On 30 and 31 March 1993 there was a series of UFO sightings in the UK
involving over a hundred witnesses. Many of these were police officers
and military personnel. The UFO also flew directly over two RAF bases.
What follows is the extraordinary story of what has been dubbed The British
UFO Mystery.
Overview
The first sighting took place on 30 March at around 8.30pm in Somerset.
This was followed by a sighting at 9pm in the Quantock Hills. The
witness was a police officer who, together with a group of scouts, had seen a
craft that he described as looking "like two Concordes flying side
by side and joined together". The reports came in thick and fast
and when I arrived at work the following morning I received a steady
stream of reports. It was soon clear that I had a major UFO event on my
hands. One of the most interesting reports came from a member of the
public in Rugely, Staffordshire, who reported a UFO that he estimated as being
200 metres in diameter. He and other family members told me how they had chased
the object in their car and got extremely close to it, believing it had landed
in a nearby field. When they got there a few seconds later, there was
nothing to be seen. Many of the descriptions related to a
triangular-shaped craft or of the lights perceived as being on the underside
of such a craft. Indeed, in an apparent coincidence these sighting
occurred three years to the very day after the famous wave of sightings in
Belgium that had led to F-16 fighters being scrambled to intercept a UFO being
tracked on radar.
RAF Cosford
The UFO was seen by a patrol of RAF Police based at RAF Cosford. Their
official police report (classified Police In Confidence) stated that the UFO passed
over the base "at great velocity ... at an altitude of approximately 1000
feet". It described two white lights with a faint red glow at the
rear, with no engine noise being heard. The RAF Police report also
contained details of a number of civilian UFO sightings that they had been
made aware of in the course of making enquiries with other military
bases, civil airports and local police.
RAF Shawbury
Later on that night, the Meteorological Officer at RAF Shawbury saw the UFO.
He described to me how it had moved slowly across the countryside towards the
base, at a speed of no more than 30 or 40 mph. He saw the UFO fire a
narrow beam of light (like a laser) at the ground and saw the light sweeping
backwards and forwards across the field beyond the perimeter fence, as if it
were looking for something. He heard an unpleasant low frequency
humming sound coming from the craft and said he could feel as well as hear
this - rather like standing in front of a bass speaker. He estimated the
size of the craft to be midway between a C-130 Hercules transport aircraft and
a Boeing 747. Then he told me that the light beam had retracted in an
unnatural way and that the craft had suddenly accelerated away to the horizon
many times faster than a military aircraft. Here was an experienced RAF
officer who regularly saw aircraft and helicopters, telling me about something
he said was quite unlike anything he's ever seen in his life. The MOD
party line about UFOs being of "no defence significance" was looking
decidedly shaky. What was I supposed to say to him, I wondered -
"don't worry, it was probably just a weather balloon"! I
corresponded with him recently about this but, unlike some sceptics, I intend
to respect witness confidentiality and won't name him.
How Many Reports?
For a number of reasons UFOs are notoriously under-reported. The two
main factors here are fear of disbelief and/or ridicule, and the fact that
many people do not know who to contact with details of their sightings.
While there were standing instructions that UFO reports sent to military
bases, civil airports and police stations should be forwarded to the MOD for
investigation, this national reporting system did not always work. The
casefile on the 30/31 March 1993 UFO incident makes it clear that there were
many more sightings than ever reached the Department. One throwaway line
from a signal reporting how police officers in Liskeard, Cornwall, had seen a
UFO stated that the object was "seen by other police officers throughout
Devon and Cornwall". We can only guess at the number of sightings
that went unreported that night.
Radar
I launched a detailed investigation into these sightings, working closely with the
RAF, colleagues in the Defence Intelligence Staff and personnel at the
Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at RAF Fylingdales. One of the
first things that I did was order that radar tapes be impounded and sent to me
at MOD Main Building in Whitehall. The radar data was downloaded onto
standard VHS video cassettes and arrived shortly thereafter. I watched
it with the relevant RAF specialists who told me that there were a few odd
radar returns, but that they were inconclusive. Radar is not an exact
science and in certain circumstances, false returns can be generated.
Aircraft
Later, a more formal assessment of the radar data was made.
Unfortunately, one of the radar heads was not working on primary radar during
the reporting period, so only aircraft working Secondary Surveillance Radar
could be seen. But with this and with other checks, what we were able to
do was build up a picture of all aircraft and helicopters activity over
the UK, so that we could factor them into the investigation and eliminate them
from our enquiries if appropriate.
RAF Fylingdales and Cosmos 2238
The Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at RAF Fylingdales, with its
powerful space-tracking radars, was an important part of my UFO investigation.
They quickly alerted me to the fact that there had been a re-entry into
the Earth's atmosphere of a Russian rocket carrying a communications
satellite, Cosmos 2238. We postulated that this was a possible
explanation for a cluster of UFO sightings that occurred at around 1.10am on
31 March. As an interesting footnote, ufologists such as Jenny Randles
have previously claimed that some UFOs may be interested in re-entries!
Ufologists
Most ufologists had not even heard about this case until I wrote about it in
1996, in my first book, Open Skies Closed Minds. One ufologist who had
been very closely involved was Doug Cooper. I worked closely with him
during the course of my official investigation, as part of a new more open
policy that I had instigated. Some ufologists like Doug had welcomed
this but others, sadly, saw me as a sinister Man in Black and refused to have
anything to do with the MOD, believing that we were part of a conspiracy to
cover-up the truth about UFOs. Doug shared with me his own report into
the wave of sightings. Like us, he had concluded that the Cosmos 2238
re-entry was the probable explanation for the cluster of sightings at 1.10am.
But there were some interesting gems in his report, including a reference to
one of the UFO sightings having unnerved cattle in a field, which were
reported as having been restless somewhere between midnight and 1am. The
witnesses then described their absolute astonishment at seeing all the cows
standing in a circular formation in the middle of the field, all completely
silent.
The British UFO Mystery
On 1 November 2006 Channel Five showed a one hour documentary on this case,
entitled "The British UFO Mystery". The investigative
documentary was part of Channel Five's second "Stranger Than
Fiction" series. The production company, Steel Spyda, had adopted
an unusual approach when making this documentary. All too often, UFO
documentaries rely on an endless series of 'talking heads', with witnesses
telling their stories, followed by believers and sceptics from the world of
ufology expressing their contrasting views. Steel Spyda tried a new
approach. They obtained the MOD's case file on the incident (which ran
to 105 pages of documentation) and based the programme around that. As
I'd led the investigation, they asked me to front the programme, giving
viewers an unprecedented insight into the methodology of an official MOD
investigation. The programme drew just over one million viewers - a
strong showing for Channel Five. Ufologists were pleased to see their
subject back on one of the national networks at primetime.
Sceptics
Sceptics soon jumped on the bandwagon and some lengthy analyses of the case
(actually little more than a reproduction of material from the MOD
casefile) appeared, following the broadcast of the Channel Five
documentary. These were conclusion-led and marred by misunderstandings
about the way in which the military record time and the way in which aircraft
heights are recorded. Sceptics leapt on the Cosmos 2238 explanation
(which MOD had known about at the time) to explain the cluster of 1.10am
sightings and promptly tried to shoehorn all the other sightings into this, suggesting
that witnesses who had seen the UFO at any other time must have got
the time wrong - sometimes by several hours!
Black Projects
A theory often put forward to explain some of the most spectacular UFO
sightings is that they might be prototype aircraft or UAVs. Of course,
at any time we will be test flying various things that you won't see at the
Farnborough airshow for several years, but the bottom line is that we test fly
such things in certain areas so at least within government we can
differentiate between black projects and UFOs. In view of the
controversy about Aurora (an alleged hypersonic replacement for the SR-71
Blackbird) we did, in the case of the March 1993 UFO sightings, raise the
issue with the US authorities, through the British Embassy in Washington.
Was it possible that something had gone wrong with the normal processes for
overflight of another country and could our UFO sightings be attributable to
some US prototype? The answer I got back was extraordinary. The
Americans had been having their own sightings of these large,
triangular-shaped UFOs and wanted to know if the RAF might have such a
craft, capable of moving from a virtual hover to speeds of several thousand
mph in an instant. We wish we had! The interesting thing about
this was that somebody in the US was still clearly taking an interest in
UFOs, despite the apparent disengagement from the subject in 1969 with
the closing down of Project Blue Book. Sadly, a letter to the US Embassy
about Aurora was the only document missing from the casefile released to Steel
Spyda following their FOIA request for documents relating to the March 1993
UFO sightings.
Jodrell Bank Observatory
Intriguingly, even the cluster of 1.10am sightings might not all be explained
by the Cosmos 2238 re-entry. The sceptics were torpedoed by
Professor Ian Morrison, Director of the Jodrell Bank Observatory (and hardly a
believer in UFOs!) who in speaking about these sightings on "The
British UFO Mystery" said "Sometimes people see a pattern of lights
that stay pretty much in formation for maybe several minutes at a time and to
be honest I don't believe that can be the break up of space junk or anything
else. Those things are short-lived and they all leave streaks, and the
relative positions may well change as they travel".
Conclusion
Given the MOD's "no defence significance" conclusion on UFOs, it
seems fitting to conclude with quotes from MOD documents which contradict the
usual stance. In a briefing that I prepared for my Head of Division on
16 April 1993 I wrote:
"It seems that an unidentified object of unknown origin was operating in
the UK Air Defence Region without being detected on radar; this would appear
to be of considerable defence significance, and I recommend that we
investigate further, within MOD or with the US authorities".
My Head of Division was normally sceptical about the UFO phenomenon, but on
this occasion he agreed with my conclusion. His 22 April 1993 brief
to the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (one of the UK's most senior RAF
officers) stated:
"In summary, there would seem to be some evidence on this occasion that
an unidentified object (or objects) of unknown origin was operating over the
UK."
This is about as close the MOD will ever get to saying that there's more
to UFOs than misidentifications or hoaxes.
Postscript
As a result of the media and public interest generated by the Channel Five
documentary that I presented on this incident, the Ministry of Defence posted the
official case file on the incident on its website: