would undermine the line that the government had no interest in the phenomenon.

Documents also relate how a Tina Turner concert triggered a spate of UFO sightings in London in 1989, and how one person was "contacted by aliens" descended from "legendary feathered serpents from ancient Peru".

Clarke said the papers showed the government could not conceal anything and that people were not going to find "that elusive bit of evidence that proves we're being visited by aliens".
 
David Cameron: we will publish secret UFO files
David Cameron admitted to the audience that he has no idea if there is intelligent life in space
Nico Hines

David Cameron vowed today that if he was elected Prime Minister he would bring an end to the era of government secrecy over UFOs and extra-terrestrial activity.

Speaking at one of his “Cameron Direct” public meetings, the Conservative Party leader pledged that a Tory government would be “entirely open and frank” in sharing any information about alien life-forms.

At the meeting in Tynemouth, North-East England, he was questioned about a string of recent mysterious incidents. “I have no idea if there is intelligent life out there,” he replied. “I do believe in freedom of information and openness and this question has been asked from time to time, and I think we should be as open and clear as possible.”

“What has tended to happen when people have looked at the Roswell incident, or when people have looked at pictures, is a rational explanation tends to be produced to try and show what has happened is not what those who believe in UFOs suggest.

“But I think we should be as open as possible, so I would be quite happy to give you a guarantee that if I became Prime Minister I would always be entirely open and frank about these things.

“I don’t think any of us have any clue whether there’s intelligent life out there and it is certainly not something that any Government should seek to hide from anyone.”

Conservative Party officials were not immediately able to clarify whether the new government would release the cache of existing classified documents or simply introduce a more relaxed policy towards the publication of future discoveries or investigations.

During today’s question and answer session, a member of the audience said to the MP for Witney: “In July last year the respected scientist and astronaut Dr Edgar Mitchell, who was the sixth man to walk on the moon, spoke on a British radio station.

“He said the American government had had contact with extra terrestrials on multiple occasions and that these were ongoing. He spoke about the Roswell event in 1947, where wreckage of a downed UFO was recovered and found to contain alien bodies.

“He said this event was real but was covered up by the Government for many years.

“Do you agree with me that the British people have a right to know if we have been visited, and if so, when you become prime minister will you seek to lift the veil of secrecy and give the public the truth that they deserve and that has been covered up for all these years?”

Mr Cameron laughed and replied: “I’m convinced we have been visited by alien life forms - and one of them is the trade secretary Peter Mandelson.”

He later apologised to the man for the joke, but offered no apology to Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary. :twisted:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/p ... 600271.ece
 
UFO spotted opposite Houses of Parliament
A multicoloured spacecraft seen floating opposite the Houses of Parliament was among the hundreds of UFOs reported in 2008, it has been disclosed.

By Matthew Moore
Last Updated: 7:37AM GMT 05 Feb 2009

The number of UFO sightings logged with the Ministry of Defence more than doubled to 285 last year, a rise described as "phenomenal" by experts. It is the highest number of sightings in 10 years.

All the incidents are included in a document released by the MoD yesterday, which details the date, time and location of the sightings, along with a brief summary of the eyewitness reports.

The Palace of Westminster sighting on Feb 12 is described as follows: "There was a craft that had green, red and white lights. It was still and static in the sky. It was seen for about an hour and a half." There is no information about who reported the UFO or what it may have been.

The MoD only investigates reports of unidentified flying objects that it considers may pose a risk to national security, and most of the incidents seem just to have been logged and ignored. :roll: One UFO, in the skies over Stroud in Gloucestershire on June 2, is recorded only as "a sighting of something".

Many of the sightings read like the products of overactive imaginations. In Scarborough, North Yorkshire on June 11 a member of the public reported seeing "a cork shaped object that glowed like an angel, flew up and over some trees".

Others are strikingly specific, like this description of a UFO seen near Blackpool in Lancashire on Sept 8: "An object, the shape of a chewing gum pack, black in colour and had three circles of lights underneath it, emitting a dull orange light. Was about 150 feet long and 50 feet wide."

Nick Pope, who used to investigate UFOs for the MoD in the 1990s and is now one of the country's leading UFO authorities, said that the doubling of sightings was "statistically extremely significant." In 2007 there were 135 reported sightings, and just 97 in 2006.

"If it was a more modest increase one could say it was due to all sorts of reasons but this is phenomenal," he said.

"There are some interesting clusters of sightings in the summer where there were six sightings on the same day, albeit in different parts of the country and with different descriptions."

Mr Pope said that the increase in reporting was probably linked to the MoD's release of documents from its UFO archive in May, which made headlines across the world and helped make the phenomenon a mainstream issue again.

Many of archive documents featured testimonies from policemen and pilots, which "sent a message to people that there is nothing to be ashamed of" about reporting a UFO, Mr Pope said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... ament.html
 
The increase in UFO sightings is more likely to be tied to the relatvely large number of sky lantern incidents, whick has sparked of a 'flap' in the Mail and the Sun. I doubt very much that the release of UFO files has made any significant impact on the number of sightings; they are pretty dull fare.

Incidentally, when someone reports a 'green, red and white' stationary UFO in February, I immediately wonder where Sirius is in relation to the observer. The scintillations of that star are well-known to cause multicoloured sightings.
 
UFO files show 'close encounter'

A boomerang-shaped object seen from an airport control tower and a woman's encounter with an "alien" are among the secrets revealed in official UFO files.

The woman reported seeing a glowing, spherical object rise into the air in Norwich after meeting a man who said he came from a planet similar to Earth.

In another sighting, a triangular craft hovered then "shot off at 500mph".

The third set of UFO documents to be released by the Ministry of Defence covers the period from 1987 to 1993.

In November 1989 a "completely terrified" woman contacted RAF Wattisham in Suffolk to report her close encounter with a man claiming to be an alien.

She said she met the fair-haired man with a Scandinavian-type accent as she walked her dog on a sports field.

He told her crop circles were caused by others like him who had travelled to Earth and that the purpose of his visit was friendly.

He then said he had spoken to her because he felt it was important to have contact with humans even though he was told not to.

As the unidentified woman ran home she heard a loud buzzing noise and turned to see a large, spherical object, glowing orange-white, rise steadily until out of sight.

A letter from RAF Wattisham to the MoD and Norfolk police described it as "one of our more unusual UFO reports".

Three years later two air traffic controllers at London's Heathrow Airport reported seeing a black, inverted boomerang-shaped UFO from their control tower.

It was stationary then moved steadily in the morning sun, the files say.

A week earlier on a coastal road in Louth, Lincolnshire, several people had reported similar sightings of a large, triangular-shaped object with three lights.

Many witnesses reportedly stopped their cars and got out for a better look before it turned on its axis and zoomed off "at 500mph towards north west".

Other accounts of strange lights and unexplained objects had plausible explanations.

In November 1990, the crews of six RAF Tornado jets reported being overtaken by a "giant UFO" while flying over Germany.

They thought it was a test flight for the then top-secret US Stealth fighter, but it turned out to be the burning debris from a Soviet rocket body used to launch a satellite into orbit.

On 31 March 1993 various reports of moving lights over south-west England and south Wales were later traced to the re-entry of a Russian Cosmos rocket body.

The files suggest it had burned up, disintegrating over the North Atlantic.

In 1992, a bright cigar-shaped object seen flying silently over central London at night triggered a "spate" of sightings, notably in Ilford and Romford.

It was later identified "almost certainly" as an illuminated airship advertising the Ford Mondeo car.

UFO expert Dr David Clarke said: "The vast majority of reports are ordinary things seen in extraordinary situations.

"So many things can be interpreted as unusual, you've got to eliminate all that noise and see what's left.

"I don't think there's any solid evidence that we have been visited by intelligent life but I don't think you can rule that out.

"There are many good examples of puzzling things, for example seen on radar by the military, that need investigating."

The files, which can be downloaded from the National Archives website, are being released as part of a three-year project.

These latest documents are the first containing information written by defence intelligence staff to be made public.

Dr Clarke said they were among tens of thousands of secret files contaminated with asbestos and were in danger of being destroyed.

They were eventually saved after a campaign by historians to rescue them from the old War Office building in Whitehall.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7954001.stm
 
UFO files: MoD fears over 'PR disaster'

UFO files: MoD fears over 'PR disaster'

Ministry of Defence efforts to create a computer database of UFO reports were halted amid fears of a potential public relations disaster should its existence come to light, according to files out today.

The aim was to produce a database which could supply information and explanations when ministers were asked questions in Parliament about sightings.

But the project was halted following concerns from a senior MoD official, head of the Air Staff Secretariat, about the public reaction if there was a leak to the media.

Correspondence from 1988 shows that records of all UFO sightings had been maintained on paper "until recently" when a computer database was begun - but they were not seen as a priority by the military.

"I personally doubt that the the MoD would lose much if we filed UFO reports in 'WPD' (the waste paper basket)," according to one unnamed official.

"It is a subject that is given prominence by enthusiastic 'cranks' and others, who we should perhaps not describe as cranks, e.g. the Lords Hill-Norton and Threthgarne (sic)."

He appeared to be referring to the late Lord Peter Hill-Norton, a former Chief of the Defence Staff, and Lord David Trefgarne, the former Conservative defence minister.

An undergraduate on a year-long placement with one MoD division could be given the task of creating a historical UFO database, the official suggested in January that year.

But another letter dated March revealed the project was to be ditched because it "contravened" statements from ministers saying UFOs did not post a threat to the UK and that resources would not be diverted to investigate incidents.

"I also understand that there was some concern about public reaction if knowledge of the work being undertaken emerged in the media," the official wrote.

He said it now seemed "all work must stop" but that UFO incidents would continue to be logged "as and when" they took place.

UFO expert Dr David Clarke said of the revelations: "It shows again how sensitive they were to what the media were saying about this."
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... aster.html
 
Dog walker met UFO 'alien' with Scandinavian accent

Dog walker met UFO 'alien' with Scandinavian accent
by Sarah Knapton

A dog walker claimed she met a man from another planet who said aliens were responsible for crop circles, military UFO files have revealed.

The anonymous woman telephoned RAF Wattisham in Suffolk in a state of distress to describe an encounter she had the previous night. A covering letter in the files notes that it is "one of our more unusual UFO reports".

The woman told the operator at the base that the incident happened as she was walking her dog on a sports field close to her home near Norwich at about 10.30pm on November 20 1989.

She was approached by a man with a "Scandinavian-type accent" who was dressed in a light brown garment like a flying suit.

The report notes: "He asked her if she was aware of stories about large circular flattened areas appearing in fields of wheat, and then went on to explain that he was from another planet similar to Earth, and that the circles had been caused by others like him who had travelled to Earth."

The man said the purpose of their visits was friendly but they were told not to have contact with humans for fear that they would be considered a threat.

The woman said she was "completely terrified" and after about 10 minutes the man left.

As she ran home she heard a "loud buzzing noise" behind her and turned to see a large glowing orange-white spherical object rising vertically from behind trees.

The RAF operator who took the statement from the woman said the conversation lasted about an hour and described it as a "genuine call".
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... ccent.html

Nordic-type aliens taking the disguise a step further? :shock: :D
 
UFO alien sketches include banana with dangling limbs

UFO alien sketches include banana with dangling limbs
by Sarah Knapton

Sketches of aliens and UFOs spotted by members of the public have been released by the Ministry of Defence.

The drawings include a blue banana-shaped object with dangling human-like arms and legs, seen in London in 1989.

Another sketch, by a 65-year-old housewife, shows a circle of flashing red lights surrounding a constant red light which she saw in the early hours of June 21 1984 over Highwood, south of Uttoxeter, Staffordshire.

But many of the drawings are from a single sighting on August 16 1987.

A man in Derby saw a bright white object in the sky as he pulled onto his driveway and got out of his car at 10.15pm.

"The object was moving in a slightly downward arc and was bright and left a trail of bright 'blobs' behind it," he said.

The man said he had studied astronomy and added: "My immediate thought was that I had seen a meteor but the way it disappeared suddenly from being very large and bright and the size of particles in the tail were not what I would expect."

At 10.57pm a woman also spotted a "very bright" light over Breadsall Hilltop, north of Derby, which she first thought was a low plane.

"It was massive, the lights were brilliant and it hovered," she said. "All I saw at first were these very brilliant lights either side of it and a red glow underneath then as it hovered and moved I saw I saw more lights, looking like big cabins all lit up like a double decker bus up in the sky but very brilliant.

"The lights were so bright there was no definite outline."

The woman added: "It takes a lot to frighten me normally but I was frightened inside."

The investigator's report said he was "very impressed" with the witnesses and felt "certain that they came very close to a very unusual object on the night in question".

And the object was seen by three other people on the Chaddesden Estate in Derby around 11pm.

A middle-aged couple said they watched the object - which they said was the size of a large bus - for around 15 minutes.

Just before it disappeared from view, they heard "a slight whining sound, like an electric motor" and saw the object open out from its original oval into an shape more like an arrow head. They sketched both shapes for investigators.

Half an hour later, a 35-year-old charge nurse saw two bright spheres of light with smaller spheres below them over Mackworth, Derbyshire, when he opened his back door to let the dog out.

A "pie-shaped" flying saucer with a brown light and a yellow/green light on its side was drawn after a married couple spotted the object hovering over trees in Staffordshire, between 9.20pm and 10pm on August 17, 1987.

The couple, described as 'high-calibre' witnesses, said the object above Crake Marsh, just north of Uttoxeter, had a funnel-shaped searchlight beam coming from its underside.

It was "as if it was looking for something", said the man - whose name is not revealed in the report.

A 45-year-old professional artist drew a pencil sketch after seeing strange circular lights in the sky over Marland, near Rochdale, Lancashire, in late August 1987.

He said they were "a tremendous size" and had a hazy edge, as if they were rotating, with three bright lights on the underside of each circle.

West Yorkshire Police were given two drawings of UFOs in March 1988.

A Hemsworth-based taxi driver said he was on his way to pick up a fare at 11.50pm on March 24 when he saw a silver craft with bright red, white and green lights and stopped his car to get a better view.

The cabbie said he sketched a diagram on a notebook as the UFO hovered above him, making a low humming noise.

At 8.50pm the next evening he saw the same bright light again and spotted a craft the shape of an "elongated spinning top" which was three times the size of a hot air balloon.

A third drawing was given to West Yorkshire police after another sighting on April 20, 1988.

The Huddersfield man said his daughter called him to see what he described as a rectangle with five lights which gave off a very bright light.

After getting his binoculars, he realised it was a "wedge shape" which appeared to moved "very slowly but smoothly".

A resident of Ardingly, West Sussex, described seeing a five-sided object with "two very, very powerful" front lights flying over woods on September 4, 1989.

A detailed description and drawing was given to Gatwick Airport but a note which was later added to the file says it "looks suspiciously like a sighting of an aircraft".
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... limbs.html
 
Re: Dog walker met UFO 'alien' with Scandinavian accent

ttaarraass said:
Nordic-type aliens taking the disguise a step further? :shock: :D
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Unusual for 1989! I mean, unusual for any year, but this story sounds totally sixties or seventies. Maybe it was a retro-nostalgia alien? Although he mentioned crop circles just to be trendy.
 
UFO files: USAF pilot's death explained
The death of an American Air Force pilot attached to the RAF was not the result of a UFO encounter but a "tragic" accident, according to today's Ministry of Defence files.

Last Updated: 6:23AM GMT 23 Mar 2009

Captain William Schaffner's fatal crash into the North Sea on September 8, 1970, made headlines more than 20 years later over claims he was on an secret operation to intercept UFOs.

Reports emerged in 1992 that the 28-year-old USAF pilot, stationed at RAF Binbrook in Lincolnshire, disappeared after approaching a conical shape with a bright bluish light off the east coast.

The Grimsby Evening Telegraph published a transcript of what, according to an anonymous source, was the final conversation between radar control at Staxton Wold and the pilot, who reportedly described seeing the shape, followed by something "like a large soccer ball ... made of glass".

"It's like bobbing up and down and going from side to side slowly," he was quoted as saying, before ditching his aircraft.

Searches failed to find any trace of his Lightning plane until the wreckage was discovered weeks later, with no sign of its pilot.

But the RAF accident report showed the crash occurred when Captain Schaffner accidentally flew into the sea while on an exercise to practise shadowing low-flying targets at night.

Officials decided that while carrying out the difficult task of fixing on his target, the captain failed to monitor how low his own aircraft was and "inadvertently" flew it into the water.

When the ejection seat mechanism failed, he drowned during or after making his escape from the aircraft, they concluded.

An MoD official wrote of the report: "There is no indication of any 'unidentified aircraft' having been encountered, and no reason to suggest that there is any sort of UFO incident in any way connected with the tragic crash."

Another noted that any response from the RAF would be likely to be interpreted by alien enthusiasts who had seized on the suggestion of a mystery as evidence of further "sinister doings".

UFO expert Dr David Clarke described the supposed transcript of the pilot's final words, which had fuelled the speculation, as a "clever fake".

He said of the person who leaked the story: "I think it was somebody who was in the RAF, reading between the lines, and for reasons known only to himself decided to concoct this cock-and-bull story.

"I don't understand what it was supposed to achieve.

"All it's done is caused a lot of heartbreak for the surviving sons of Captain Schaffner, who thought they had been lied to."

A BBC Inside Out programme in 2002 also debunked the idea of any bizarre encounter being behind the death.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/5031630 ... ained.html

Earlier (2006) discussion here:
http://www2.forteantimes.com/forum/view ... hp?t=28603

which leads to
http://www.crowdedskies.com/tony_dodd_foxtrot94.htm

Sometimes you don't know what to think... :?
 
Now the 2006 discussion started about happenings in the early 60s. It was only in the very last post on that thread that MidnightZodiac gave the link to the 1970 event involving XS894.

That was only his/her third post on this MB - it was also the last.... :shock:
http://www2.forteantimes.com/forum/prof ... ile&u=8778

Make of this what you will.... :?
 
I've re-read the Daily Telegraph piece in conjunction with all 3 pages of the Crowded Skies article - there is a yawning gulf between the stories!

The RAF accident report basically says 'Pilot error', no UFOs involved, move along now, nothing to see...

But according to Crowded Skies, there was much more going on than just a single plane ditching:
  • This was part of a UFO flap extending from Iceland down into the North Sea, triggered by radar contacts. (This was still in the cold war)

    USAF Phantoms from Iceland and RAF Lightnings were tasked to intercept the target.

    The US specially requested that Captain Schaffner be included in the Lightning sorties. Airborne tankers also joined the search.

    The alleged transcript from the Grimsby Evening Telegraph is given

    Schaffner apparently interacted somehow with the UFO and contact was lost for a while. When he made contact again he reported feeling confused and having instrument problems.

    Staxton controllers ordered him to ditch the plane, although he said it was handling OK. A Shackleton patrolling overhead saw the plane ditch; it was intact and remained afloat.

    Eventually the plane sank, and there was no sign of the pilot. A helicopter search found nothing.

    Nearly a month later, the wreckage was located, with a body in the cockpit. But when the wreckage was raised there was no body...

    The a/c was taken back to RAF Binbrook. Accident investigators from Farnborough attended, but already cockpit instruments had been removed and the ejector seat had possibly been replaced. The investigators were dismissed after just a few hours, and ordered not to speak of the incident to anyone.

    The a/c was subsequently sent to America.
This is just the gist of it. (There were also visual UFO reports in the area of the ditching.) Most of the information allegedly came from 'unnamed' persons, so it could all be a made-up fairy story, but to what end, and coming so long after the original events?

Many questions remain. Why didn't the pilot eject? What happened to his body? Why wasn't the plane taken to Farnborough for examination, as was usual? And what did the Americans want with it?

It's even possible there was a cover-up, not because of UFOs, but for some other operational reason.

All in all, I'm still not sure the MOD has revealed all. 8)
 
Just to note that in the recent North Sea crash of a Puma helicopter, the wreckage was taken to Farnborough, as per usual:
The wreckage was later recovered from the seabed and transported to the AAIB headquarters at Farnborough in Hampshire.

It included the black box flight recorder, the fuselage with the engines and rotor gearbox attached, the separated rotor head with the main rotor blades still attached, and the separated tail.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7994305.stm
Click to expand...
 
Minister warned over 'UK Roswell'

A former head of the armed forces told the defence secretary a UFO claim known as Britain's Roswell could be a "banana skin", newly released files show.

In 1985 Lord Hill-Norton wrote to Michael Heseltine about the "Rendlesham incident" in 1980, when US airmen in Suffolk said they saw strange lights.

He said an authorised aircraft may have entered and left UK airspace.

In 2003, an ex-US security policeman said he and another airman had shone patrol car lights as a prank.

The case is among the latest MoD files on UFOs released by the National Archives.

The "Rendlesham incident" involved American airmen from RAF Woodbridge who reported seeing mysterious lights.

Witnesses said a UFO was transmitting blue pulsating lights and sending nearby farm animals into a "frenzy".

Lord Hill-Norton's letter said either a craft had entered UK airspace with impunity or US airmen were capable of a "serious misperception".

But in 2003, ex-US security policeman Kevin Conde admitted that he and another airman had shone patrol car lights through the trees and made noises on the loudspeaker as a prank.

[video clip: Some of the UFO sightings reported to the authorities]

But in 1985, Lord Hill-Norton - a former chief of the defence staff and First Sea Lord - wrote to Mr Heseltine, the then-defence secretary, to express his feelings about the event.

In his letter, Lord Hill-Norton said he rejected the official MoD line that the case was of "no defence interest", adding that it displayed "puzzling and disquieting features which have never been satisfactorily explained by your department".

He said it was either the case that a piloted craft had entered and left UK airspace with "complete impunity" or "a sizeable number of USAF personnel at an important base in British territory are capable of serious misperception".

Lord Hill-Norton added: "There seems to be a head of steam building up on this matter, and I can see a potential 'banana skin' [a political embarrassment] looming."

The release is part of a three-year project by the MoD and the National Archives to release files related to UFOs on the National Archives website.

Other incidents recorded in the latest batch of documents, which cover the years 1981 to 1996, include:

• Two men from Staffordshire who told police that, as they returned home from an evening out in 1995, an alien appeared under a hovering UFO hoping to take them away

• More than 30 sightings of bright lights over central England during a six-hour period in 1993, which led to the assistant chief of defence staff being briefed - and turned out to be caused by a Russian rocket re-entering the atmosphere

• Several sightings in Bonnybridge, central Scotland, which became the UK's UFO hotspot during the 1990s

• A UFO which was seen over the jazz stage at the Glastonbury Festival in June 1994. The two female witnesses reported that they turned to the people next to them to verify what they had seen but "they didn't look hard enough or take it seriously"

It is also revealed that UFO sightings leapt from 117 in 1995 to 609 in 1996 - the year that Will Smith's alien invader blockbuster Independence Day was released and alien conspiracy series The X Files was at the height of its popularity with UK audiences.

Dr David Clarke, a UFO expert and journalism lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, said it was significant that one of the biggest years for reports previously had been 1978, which saw 750 - at the same time that Steven Spielberg's blockbuster Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released.

He added: "Obviously, films and TV programmes raise awareness of UFOs and it's fascinating to see how that appears to lead more people to report what they see.

"In the 1950s you have UFOs with flashing dials like in the b-movies of the time, and the aliens tend to come from Venus and Mars - that stops from the late '60s when we find out how inhospitable these places are.

"From the mid-1980s you start to see triangular-shaped objects - this is the era of US stealth aircraft. I think it's clear that people see what they expect to see."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8202157.stm

This Rendlesham report was discussed quite seriously on 'Today', which is a change from the usual jokey approach the subject gets in parts of the media.

Also:

In pictures: UFO archives opened

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/8202491.stm
 
A different angle, and extra info, from the Times:

UFO sightings increase 'after television shows about aliens'
Michael Evans, Defence Editor

Sightings of unidentified flying objects increase when public interest is aroused by films and television programmes about aliens, newly declassified files indicate.

There was a surge of UFO reports in 1996 when the Hollywood film Independence Day was released and the television series The X Files was growing in popularity.

Ministry of Defence files released by the National Archives show that there were 609 “sightings” in 1996, compared with 117 in 1995. The MoD had its own department to ensure that none of the reported UFOs was a threat to national security.

In one case in 1995, two men told police in Staffordshire that an alien figure with a lemon-shaped head had come out of a spaceship they had seen that was four houses high and hovering over a field, telling them: “We want you. Come with us.” The men gave police a drawing of the craft resembling a flying saucer. The files also contained drawings of other supposed sightings.

A US spy plane may have been behind other allegations made in 1993. More than 70 people, including police and military personnel, reported UFOs in Devon, Cornwall, South Wales and Shropshire early on March 31. Many described a large, low-flying object which made a humming sound.

A note to Sir Anthony Bagnall, then the assistant chief of air staff, from Nick Pope, head of the MoD’s UFO desk, said there was evidence of an unidentified craft evading UK defences.

He said he would not normally concern Sir Anthony with UFO sightings but continued: “You may wish to be aware of a recent particularly unusual incidence of UFO sightings over the UK, involving descriptions that match some of the reported characterisations of the so-called ‘Aurora’.”

The Aurora was the name given to a US plane supposedly developed in secret “black” programmes in the 1980s which was allegedly capable of hypersonic flight, five times faster than the speed of sound.

Mr Pope said yesterday: “There are some fascinating cases here [in the released files]and while we could explain 95 per cent of the sightings, the rest were a genuine mystery. We were particularly concerned by near misses with aircraft and cases where UFOs were seen close to military bases.”

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 798427.ece
 
rynner2 said:
There was a surge of UFO reports in 1996 when the Hollywood film Independence Day was released and the television series The X Files was growing in popularity.
Click to expand...

Surely the fiction gave more people a reason to look upwards and therefore report more. When Jade Goody brought cervical cancer into the public arena more women booked tests for that disease, not all of them had cancer but surely it caught some which wouldn't have been diagnosed had the "Jade Effect" not kicked in. The number of UFO's didn't increase just the number of people looking skyward.
The "CE3K / X-Files" explanation seems to be the first thing mentioned in both of those reports posted by Rynner as though that's an explanation which then casts doubt on anything else in the report. IMO

mooks out
 
Moooksta said:
The "CE3K / X-Files" explanation seems to be the first thing mentioned in both of those reports posted by Rynner as though that's an explanation which then casts doubt on anything else in the report. IMO
Click to expand...
No, the BBC starts with the Rendlesham incident, and only mentions CE3k / X-files near the end.

But I agree "More people looking = more reports"
 
Since the National Archives have been mentioned here recently I thought it would be ok to mention todays new archive releases. (If a mod thinks I ought to have started a new thread please do shout).

I've had a quick trawl through the files, and a few have really caught my interest. The case of the 2 people at Glastonbury witnessing a UFO over the Jazz tent might initially be ignored due to assumptions over lack or sobriety....yet they claim they were sober and they agree they saw the same identical event (although I do question wether or not you'd actually admit to a police officer that you were off your face on acid, but aurely then you wouldn't report it). It's definitely worth a read, and the diagram one of them drew to illustrate the UFO and it's path is a hoot.

In general though there is relatively few cases amoungst a lot of dull communications. Has anyone else found anything interest?
 
Does the report detail who was playing at the Jazz stage at the time?
 
UFOs: Is there really anybody out there?
As the Government releases its UFO files, Jasper Gerard sorts fact from science fiction in the history of alien encounters, and asks whether a sighting in Suffolk could be Britain's equivalent of the Roswell incident

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... there.html

A longish but even-handed piece. Not much new for the old hands of this forum, however, but newbies might find it interesting.

"Perhaps," speculates Pelling "it has suited the American and British authorities to have people believe they have seen a UFO rather than so-called 'black projects', secret new kit they are trying out." Stealth Bombers do move with incredible speed and silence, so these may have confused witnesses. But such explanations don't account for the incident at the British base [Rendlesham], where service personnel witnesses would surely recognise an aeroplane.

And the American authorities appear to have taken UFOs surprisingly seriously, since Washington was supposedly "buzzed" in 1952, with even President Truman becoming involved. Ditto Britain. Long before the intervention by the chief of the defence staff, Winston Churchill was on the case. Indeed, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he is credited with the first "official" reporting of a UFO, above Kent on October 14, 1912.

The incident must have left an impression because in the Fifties, Churchill was involved in the delightfully titled, comic-book sounding Flying Saucer Working Party, which was, naturally, terribly hush, hush. More recently, correspondence has emerged from 1952 between the prime minister and his air minister asking for an assessment of the truth about flying saucers.
Click to expand...
 
Rendelsham does seem to stand the test of time as far as UK UFO events. I'm sure I read somewhere that a US military police officer "admitted" to flashing vehicle head lights into the forest to hoax the whole thing...does anyone know if this was ever confirmed?

As for who was playing at the Glastonbury Jazz tent....I think it was jazz musicians ;)
 
Like any famous old sighting it has gathered some 'moss' over the years but you're right that it seems to be standing the test of time. One thing to remember is that there are the forgotten witnesses, the locals. http://rendlesham-incident.co.uk/search ... nesses.php

As to why we dont hear much from them, I suspect that they are scared of being ripped to shreds by professional skeptics or else ambushed by nutcases, cant say I blame them for lying low.
 
rynner2 said:
But I agree "More people looking = more reports"
Click to expand...

Not necessarily that they look more, or that there are more sightings ; but that they report more. Usually, people are reluctant to report UFO sightings, for fear of ridicule (some estimates say that less than 5% report, others less than 1 %). In period of mediatic interest, this fear is probably less important. It would be interesting to know if there was an increase of the percentage of unknowns.
 
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