Selected Documents
The Flying Saucer Working Party was set up in October 1950 by Ministry of Defence Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Henry Tizard, who felt that UFO reports should not be dismissed out of hand without some serious study. He duly authorised the setting up of a small study team to look into the phenomenon. This is the group's final report, which was released to Georgina Bruni and a handful of other researchers in 2001 by the MOD, following requests made under the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information. A detailed commentary and analysis of this material can be found in the Official History article on this site.
Britain's most famous UFO case is the so-called Rendlesham Forest incident. Over a series of nights in December 1980 numerous United States Air Force personnel at the twin bases of Bentwaters and Woodbridge saw UFOs in and around Rendlesham Forest, in Suffolk. In early 2001 Georgina Bruni obtained the Ministry of Defence file on this incident, under the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information. The papers consisted mainly of public correspondence, but the early documents related to the MOD's investigation into this incident, and included papers from the Defence Intelligence Staff. The key documents are reproduced here. A detailed commentary and analysis of these documents can be found in the Rendlesham Files Reviewed article on this site. For a detailed account of the case itself, see Georgina Bruni's book You Can't Tell The People
The entire file is available on the Ministry of Defence website.
To access the material, go to the MOD website at http://www.mod.uk/
and click on "Freedom of Information Act" link on the homepage. Then
click on "Search for Information", and enter the phrase
"UFO".