occurred three years to the very day after the famous wave of sightings in Belgium that led to F-16 fighters being scrambled to intercept a UFO tracked on radar.
The UK UFO was seen by a patrol of Air Force police based at the RAF station in Cosford, 150 miles northwest of London. Their official police report (classified Police In Confidence) stated that the UFO passed over the base “at great velocity… at an altitude of approximately 1,000 feet.” It described two white lights with a faint red glow at the rear, with no engine noise being heard. The Air Force police report also contained details of a number of civilian UFO sightings they had received in the course of making enquiries with other military bases, civil airports, and local police.
Later that night, the meteorological officer at RAF Shawbury—the base that provides advanced training for helicopter aircrew, air traffic controllers, and flight operations personnel for all three of the UK’s armed services— saw the UFO. He described to me how it had moved slowly across the countryside toward the base, at a speed of no more than 30 or 40 mph. He saw the craft fire a narrow beam of light (like a laser) at the ground and saw the light sweeping backward and forward 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 object 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 Royal Air Force 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 defense 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”?
For a number of reasons UFOs are notoriously underreported. 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 case file on the March 30–31, 1993, UFO incident makes it clear that there were many more sightings than ever reached the department. One throwaway line from a police report of a sighting in Liskeard, Cornwall, 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.
Because of the similarity between these reports and those repeatedly filed in Belgium in 1989 and 1990, I asked the Defence Intelligence Staff to make some discreet enquiries to the Belgian authorities through the British embassy in Brussels. As I recall, our air attache was able to speak to General De Brouwer and the two F-16 pilots. It was clear that De Brouwer had done an excellent investigation under very difficult circumstances.
Like De Brouwer, I launched a detailed investigation into the Cosford sightings, the main difference being that the Cosford incident was not a “wave” but a one-time event, as are most UFO cases. I worked 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. 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, we were able to build up a picture of all aircraft and helicopter activity over the UK, so that we could factor them into the investigation and eliminate them from our enquiries if appropriate.
The Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at RAF Fylingdales, with its powerful space-tracking radars, was an important part of my UFO investigation. The authorities there quickly alerted me to the fact that there had been a reentry 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 1:10 a.m. on March 31.
A theory often put forward to explain some of the most spectacular UFO sightings is that they might be prototype aircraft, drones, or other unmanned aerial vehicles. Of course, at any time we will be test-flying various things that you won’t see at the big air shows for several years, but the bottom line is that these tests occur in specific areas, so at least within government we can differentiate between black projects—a classified project that is not publicly acknowledged, such as the F-117 stealth fighter program, prior to 1988—and UFOs.
Even so, there had been controversy brewing about the American Aurora, an alleged hypersonic replacement for the SR-71 Blackbird that some journalists and aviation enthusiasts alleged was being flown in British airspace without the knowledge of the UK authorities. So we raised the issue of the March 1993 UFO sightings with the U.S. 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 U.S. prototype? The answer I got back—via our air attache at the UK embassy in Washington—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, perhaps as part of a “black” program, 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 United States was still clearly taking an interest in UFOs, despite the apparent disengagement from the subject in 1969 with the closing of Project Blue Book.
Given the MoD’s “no defense significance” conclusion on UFOs, it seems fitting to conclude this section with quotes from MoD documents which contradict the usual stance. In a briefing that I prepared for the division head on April 16, 1993, after the Cosford investigation, 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 defense significance, and I recommend that we investigate further, within MoD or with the U.S. authorities.”
My division head was normally skeptical about the UFO phenomenon, but on this occasion he agreed with my conclusion. His April 22, 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 as the MoD will ever get to saying that there’s more to UFOs than misidentifications or hoaxes.
The Rendlesham Forest Incident:
A Cold Case Review
Britian’s most spectacular UFO incident occurred late on Christmas night 1980 and in the early hours of Boxing Day, when strange lights were seen in Rendlesham Forest, near Ipswich. The many witnesses were mainly United States Air Force personnel based at the joint U.S. Air Force/NATO twin bases RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk. Even though the events took place on British soil, these bases were U.S. Air Force facilities at that time. Rendlesham Forest lies between the twin bases, and as the Cold War was still decidedly frosty, a UFO sighting at two of the nation’s most sensitive military sites was most decidedly of interest.
At the UFO project, I had[120] access to the large MoD file on this incident, which at that time had
The series of events began in the early hours of December 26, when duty personnel reported seeing lights so bright that they feared an aircraft had crashed. They sought and obtained permission to go off-base and investigate. They didn’t find a crashed aircraft—they found a UFO.
The three-man patrol from the 81st Security Police Squadron—Jim Penniston, John Burroughs, and Ed Cabansag—saw a small metallic craft moving through the trees. At one point it appeared to land in a small clearing.
