The latest release of UFO files bring together conspiracy and cover-up allegations that even Winston Churchill can't escape.
And still they come. The Ministry of Defence has just released the latest batch of their UFO files, as part of an ongoing three-year collaboration between the MoD and the National Archives. There are 18 files and while that may not sound particularly impressive, this release – the sixth – runs to over 5,000 pages of documentation. The material comprises sighting reports, letters from the public and papers discussing how to handle the issue when it was raised in parliament – as it occasionally was.
There's an extraordinary claim about Winston Churchill, made by a scientist who wrote to the MoD claiming that his grandfather had been one of Churchill's bodyguards. It's alleged that Churchill met General Dwight D Eisenhower to discuss an incident in the second world war when an RAF aircraft returning from a bombing raid encountered a UFO capable of extraordinary speeds and manoeuvres. It was claimed that they agreed to keep this from the public, to prevent mass panic and to avoid the possibility that people's belief in God and the church would be shattered. MoD officials investigating the claim found no documents to support these allegations, though they admitted that prior to 1967, most UFO files had been destroyed after five years.
Some documents relate to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) – more recently in the news due to their role in producing the so-called "dodgy dossier", which took us to war with Iraq. In 1957 the JIC discussed the UFO mystery at a meeting and concluded that four cases where UFOs had been tracked on radar remained unexplained. The report was delivered to the JIC by the air ministry's head of air intelligence. This sort of high-level interest always gets conspiracy theorists excited, particularly where the word "intelligence" appears anywhere near the phrase "UFO".
Indeed, allegations of cover-ups and conspiracies feature prominently in these files. There are accusations from the public that defence advisory notices were being used to prevent the media running UFO stories. There is correspondence about cases where it's alleged that UFOs crashed (one in Wales, another in the Peak District) and that the wreckage was spirited away by sinister government agents. There is speculation about secret prototype aircraft and even documents about UFO researchers being arrested after trying to break into RAF Rudloe Manor in Wiltshire, where they believed UFO secrets were kept.
The MoD's UFO files occasionally contain documents relating to other mysteries such as ghosts or crop circles. Some newly released documents tell the bizarre story of how, in 1990, a man presented himself at RAF Stanmore and said he'd had a dream about an attack at a military base in London. He felt it was a psychic warning. A few weeks later there was a terrorist bomb attack on the base at Stanmore. The RAF police launched an investigation.
My favourite case is that of the man who placed a bet at 100-1 that proof of alien visitation would be confirmed by the end of the 20th century. He then wrote to the MoD asking for evidence that would support his claim. The MoD gave the standard response, explaining that while the department remained open-minded about the possibilities, they had no such evidence. The man lost his bet.
Showing posts with label documents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label documents. Show all posts
Monday, August 9, 2010
UFO files ignored by Winston Churchill revealed
Former British prime minister Winston Churchill is well known as the country’s war time hero and it's probably safe to say he had plenty on his plate during World War II.
So when papers came across his desk reporting RAF pilots had had a close encounter with a UFO he didn't want to know - he just locked them away for 50 years.
Watch Video Here
So when papers came across his desk reporting RAF pilots had had a close encounter with a UFO he didn't want to know - he just locked them away for 50 years.
Watch Video Here
Churchill Ordered UFO Coverup, Documents Suggest
In order to prevent a mass panic, Winston Churchill kept top secret a close encounter between a World War II pilot and an unexplained flying object, newly unclassified documents reveal.
The British prime minister said the unexplained incident should be kept secret for 50 years, fearing it would provoke a "mass panic."
The claim was discovered in files newly unclassified by the British Ministry of Defense. It came from a scientist who said his grandfather was one of Churchill's bodyguards.
According to the documents, details of the coverup emerged when the man wrote to the government in 1999 seeking to find out more about the incident. He described how his grandfather, who served with the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the war, was present when Churchill and U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower discussed how to deal with the UFO encounter.
The man, who is not named in the files, said Churchill was reported to have exclaimed, "This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic amongst the general population -- and destroy one's belief in the church."
The incident allegedly involved an RAF reconnaissance plane returning from a mission in France or Germany toward the end of the war. It was over or near the English coastline when it was allegedly suddenly intercepted by a strange metallic object that matched the aircraft's course and speed for a time before accelerating away and disappearing.
The mysterious files also reveal a lengthy history of reported close encounters over the years.
In one incident, a gambler approached the Defense Department for help after a local gambling parlor refused to pay out on his 100-1 bet that aliens would land on Earth before the end of the 20th century.
And an alien spaceship "20 times the size of a football field" is among the string of bizarre UFO sightings. The huge craft was reported to the military after it was seen hovering above Manchester airport in January 1995. In another report, a black U-shaped object was seen from Edinburgh travelling above a Scottish river without disturbing the water on October 9, 1995.
During the Cold War, RAF jets were scrambled 200 times a year to investigate UFOs picked up on radar. But this fell to zero after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Nick Pope, a former Ministry of Defense expert who worked on the official UFO files, told London paper The Sun, "Whatever you believe about UFOs, there's some fascinating material in these real life X-Files."
"Most of these sightings turned out to be misidentifications of things like aircraft lights or meteors, but a small proportion could not be explained."
The Sun contributed to this report.
The British prime minister said the unexplained incident should be kept secret for 50 years, fearing it would provoke a "mass panic."
The claim was discovered in files newly unclassified by the British Ministry of Defense. It came from a scientist who said his grandfather was one of Churchill's bodyguards.
According to the documents, details of the coverup emerged when the man wrote to the government in 1999 seeking to find out more about the incident. He described how his grandfather, who served with the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the war, was present when Churchill and U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower discussed how to deal with the UFO encounter.
The man, who is not named in the files, said Churchill was reported to have exclaimed, "This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic amongst the general population -- and destroy one's belief in the church."
The incident allegedly involved an RAF reconnaissance plane returning from a mission in France or Germany toward the end of the war. It was over or near the English coastline when it was allegedly suddenly intercepted by a strange metallic object that matched the aircraft's course and speed for a time before accelerating away and disappearing.
The mysterious files also reveal a lengthy history of reported close encounters over the years.
In one incident, a gambler approached the Defense Department for help after a local gambling parlor refused to pay out on his 100-1 bet that aliens would land on Earth before the end of the 20th century.
And an alien spaceship "20 times the size of a football field" is among the string of bizarre UFO sightings. The huge craft was reported to the military after it was seen hovering above Manchester airport in January 1995. In another report, a black U-shaped object was seen from Edinburgh travelling above a Scottish river without disturbing the water on October 9, 1995.
During the Cold War, RAF jets were scrambled 200 times a year to investigate UFOs picked up on radar. But this fell to zero after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Nick Pope, a former Ministry of Defense expert who worked on the official UFO files, told London paper The Sun, "Whatever you believe about UFOs, there's some fascinating material in these real life X-Files."
"Most of these sightings turned out to be misidentifications of things like aircraft lights or meteors, but a small proportion could not be explained."
The Sun contributed to this report.
Britain releases new UFO files
London, England (CNN) -- A hovering Toblerone and a silky-white residue join near-misses and strange lights in the British government's latest release of its files on UFO sightings.
Made public Thursday, the files are the fifth collection of records about unidentified flying objects to be released by the Ministry of Defence and The National Archives as part of a project to open the files up to a wider audience.
Thursday's release is the largest so far, totaling more than 6,000 pages of material from 1994 to 2000.
The files include a sighting by a man in Birmingham, England, in March 1997. He said he came home from work at 4 a.m. to see a large blue triangle-shaped craft hovering over his back garden.
It was silent but caused dogs in the neighborhood to bark, the report said. It "shot off and disappeared" after about three minutes, the report said, leaving behind a "silky-white substance" on the treetops, some of which he saved in a jar.
It was not clear what happened to the jar and its contents.
Another document, from January 1997, is about a man driving home through south Wales one night when he saw "a 'tube of light' coming down from the sky," which at first seemed like a "massive star" coming toward him.
The man's mobile phone and car radio failed, the report said, and the man got out of his car and was able to walk through the light. It said he got back in his car but started feeling sick, and he soon developed a skin condition for which he had to see a doctor.
His car was left covered in dirt and dust, the report said.
Other reports are about sightings by groups of people, including one from August 1997 in which five members of a fishing trawler in the North Sea reported seeing a round, flat, shiny object hovering in the sky.
They saw it both with the naked eye and through binoculars, with the report noting, "witness very skeptical of UFOs." They tracked the object on their radar for several seconds before it vanished, the report said.
Police officers in Boston, England, and Skegness -- both on England's east coast, caught a UFO on video at the same time that the Royal Air Force (RAF) detected an "unidentified blip" on their radar, the files show.
It happened in October 1996, when the officers saw "strange rotating red, blue, green and white flashing lights in the sky," the report said. A ship in The Wash, a bay near Boston, also saw the lights, and at the same time RAF air defense radars picked up the blip over Boston, the report said.
Press coverage of the incident led the RAF to look into the lights, later identifying some as stars and bright planets, and attributing the radar blip to a "permanent echo" created by a nearby church spire.
The release highlights how the reported shapes of UFOs have changed during the past half-century, the National Archives said. Many of the reports in the latest file describe UFOs as big, black and triangular, whereas reports from the 1940s and '50s tended to be about saucers or disc-shaped objects, they said.
"In the 1950s the next big leap in technology was thought to be a round craft that took off vertically, and it's intriguing to note that this is the same period when people began to report seeing 'flying saucers' in the sky," said David Clarke, author of a book called The UFO Files and a journalism lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University.
He pointed out that in the years covered by the latest file release, triangle-shaped U.S. stealth bombers and Aurora spy planes featured heavily on TV shows like "The X-Files" and movies like Independence Day.
"It's impossible to prove a direct link between what people are reading and watching and what they report as UFOs, but one interpretation could be that the latest advances in technology may be influencing what people see in the sky," he said.
A craving for chocolate may have influenced another sighting, that of a "Toblerone-shaped" UFO hovering over Annandale, Scotland, in July 1994. The Toblerone is a triangular-shaped Swiss chocolate candy bar. The files include a sketch of the object, which showed it as 35-40 feet long and about 20 feet wide.
It hovered silently about 10 feet above a field with no lights and was "observed for at least 40 minutes," the report said.
The release also contains several incidents involving UFOs and aircraft, such as a near-miss that happened in January 1995 when a British Airways Boeing 737 was approaching Manchester airport. The captain and a crew member saw the object, but an investigation by the Civil Aviation Authority failed to identify it, the report said.
An airliner near Glasgow Airport saw white and red flashing lights in December 1996, but the report simply concluded there was no RAF activity in the area at the time.
Made public Thursday, the files are the fifth collection of records about unidentified flying objects to be released by the Ministry of Defence and The National Archives as part of a project to open the files up to a wider audience.
Thursday's release is the largest so far, totaling more than 6,000 pages of material from 1994 to 2000.
The files include a sighting by a man in Birmingham, England, in March 1997. He said he came home from work at 4 a.m. to see a large blue triangle-shaped craft hovering over his back garden.
It was silent but caused dogs in the neighborhood to bark, the report said. It "shot off and disappeared" after about three minutes, the report said, leaving behind a "silky-white substance" on the treetops, some of which he saved in a jar.
It was not clear what happened to the jar and its contents.
Another document, from January 1997, is about a man driving home through south Wales one night when he saw "a 'tube of light' coming down from the sky," which at first seemed like a "massive star" coming toward him.
The man's mobile phone and car radio failed, the report said, and the man got out of his car and was able to walk through the light. It said he got back in his car but started feeling sick, and he soon developed a skin condition for which he had to see a doctor.
His car was left covered in dirt and dust, the report said.
Other reports are about sightings by groups of people, including one from August 1997 in which five members of a fishing trawler in the North Sea reported seeing a round, flat, shiny object hovering in the sky.
They saw it both with the naked eye and through binoculars, with the report noting, "witness very skeptical of UFOs." They tracked the object on their radar for several seconds before it vanished, the report said.
Police officers in Boston, England, and Skegness -- both on England's east coast, caught a UFO on video at the same time that the Royal Air Force (RAF) detected an "unidentified blip" on their radar, the files show.
It happened in October 1996, when the officers saw "strange rotating red, blue, green and white flashing lights in the sky," the report said. A ship in The Wash, a bay near Boston, also saw the lights, and at the same time RAF air defense radars picked up the blip over Boston, the report said.
Press coverage of the incident led the RAF to look into the lights, later identifying some as stars and bright planets, and attributing the radar blip to a "permanent echo" created by a nearby church spire.
The release highlights how the reported shapes of UFOs have changed during the past half-century, the National Archives said. Many of the reports in the latest file describe UFOs as big, black and triangular, whereas reports from the 1940s and '50s tended to be about saucers or disc-shaped objects, they said.
"In the 1950s the next big leap in technology was thought to be a round craft that took off vertically, and it's intriguing to note that this is the same period when people began to report seeing 'flying saucers' in the sky," said David Clarke, author of a book called The UFO Files and a journalism lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University.
He pointed out that in the years covered by the latest file release, triangle-shaped U.S. stealth bombers and Aurora spy planes featured heavily on TV shows like "The X-Files" and movies like Independence Day.
"It's impossible to prove a direct link between what people are reading and watching and what they report as UFOs, but one interpretation could be that the latest advances in technology may be influencing what people see in the sky," he said.
A craving for chocolate may have influenced another sighting, that of a "Toblerone-shaped" UFO hovering over Annandale, Scotland, in July 1994. The Toblerone is a triangular-shaped Swiss chocolate candy bar. The files include a sketch of the object, which showed it as 35-40 feet long and about 20 feet wide.
It hovered silently about 10 feet above a field with no lights and was "observed for at least 40 minutes," the report said.
The release also contains several incidents involving UFOs and aircraft, such as a near-miss that happened in January 1995 when a British Airways Boeing 737 was approaching Manchester airport. The captain and a crew member saw the object, but an investigation by the Civil Aviation Authority failed to identify it, the report said.
An airliner near Glasgow Airport saw white and red flashing lights in December 1996, but the report simply concluded there was no RAF activity in the area at the time.
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