Britain’s Ministry of Defence ceased to collect UFO reports as of December 2009, because, as they put it, “…in over fifty years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom.” However, the UFO files being released by the British National Archives contain cases that clearly should be of concern, and I am not alone in this opinion. In fact, the last batch of files includes correspondence between the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and two high level military officials who were adamant that UFO cases should be taken more seriously.

Lord Hill-Norton (image credit: The Telegraph)

The highest ranking among those hounding the MOD about UFOs was Baron Hill-Norton, former Admiral of the Fleet (1970-71), Chief of the Defence Staff (1971-73), and head of NATO’s military committee (1974-77). Two years after his retirement in 1977, Peter Hill-Norton was made Baron and a member of the House of Lords. As you can see, Lord Hill-Norton was quite an impressive chap and known as a tough and aggressive leader. In other words, he didn’t take no crap.

At some point Lord Hill-Norton took an interest in UFOs, and was unsatisfied with the MOD claiming that they were of no concern. He badgered the MOD with questions, trying to get them to actively investigate important cases. There are over 300 pages of correspondence between Lord Hill-Norton and the MOD in the latest batch of UK UFO files.

Lord Hill-Norton took a particular interest in the Rendlesham forest case. In late December of 1980, several US servicemen witnessed UFO activity over a two day period near the bases of RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge, both on lease by the US from the UK. The Rendlesham forest surrounds the bases. One of the witnesses included Deputy Base Commander, Charles Halt, who was ordered to forwarded a memo on the incident to the MOD.

In a response dated October 22, 1997 to Minister of State for Defence, Lord Gilbert, who claimed the Rendlesham sightings were not of interest, Lord Hill-Norton wrote:

My position both privately and publicly expressed over the last dozen years or more, is that there are only two possibilities, either:

a. An intrusion into our Air Space and a landing by unidentified craft took place at Rendlesham, as described.

or

b. The Deputy Commander of an operational, nuclear armed, US Air Force Base in England, and a large number of his enlisted men, were either hallucinating or lying.

Either of these simply must be ‘of interest to the Ministry of Defence’, which has been repeatedly denied, in precisely those terms. They, or words very like them, are used again in your letter and I believe, in the light of the above, you would not feel inclined to sign your name to them again.

Further, Lord Hill-Norton pushed Lord Gilbert on the sensitive question of whether there were nuclear arms on the base, which would have been against their agreement with US. Lord Hill-Norton asked Lord Gilbert, “Whether they are aware of reports from the United States Air Force personnel that nuclear weapons stored in the Weapons Storage Area at RAF Woodbridge were struck by light beams fired from an unidentified craft seen over the base in the period 25-30 December 1980, and if so, what action was subsequently taken.”

Lord Gilbert responded, “There is no evidence to suggest that the Ministry of Defence received any such reports.” He continued that he intended “neither to confirm nor to deny where nuclear weapons are located either in the UK or elsewhere, in the past or at the present time.”

In 2001, Lord Hill-Norton asked that the MOD reopen its investigation into the Rendlesham forest incident. He was told, “No additional information has come to light over the last 20 years to call into question the original judgment by the Ministry of Defence that nothing of defence significance occurred in the location of Rendlesham Forest in 1980. Accordingly there is no reason to hold an investigation now.”

Clearly upset with this response, Lord hill-Norton replied, “I have now had time to have a proper look at your letter dated 22nd March, and I find it not so much disappointing as absurd. This for various reasons but mainly because you seem unable to grasp what we are arguing about.” Lord Hill-Norton continued, “There is a great deal more, now in the public domain which makes it beyond any possible doubt that the incident most certainly was of considerable Defence interest, and it is absurd of you to pretend otherwise.”

Ralph Noyes (image credit: Quartet Books)

Ralph Noyes, who retired as the Undersecretary of State in 1977, was another British government official whose letters petitioning that the UFO matter be taken serious can also be found in the UK UFO files. In 1969 he was head of Defense Secretariat 8 (DS8), and one of his responsibilities was to answer public questions about UFOs. He says he was not able to share his true opinions on the subject. In the files he states:

It is only since I left the MOD (in 1977) that I have seriously tried to consider what may possibly lie behind the ‘UFO phenomenon’. It was impossible to discuss it seriously within the Department: I would merely have ‘rubbished’ my working relationship with the RAF and scientific colleagues if I had disclosed the interest I felt in the better reports which reached us. What I retain from my MOD experience — greatly reinforced by much that I have since read — is that the ‘phenomenon’ is veridical and important

There is one more British official of note in the files, who also disagrees with the stance that UFOs pose no concern. Nick Pope ran the MOD’s UFO desk from 1991 to 1994. In a recent article by Lee Speigel of the Huffington Post, Pope actually apologized for having to play down the importance of UFO sightings when responding to public inquiries on the matter while manning the MOD UFO hot seat.

Nick Pope (left) with Rendelsham witnesses James Penniston and Charles Halt at a press conference in Washington DC in Nov, 2007. (image credit: James Fox)

In a recent Open Minds article on Ralph Noyes, Antonio Huneeus, suggested that some of the responses Noyes received from the MOD might have actually been authored by Pope. I emailed Pope to inquire about Huneuus’ suspicions, which Pope confirmed. He went on to write:

I had tremendous respect for Ralph Noyes, who I met on several occasions. He briefed me about his earlier UFO-related work at the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Defense. In many ways, we grappled with the same problem, albeit several years apart: we had official responsibility for a phenomenon that defied conventional explanation, but we faced a situation where we had to follow the official line that UFOs were of no defense significance. But this was Orwellian doublethink. How could it not be of defense interest, when our own radar systems were picking up these things, when jets were being scrambled and when both pilots and radar operators confirmed that these objects — whatever they were — were capable of speeds and maneuvers that defied conventional explanation? So we had a bizarre situation where we were telling the public that we weren’t interested, but behind the scenes, our scientific and technical intelligence specialists were desperate for data, hoping that solving the UFO mystery might enable us to make a quantum leap breakthrough in propulsion system technology, aerodynamics or a related field.

Pope continued to explain:

The ultimate irony was that it wasn’t just the public who were out of the loop. There were factions at the MoD on this issue. I was involved in work that led to the setting up of a highly classified study into the UFO phenomenon, codenamed Project Condign. But my successors didn’t enjoy the close relationship with the Defense Intelligence Staff that I’d had, and weren’t briefed on the study. When the final report was issued in 2000, it wasn’t copied to Directorate Air Staff, despite their being the division with the policy lead for UFOs! When the report was declassified and made public under the Freedom of Information Act, there was a farcical situation: it emerged that the people who had been sending out letters to the public saying that MoD didn’t investigate UFOs hadn’t been aware that, behind their backs, intelligence staffs had been doing the very thing that the civil servants had been telling parliament, the media and the public that we didn’t do.

Ralph Noyes (image credit: Quartet Books)

One of the documents that has received some attention in the latest release of UFO files by the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) is a long letter written in 1994 by Ralph Noyes, who headed Defense Secretariat 8 (DS8) in the early seventies, to Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a, in charge of UFO reports at the Ministry. The recipient’s name is censored but given the time frame it must be Nick Pope, who would later become one of ufology’s superstars. The letter discusses a number of UFO issues and attitudes going all the way back to 1952 and it’s not the only time that Noyes, who retired from the Ministry in 1977 with the rank of Under Secretary of State, would cross paths and sometimes criticize his former employer. This was particularly the case when both Noyes and former Admiral of the Fleet Lord Peter Hill-Norton challenged the MOD’s public stance that the famous December 1980 Rendlesham Forest UFO incident was of “no defence interest.”

Who was Ralph Noyes?

Ralph Noyes passed away in 1998, but I still remember vividly a fascinating informal meeting of ufologists that took place at his flat in London during a visit to the UK in December 1991. Among those present were Timothy Good, who had reported some of Noyes’s revelations in his bestseller Above Top Secret, John Michell, the great Fortean author and longtime friend of Noyes, and a visiting Russian ufologist called Nikolai Lebedev, who was writing for Tim Good’s The UFO Report series of books. Much of the conversation dealt with crop circles, which were then becoming a major sociological phenomenon in England. Noyes himself was quite involved in that mystery, earlier that year editing The Crop Circle Enigma, one of the first books on the topic.

A Secret Property book cover (image credit: Quartet Books)

Noyes published in 1985 a novel titled A Secret Property, which was a spy thriller dealing with UFOs and inspired by the Rendlesham affair, as he himself acknowledged it in the book’s Afterword. The jacket provided a lengthy biographical profile of the author:

Ralph Noyes was born in the tropics and spent most of his childhood in the West Indies. He served in the RAF from 1940 to 1946 and was commissioned as aircrew, engaging in active service in North Africa and the Far East. He entered the civil service in 1949 and served in the Air Ministry and subsequently the unified Ministry of Defence. In 1977 he retired early from the civil service to take up a writing career, leaving in the grade of Under Secretary of State. He has since published several pieces of shorter fiction, most of them on speculative themes.

For nearly four years, until late 1972, Ralph Noyes headed a division in the central staffs of the Ministry of Defence which brought him in touch with the UFO problem. Since his retirement he has become increasingly interested in the subject, among others which lie on the fringes of present understanding. He sees speculative fiction as the ideal mode for grappling with these unusual areas of experience. But A SECRET PROPERTY is not only fiction but also ‘faction’ – at least to the extent of drawing on Ralph Noyes’s lengthy background in the Royal Air Force and the Ministry of Defence.

The MOD letter

Besides the 3-page letter by Noyes to Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a, dated January 25, 1994, outlining all the experiences in his official career which involved the UFO issue, the latest release of MOD files also includes the following attachments: “Ralph Noyes Speaks,” a lengthy transcript of an interview published in the British newsletter UFO Brigantia in May 1991; “The Majestical Mystery Tour,” an article by Noyes about his experiences at MOD published in 1988 in the British ufological publication Magonia; and a long letter by Noyes, “Some Properties of the Ministry of Defence,” published in the Fortean Times also in 1988. All these pieces cover basically the same territory, but there is one paragraph at the end of the Brigantia article worth citing, as it conveys perfectly the problem that many officials face —in Britain and elsewhere—when dealing with the UFO issue in the course of their careers. Ralph Noyes says:

It is only since I left the MOD (in 1977) that I have seriously tried to consider what may possibly lie behind the “UFO phenomenon”. It was impossible to discuss it seriously within the Department: I would merely have “rubbished” my working relationship with the RAF and scientific colleagues if I had disclosed the interest I felt in the better reports which reached us. What I retain from my MOD experience – greatly reinforced by much that I have since read – is that the “phenomenon” is veridical and important, and that the expert methodology developed over the past century by scholarly people in the field of the so-called “paranormal” may possibly be relevant… All I can be quite sure of is that we, in ufology, are dealing with transient and somewhat insubstantial events of a bizarre character, and that we are not alone in doing so. I think they matter. I also think that we and the “parapsychologists” might have some useful exchanges.

Back to the 1994 letter to Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a, we reproduce it in full because of its important testimony regarding various events and attitudes that took place during Ralph Noyes’s long career at the Ministry. It all started in 1952 when he was the Private Secretary to the Vice Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Ralph Cochrane. British authorities seemed concerned with the flying saucer wave in the United States and particularly over Washington, DC in the summer of 1952, and this went all the way to the top to Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill. However, wrote Noyes, “the PM was advised that there was nothing in the ‘UFO nonsense’,” and the relevant files dealing with this matter have been released in previous MOD batches. The letter then mentions “the Bentwaters/Lakenheath events of  August 1956, the events at West Freugh in the following year , and other subsequent events,” all of which “suggested to some of us that a ‘UFO phenomenon’ of some kind or other certainly existed.”

Ralph Noyes in his apartment in London in 1991. (image credit: Antonio Huneeus)

Noyes’s career went on and in 1969 he was appointed head of DS8, which included in part “the responsibility of responding to the public (including, of course, UFO groups) on unidentified objects which had been seen in the sky.” A little later comes the key paragraph dealing with an event which has elicited some attention over the years since it was first published in Tim Good’s Above Top Secret. Sometime in 1970, he writes, “a small party of us were invited by (I think) the then D. of Ops (AD) to view some photographic material in the sub-ground cinema during the lunch break… We were shown some slides, purportedly from aerial photographs taken by air crew. The highlight was a couple of brief clips of what I understand to be gun-camera material obtained as far back as 1956.”

Although Noyes clarified that the footage was “on the whole unimpressive,” the fact that such a screening even took place is rather interesting. He provides some additional details and comparisons to other footage from civilian sources like that obtained in Norway’s Hessdalen Valley or by Dr. Harley Rutledge in the American Ozarks, noting that “the evidence for the persistence of an odd phenomenon (occasionally with very strange effects) is abundant in the serious ufological literature.” Noyes then concludes the section about footage with this interesting observation:

That said, I can’t help feeling that there must be at least a scattering of good photographic material of unusual aerial objects obtained by the RAF over the years, perhaps backed by radar evidence. This could be of scientific value if released for outside study. Moreover, as I’ve suggested above, the mere fact that a government department was known to be adopting a non-dismissive attitude to these unusual phenomena might assist in getting the resources for serious research (eg. in the universities) which the ufological groups are unlikely to succeed in obtaining for themselves.

Here is the full letter by Ralph Noyes.

Ralph Noyes letter. Click the image to view full PDF.

The files also include the January 27, 1994 response by Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a—almost surely our friend Nick Pope (the name has been censored)—to Ralph Noyes, in which he writes:

I was interested to hear the background to the gun-camera film saga, together with the more general insight that you gave me into policy and attitudes in previous years. The recent enquiries about the gun-camera footage presented me with a useful opportunity to look, more generally, into the whole question of what film and photographic evidence we might have built up over the years. It was unfortunate that this search failed to turn up any such material, but at least we can now say that we had a very thorough look.

This poses an interesting conundrum that has parallel stories in the U.S. and other countries as well. Here we have an MOD official making an in-house official inquiry for footage that was known to have existed some 20 years earlier, since the testimony of Ralph Noyes is absolutely trustworthy. And yet…nothing shows up, it’s as if the material—particularly when dealing with things like photographic or physical evidence—just vanished into the twilight zone! If the material existed at one time, it has to be stored somewhere since it’s very unlikely that it would just be destroyed. But where? There is not a good answer for this particular problem unless you consider a super-secret group within the governments that just scoops up these kinds of evidences, a group that is beyond the reach of normal government officials and freedom of information laws.

Noyes and the Rendlesham affair

Lord David Alton, former MP from Liverpool and current member of the House of Lords (image credit: http://davidalton.net/)

Previous releases of MOD UFO files dealing with the famous 1980 Rendlesham affair included the efforts by David Alton, a Member of Parliament for Liverpool Moseley Hill from the Liberal Party who is currently a member of the House of Lords, to get to the bottom of this mysterious incident involving both the British and American military. Alton wrote in May 1985 to then Minister of Defence Michael Heseltine, enclosing a letter he received from Ralph Noyes about this matter, adding that “it seems to me that the points he raises are quite reasonable and merit a reply.” Alton and everybody else who inquired with MOD about this incident received the Ministry’s standard reply that the Rendlesham case was “of no defence significance.” Noyes thought this line just didn’t make sense if one considered the facts about this case.

I quoted briefly from the letter written on May 14, 1985 by Ralph Noyes to MP David Alton in the cover story about “The Rendlesham Forest Incident” published on issue 4 of Open Minds magazine in October/November 2010, in which he calls it a “puzzling and disquieting case.” The main gist of Noyes’s letter is his challenge to Lord Trefgarne, then serving as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at MOD and a member of the House of Lords, that Rendlesham was of  “no Defence interest.” Noyes wrote:

I cannot accept Lord Trefgarne’s view that there is no Defence interest in this case. Unless Lt. Col. Halt was out of his mind, there is clear evidence in his report that British airspace and territory were intruded upon by an unidentified vehicle on two occasions in late December 1980 and that no authority was able to prevent this. If, on the other hand, Halt’s report cannot be believed, there is equally clear evidence of a serious misjudgement of events by USAF personnel at an important base in British territory. Either way, the case can hardly be without Defence significance.

You can view the 2-page Noyes letter in full so that you can see all the arguments and issues he raises:

Letter from Noyes to David Alton. Click image to see full letter in PDF.

Ralph Noyes revisited the Rendlesham case in detail in a long essay published in The UFO Report 1990, a book edited by Timothy Good. The title of his piece, “UFO lands in Suffolk – and that’s Official!” is the same headline of the famous front page story published in October 1983 in the now-defunct British tabloid News of the World. That story introduced this case to the public, publishing for the first time the contents of the now famous January 13, 1981 memo on “Unexplained Lights,” written by Bentwaters Deputy Base Commander, Lt. Col. Charles Halt to the MOD. Noyes analyzed in detail the Rendlesham affair in his essay, concluding the case was certainly real and making the following observation towards the end of the piece:

The Rendlesham case also confirms, at least for me, that governments and their official agencies are undoubtedly engaged in concealment and obfuscation – but that the cover-up is of ignorance and unease. (This was certainly the game which I felt it necessary to play, myself, during my own term as an official of the Ministry of Defence from 1949 to 1977.)

Noyes also dealt with both the Rendlesham case and other factual details of ufology in the Afterword of his 1985 novel A Secret Property, where he wrote:

The RAF Woodbridge case of December 1980 strikes me as one of the most interesting and important of recent years, anyway in this country – perhaps the most significant military sighting (or supposed sighting) since the celebrated events of 13/14 August 1956 near RAF Bentwaters and Lakenheath (both of which, are by an entertaining coincidence, quite close to Woodbridge in that much haunted county of Suffolk).

For an updated view of what happened at the Rendlesham Forest, you can consult the lecture given earlier this year.by retired Col. Halt at the International UFO Congress.

Nick Pope (image credit: www.nickpope.net)

Pope divulged an insiders look at the government’s game of misleading people. He revealed one tactic used to downplay UFO reports was to refer to witnesses as “UFO buffs” or “UFO spotters” to make them sound less credible. They additionally used terms like “little green men” in reports to make the sightings seem silly, which would hopefully reduce the chance of the media picking up the story.

When Pope was with the MoD, he too was required to go along with the policy of deception. He told the Huffington Post, “I believe in open government and freedom of information. I believe that the UFO phenomenon does raise important defense, national security and air safety issues, and if I helped kill any initiative on that, I’m deeply sorry.”

McGregor has seen the objects several times in the past, with the most recent time being in January of 2011. He hopes that others who watch his video might be able to shed some light on the mystery. But McGregor’s theory is that the UFOs he has encountered are secret military aircraft.

Click below to watch McGregor’s UFO footage from 2006:

With such an increase in reports, why would the MOD shut down their investigation? According to the website that used to direct Britain citizens to the UFO hotline, it was shut down because “…in over fifty years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom.” It goes on to further state that spending resources in this area is inappropriate and “diverts MOD resources from tasks that are relevant to Defence.”

However, the reports released by the MOD today tell a different story. In May of 2009 a pilot reported a 20-30 foot “shiny black flying cylinder” that flew 200 feet above his airplane. In August a Royal Navy Air Traffic Controller reported seven silent lights that emitted an orange light. They traveled at 100 knots, and took a right hand turn. In November, an Ex-Royal Navy Commander reported seeing an orange orb moving at a “substantial” speed.

These three cases are some of the best examples of witnesses with “relevant” occupations. Other sighting reports contain more strange objects moving in ways which conventional aircraft would not.

The British government has been releasing documents for the past year. One of the reports that made the most worldwide headlines was regarding a US fighter pilot who was ordered to shoot down a UFO while he was stationed at the Manston Royal Air Force base in 1957. This report and others appear to provide evidence of a threat to British airspace. Intuitively it would seem that unidentified aircraft should be considered a potential threat until identification can be acquired. It would seem ridiculous for any agency seriously concerned with the safety of its airspace to ignore reports from its citizens.

Nick Pope (image credit: www.nickpope.net)

Nick Pope, who worked at the MOD’s UFO desk, had this to say about the close of the hotline, “Indeed, I am sure that as is almost certainly the case in the US, sightings from pilots and uncorrelated targets tracked on radar will continue to be looked at by someone, albeit outside of a formally constituted UFO project.”

For now you can judge for yourself. Below are some of the more interesting reports released today, and links to the full report and the MOD’s UFO reporting website.

Date: 15-Feb-09
Time: 00:15
Town/Village: Winwick
Area: Warrington
Occupation (Where Relevant): Police Officer
Description: Two orange lights in the sky that hovered over the old hospital site.
The lights were not together but were stationary. They made no noise. They then moved off in a southerly direction.

Date: 03-May-09
Time: 15:50
Town/Village: Otmoor
Area: Oxfordshire
Occupation (Where Relevant): Pilot
Description: A shiny black flying cylinder, 20-30ft long at about 4700ft which was 200ft above the pilots aircraft. Although the pilot sighted the object. Air Traffic Control forwarded details to the UFO Desk.

Date: 03-May-09
Time: 21:30
Town/Village: Ammanford
Area: Dyfed
Occupation (Where Relevant): Pilot
Description: Seven orange orbs that suddenly disappeared. They were on a North-South trajectory. Witness contacted Cardiff Air Traffic Control who had nothing on radar.

Date: 02-Jul-09
Time: 22:20
Town/Village: Blackwood
Area: Gwent
Occupation (Where Relevant): Ex-test engineer for Hawker Siddley (Aircraft Company)
Description: A bright orange light seen through the tree line. It turned and cleared the tree line. The other side of the object appeared to be a large rectangle shape of fire red/orange. It was silent. The object slowly climbed in the direction of Gloucester.

Date: 04-Jul-09
Time: Not Given
Town/Village: West Grinstead
Area: West Sussex
Occupation (Where Relevant): Part-Time Pilot
Description: 12-15 objects. Not like normal fixed wing aircraft, more like bright orange lights. Moving West at indeterminate height. Objects entered cloud then turned around.

Date: 01-Aug-09
Time: 03:42
Town/Village: Preston
Area: Lancashire
Occupation (Where Relevant): Police
Description: Bright object in sky, very large.

Date: 01-Aug-09
Time: 22:57
Town/Village: Michell
Area: Coldon
Occupation (Where Relevant): Police
Description: 17 UFO’s above village. Red and green lights, no sound.

Date: 07-Aug-09
Time: 22:45
Town/Village: Newport
Area: Shropshire
Occupation (Where Relevant): Retired RAF (Royal Air Force)
Description: Two yellow lights one above the other in the sky. On arriving home five minutes later watched the lights disappear behind a narrow cloud bank.

Date: 11-Aug-09
Time: 23:00
Town/Village: Thorpe-le-Soken
Area: Essex
Occupation (Where Relevant): Amateur astronomer
Description: Saw a meteor shower which contained something he could not explain.

Date: 13-Sep-09
Time: 20:25
Town/Village: Shepton Mallet
Area: Somerset
Occupation (Where Relevant): RN (Royal Navy) Air Traffic Control
Description: Seven silent objects emitting a bright orange light. One group of three and then singles. Travelled at about 100 knots then turned right.

Date: 17-Sep-09
Time: 21:40
Town/Village: Findon Valley
Area: West Sussex
Occupation (Where Relevant): Ex-pilot
Description: Saw an extremely bright star like light in sky. Continued flying then started to climb vertically no change in speed the dimmed and disappeared to a faint light.

Date: 19-Sep-09
Time: 21:01
Town/Village: West Wickham
Area: Kent
Occupation (Where Relevant): Pilot
Description: Series of 30 or more orange lights which then disappeared after moving at speed.

Date: 27-Sep-09
Time: 20:40
Town/Village: Northolt
Area: Middlesex
Occupation (Where Relevant): RAF (Royal Air Force)
Description: Saw two UFOs. Looked like balls of fire. As they approached RAF
Northolt the fireball went out. However, the craft was still visible and was in the shape of a jelly fish dome.

Date: 07-Nov-09
Time: 21:59
Town/Village: Peterborough
Area: Cambridgeshire
Occupation (Where Relevant): Ex-RN (Royal Navy) Cdr (Commander)
Description: Orange sphere 30 degrees above eastern horizon speed substantial, no noise no normal navigation lights just eerie orange glow.

Ministry of Defence UFO Hotline

Ministry of Defence UFO Reports

Nick Pope’s website

British Army Headquarters in Dhekelia, Cyprus (image credit: British Army)

During my time as Director of Investigation for the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA) I had the pleasure of cooperating with UFO researchers and UFO research organisations in both the UK and around the world. BUFORA had many regional UFO groups affiliated with them and also used to cooperate with others on a regular basis. One such organisation was the Plymouth UFO Research Group (PUFOG) in Devon in the UK. Its chairman was Robert (Bob) Boyd and in February of 1995 Bob passed a very interesting UFO photographic case to me. The sighting in question came from a former Royal Marine and took place while he was still serving with H.M. Forces in Cyprus.

On the 20^th of April 1993, PUFOG were interviewed by their local BBC radio station. As a result PUFOG were contacted by a Regimental Sergeant Major who wanted to relate a UFO sighting from 1971. The witness didn’t want any publicity so his name was changed and he was simply referred to as ‘Steve’. What follows is a verbatim reproduction of his UFO sighting.

Cyprus from satalite (image credit: NASA)

“I used to be a member of the Royal Marines, and we were part of a group called 41 Commando Group that was stationed in Malta. We used to depart from Malta 2 or 3 times a year and go to Cyprus for what’s called field exercises. I don’t know if you know the shape of Cyprus, but it looks something like a rugby ball laid on its side. On this particular night (31^st May, 1971), we were deployed in the field. The unit deployed with Echo company on the left hand side, in other words on the west end of the island. We had 2 companies on the north and my unit which was Command HQ, was due south at a place called Ghoshi Trooli. Altogether there were about 1400 men on the exercise.

At our position, we were doing what is known as a night move, and what happens is you move a Command HQ from one place in the field to another place in the field in darkness. One of my jobs was to control that move. So I would depart, set up a new location and then the unit would have to move to me, and we would have the spaces where they all went. Shortly before 8.00 pm, we drove to a new location. There was a particularly bad piece of track on the way there and I dropped off a young marine, a policeman, and said to him to stay on this track and when the unit comes, make sure you push them towards me in the right direction. There was one place where they could make a bad turn.

Shortly after getting on the ground, I located the various places and cleared them out. About 8 o’clockish a very bright light appeared behind a crest maybe a thousand metres away. What it looked like initially was the headlights of a car on full beam, situated behind the hill.  Because this was a night move with no lights, I got on the radio, gave my call sign and told them to turn their lights off. The light just got stronger so I transmitted again, negative lights. As I’m talking this light came over the crest about a thousand meters away and you go, ‘it’s not bloody headlights, it’s a flare’. I thought at first this was a mortar flare I was looking at. Mortar flares are stationary. You fire it up in the air and the aim is to illuminate the area. They hand by a parachute. The initial reaction was mortar flare and I was pretty concerned because we were in carbon grove, which is dry trees and if a flare lands amongst them you’ve got major problems. Twelve men had been killed in similar circumstances. A flare started in the Troodhos forest and a large number of English troops were killed. This was years before in 1957, which was in my time.

So now when I’m in a senior position in 1971, I think I’ve got a phosphorous flare hanging above a bloody carbon grove and I’m not going to be very happy. It appeared from a thousand meters, which as I said was from behind the crest but it could have been quite high in the sky. The impression I got was that initially it was quite low. My initial impression was that this object of light was about 5-10,000 feet. That’s a complete guess.

There was about 20 of us at this place, looking at this light, when we suddenly realise that it isn’t a flare and you say ‘well, what else can it be.’ The more you looked and the more people spoke, you couldn’t relate it to something else you’d seen, it was difficult to pin a label on. This was a massive thing. It appeared to be about the size of a golf ball at arms length. That’s the angle we were looking at (pointing 45 degrees). You had no obvious sign of movement. The main mass of light was almost spherical but it was putting out so much radiance, it looked like nothing you’d ever seen before. All it was like, was a burning ball of light. The light was extremely bright and when I’m talking about extremely bright, I’ve never seen anything as bright in my life.

The brilliance wasn’t burning enough to burn your eyes but it was just… awesome. The nearest I can get to it is if you lowered the sun. And this is what I mean by a burning ball of light. The thing was that bright you see. It was like a burning orb of light, one orb of brilliance. I could also see other lights amongst it or thought I could. Not obvious lights. They weren’t like porthole lights with little people putting their heads out and waving at you. It was just what I thought indications of other lights, the same colour as the main one. You had this burning ball coming overhead like that and I am seeing something, not actually a cross but other lights roughly that shape within the centre light.

Front and back of it, especially when it was lower in the sky, you had like a vortex of movement as though you had displacement of air. In other words, if a thing is moving it would push air backwards and forwards. I could see something like that. You get a lot of dust in Cyprus, especially at that time of year. Very dry dusty conditions and you get a lot of dust in the atmosphere. If you had a burning ball of phosphorous, you would have the central core of phosphorous, then the glare of the diffused light. If you were moving that phosphorous through conditions where there was dust, you would get movement, a push vortex and a vortex behind.

There was a lot of chat among the 20 men. You’re all talking about it. You’ve never seen anything like it in your life. We are now watching this for some minutes.  Remember I told you that I’d left a marine corporal guarding at the track. We all of a sudden hear this (beats hand on table) and this guy came over the hill doing about 600 mph!! This is in full kit. And you know Cyprus is a hot and sticky place. Anyway, he came up and after panting for a bit said, ‘Can you see that?’ We said yes and he said ‘Thank Christ for that’. It wasn’t till that happened that you realized that by being in a group of people watching, it wasn’t frightening as it was if you were alone. I mean for a Marine Corporal to disobey my orders and bugger off, then it was something.  To a lone individual…..to run away from something is a serious offense, let’s not disguise the fact. He deserted the post that I had given. For a lone individual, what he saw by himself…..meant it was a bit more serious than that.

Everybody on the exercise, about 1400 men, saw the light. During this period the unit, you remember, is doing a night move. As I said we had radio sets and we could hear transmissions of other people taking about the light, and at one stage the following dialogue took place between a call sign which is a unit and a commanding officer, Sunray. There was a little bit of chat about the light then Sunray said, ‘It must be a flying saucer ha ha’. There were the words he used.

We watched this for 22 minutes. We were all professional observers. I carry powerful binoculars, night glasses, and there was about half a dozen pairs of binoculars there. Now you may think that what I was going to tell you is stupid, but the light went from ground zero and took 22 minutes to disappear out of sight of binoculars to the right of the moon. We didn’t use the glasses when the light was easily visible because it was so bright it might have damaged your eyes through binoculars. It was when it was at height that we used the binoculars. So using night glasses leaning on a land rover, watching this light, the moon is now hanging over Dhekelia Garrison and the object ended up to the right of the moon.

A point I want to make is that there was no impression of speed, sound or movement. You were looking at something that seems to drift past you. I’ve been trained for 27 years to judge distances, that’s what I’m paid for. But I couldn’t tell you if that was 1000 meters high, 5000 meters high, 50 mile high. I’m also a professional parachutist, so I knew distances in the air, but I couldn’t tell you how far away it was or how high. It was just something you’d never seen before. The day we saw the light was the same day that the Americans had launched one of their moon shots. I think it was the second one.

Katopyrgos, Cyprus

We then moved back to the barracks. When I got back to base, I wrote a complete report of everything we’d seen that night. It covered about 5 pages. I posted it to my wife first and told her to keep the letter because I knew it was something different – and she ditched it!! The next morning, we were all talking in the mess about the light, so I rang Akrotiri and asked to speak to the station Net. Officer and I couldn’t get hold of him. The lines were burning. So I contacted my opposite number there and spoke to him. He said, ‘Is it about the light we saw last night,’ and I said yes. He said ‘the switchboard had been jammed solid’. Then he said that ‘it was the Mariner shot (NARAS) that’s all we were watching’.

Later that morning the colonel sent for me and (we were referring to the light in general discussion) he instructed that all sub-units who’d seen it, were requested to write a report on it and anybody who had taken photos to hand them in as part of the research into this Mariner thing. And this was done. I then got to draw ammunition. I used to lodge my ammunition in a compound. Bring it off a ship, put it in the compound and draw from the army barracks.  Everyone you saw would say, did you see that light and you’d have a chat about it. I go down there and was talking to the blokes about it. One bloke had come out of the mess, drunk: out of an army mess, drunk. He gets to the car park and goes to start his car and he looks up and sees what we saw and he said in seconds he was stone cold sober. He raced back into the mess goes ga a ga and they all run out to watch the light.

The Turks or the Greeks, I don’t know which but one of them believes a light, a bright light like this means the coming of the new Messiah. When I went for the ammo, locals worked in the ammunition dump, and one of them was telling us that his village had seen this as part of their sort of religion of Christ and that, and they all turned out and were praying in the streets, thinking that the Boss Man had arrived again. It wasn’t just a few people. It was reported in the local press so it could easily be checked, I’m not giving you a load of waffle. You could dead easy get a check of it.

I started collating the reports and listening to other people talking about it. Echo Company was on the left of the Island. Now they had observed what we had observed, maybe ten minutes prior. So let’s say at about 7.35 pm, they’d noticed this light coming from West to East, so it was coming straight towards them. This light came from West to East. Halfway across the Island, it then turned from North to South. So Echo Company watch it coming towards them, it then comes inland turns from North to South. We watch it as it came over the mountain and flies south. I didn’t know they had Mariner craft that turn a right angle basically and then disappear. All the reports were handed in, photos and negatives and quite a lot got handed in. If you’ve got 1400 blokes in the field, you’re going to have a hundred of them with cameras, aren’t you? There was a large quantity of films handed in. I would say over a hundred rolls of film.

Weeks later it was confirmed that this was a UFO. You see what happened, the first morning when the colonel asked me to get the reports, he didn’t give me a full brief. I would be responsible for running the unit and he would normally be dead straight with me. Now for some reason he had a top level meeting with his company commanders and would have discussed it with them, but he didn’t tell me the full story.

In the centre of Cyprus is a place called the Troodhos Mountains, on top of which they’ve got the most sophisticated radar in the world. They’re called golf balls because of their appearance and are maybe 3-400 feet in circumference. They used to monitor the U2 flights and long range radar transmissions. There’s a fighter base at Akrotiri and it’s a very sophisticated fighter base. On RAF bases abroad, they always have QRF (quick response) fighters burning internally. So on an operational base you always have the latest aircraft there, ready to go.

About 2 or 3 weeks later we were off the coast of (location deleted) doing a job. I went in for my morning sherry with him and he said, ‘That UFO’s been confirmed.’ So I said, what UFO? “Didn’t I tell you?’ he said. I said, no but you’re going to tell me now, aren’t you? And then he explained that this was a UFO and it was an official job from reports, they went off and then it then came back as confirmed as a UFO.

RAF Lightning fighter jet

I was told this by him – that is the colonel – that during this, those ‘golf balls’ up on Troodhos had traces early on in the game. They put 2 Lightnings up (RAF fighter aircraft), which were capable of about 1200 mph. They would obviously have an early interception course on this particular object, whatever it was, and they could be put alongside it. And the way it was said to me was, ‘Two Lightings couldn’t touch it’. In service parlance that means that you can up two aircraft and they could not get those planes in contact with the object.

The radar at Troodhos pinged them early, and the Lightning’s went up. You never get a single plane going off QRF, you always get two. You’ve got two fighters depart from Akrotiri to investigate, told them to have a look, so they get a vector course. They pick it up on their radar long before it’s visible, probably 5 to 600 miles away. So the Troodhos radar would have picked it up at distance, the Lightings would be sent up to investigate it and they can’t touch it doing 1200 mph. Yet when you ask me how fast is it going and I’m telling you it is almost stationary. If it looked almost stationary, and the Lightning’s couldn’t touch it, it must have been a fair old height. But none of the facts relate, it doesn’t fit in with anything you’ve seen before.

I would be very interested in seeing what the Lightning’s saw. They would have been put up early enough by radar to get within good seeing distance to it. They all actually carry cameras on board, so they would trigger the cameras if nothing else. These would be cine cameras. These photos I’ve given you were taken by a naval publicity photographer. In the middle of the Island you had the support company, which was firing the weapons. The photographer who took these, was with that company. He was using tripods set up for night firing. It wasn’t just a hit and miss affair with a guy with a camera. This is one of the few occasions that a guy was there with a proper set of equipment, tripods, etc.  This guy was photographing what is known as Wombats and Nobats. They’re anti-tank guns and have an open breech called venture and when the round fires, the propellant burns out the back in a big flash, so when you see them they look very dramatic. You know the gun crew, the hooded figures, the round going out, a big flash at the back. That’s what his camera was set up for.

When the light appears the guy put his camera on it and included these on the same reel of negs. And these were handed in as part of what I told you. These I imagine are the only 3 surviving photos of this. He handed the roll in but a couple of days later, he was in the same mess as me, gave me a set of the prints he had done. And that’s what these are. I had more photos than this but a couple have been nicked. I think I had 5 or 6 originally. When I showed them to people, I loaned them to one or two of them and possibly they kept one or two. I had about half a dozen at first. Luckily I’ve still got these. I’m well aware that it’s taken me 20 years to tell you this. Now if I was trying to do a snow job, I wouldn’t wait 20 years to tell you what I saw. I’m also no idiot. You could probably falsify photos 1, 2 & 3, by a dark room, a neon light and a clever photographer. But there is no way you could do this one (photo 2) which shows the lights of Dhekelia Garrison, 6 or 7 miles away.

Cyprus UFO photo #1 (image credit: Bob Boyd, PUFORG)

Cyprus UFO photo #2 (image credit: Bob Boyd, PUFORG)

Cyprus UFO photo #3 (image credit: Bob Boyd, PUFORG)

Close up of object in Cyprus UFO photo #3 (image credit: Bob Boyd, PUFORG)

The photos are time exposures, so don’t show the ball of light as such but its trail across the sky. I don’t know how long he left the shutter open. You can get a good idea of how bright it was. The photos also show the illuminated dust in the atmosphere as it passes through. Lots of people who saw this are still serving. You’ll find that the senior officers like me have gone but lots of the younger ones will still be serving.

It’s taken me 20 years to tell you now, because you don’t like getting ridiculed.  I’ve told it to other people because the beauty of it is I can prove what I’m saying. Luckily I’ve still got the photos showing the horizon. There was no cover up or hush up on the base because it fitted in with the Mariner thing, but we all knew it wasn’t that. What was surprising was that it didn’t make the English press. I’ve sometimes read or heard on the radio, that someone has seen a flying saucer. It’s amazing that on a thing like this where you’ve got, in my case, at least a thousand or more trained observers, whether they be junior or senior, all looking at the same object, and I’m talking about at least half an hour or more.  Plus from different locations spread over an area of a couple of hundred square miles. You’ve got the whole small isolated community like Cyprus seeing it, and reported on their radio, their own media and yet it never got any massive press coverage over here.

I just heard you by accident on the radio and what clicked in my mind was when you said the MoD had got something on these lines. I thought I’ll tell him about the photos. Otherwise they would have just lain there forever.”

END OF INTERVIEW

The 3 photos are reproduced here in full. You can see as ‘Steve’ described in photo number 2 the lights of the garrison at the bottom of the photo.

At the time when the photos and interview were conducted PUFORG contacted the Ministry of Defense in the UK to see if they could obtain any further information on this event. After all ‘Steve’ had told them that he collected lots of reports and photos and that later his colonel had confirmed that it was a UFO. The reply from the UK Mod was

“The files for 1971 would have been sent to the public records office a long time ago and are covered by the terms of the public records act, remaining closed from public viewing, until 30 years after the last action was taken”

Of course those 30 years has now passed and in the last few years the UK Ministry of Defense has begun releasing its UFO files to the National Archives. The main man behind this is Dr. David Clarke. I recently asked Dr. Clarke to check to see if there was any sign of this incident in the released MoD files:

“Nothing. I’ve gone through the files for that year at Kew with a fine tooth comb and would have a note of it if it was there. But as it was the Royal Marines report might have gone to the Navy and never reached the Air Staff. There are any number of reasons why it doesn’t appear in the UFO files. If they knew it was a military exercise of some description it might never have been treated as a UFO at official level. That’s the problem with following up cases like this that rely upon the memories of a single individual decades after the event”.

I don’t agree with Dr. Clarke that we are relying purely on the memories of one individual. If the witness is correct then he collected numerous reports as ordered by his commanding officer and photographs as well. The fact that they are not in the released files will only fuel speculation in some quarters that the MoD has not released everything and that there is indeed some kind of cover-up in place. I’m not sure I share such an idea but I can fully understand why some researchers do support such a notion.

And what of the three photographs provided. I asked UFO photographic analyst Winston Keech to comment on them:

“My first pass of the photos and report look good – unless I find finer detail I would consider them genuine print copies of a real illuminated object taken with a standard lens on a tripod on long exposure. I have identified the tracks of stars in the background which should confirm the exposure duration etc. There is one effect from the forward scattered light around the object in one print that I need to explain, that is unusual – but that aside, they appear genuine … proper report to follow.

There are a few typos in the report, which I suspect are due to phonetic interpretation of an original conversation… nothing drastic – except that the correct spelling of the RAF base is ‘Akrotiri’. I did in fact put in for detachment to that very base when I was a pilot with the RAF in the early 80′s… along with half the RAF, as it is considered a prize detachment … almost sea and sun holiday in fact!

It has always been a very strategic base for refueling and reach of the Middle East/Turkey … and I can confirm that it was the home to the Nº 56 squadron, who would have just converted to Mk 6 Lightning’s (not quite as quick in climb, but with longer fuel range) from the Mk 3 model, in 1971.

Note also, that the radar referred to with 500 mile range is the hilltop radar, not the lightning’s onboard radar – the lightning would have only be good for less than 50 miles targeting radar range depending on model and conditions. The hilltop system would have been similar to the early Fylingdales modified ‘sage’ system.

Hope this of help, really interesting case,

Win.

ps. for a commissioned officer to desert his post like that would normally be considered an extremely bad/unthinkable thing… it generally results in dishonorable discharge – so to not be, speaks volumes in my opinion.

I also asked Winston Keech if he thought that the Mariner 9 launch could have been misidentified and be a possible explanation for this sighting and photographs:

“I would say that it would not be possible to see the launch phase of the Mariner 9 probe from Cyprus at that time. It was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 22:23 gmt in a direct ascent and separated from it’s launch vehicle at 22:36 gmt (a 13 min ascent) then deployed its solar cells at 22:40 gmt. The ground observation visual range to low earth orbit height (about the separation height) would be around 300 miles max. As this was a direct (vertical) ascent this means that the earth could only have rotated Easterly by around 250 miles by that point, so at absolute best it could not be seen in more than an area from 300 miles offshore from Florida to 550 miles inland from Canaveral and +/- 300 miles North South during the entire launch phase. The local launch time in Cyprus would be 23:23 to 23:36 and the probe would not be visible at all until around 20 hours later as Cyprus would be rotating away from the launch site, which is around 1/5 of the Global circumference away to the West. (as it was quoted as vertical ascent therefore controlled to fly directly from the launch point towards its target – Mars – so would be flying westerly downrange at around 1000 mph by separation). I think we can pretty much rule out the Mariner probe. Presumably his ’8 pm’ would be local time, or he would have quoted it as 1900 Zulu (as Cyprus is GMT +1 hr I believe).

Hope this is of help,

Win.”

And just to be on the safe side I consulted with former RAF Wing Commander Alan Turner just to see if he knew anything about the operations of the base there at the time in Cyprus and to check that the witness’s recollections were indeed accurate:

“Many thanks for your article on what was observed in Cyprus – very convincing stuff.  What is impressive is the fact that the sighting was acknowledged formally as a UFO. I was involved with 56 Lightning Squadron when it returned from Cyprus in early 1974,  but I don’t know if that particular squadron was there at the time of the Royal Marine’s sighting  Having said that, a couple of the pilots alluded to ”sightings which were weird” although they didn’t go into detail”.

Many UFO researchers will tell you that UFO sightings made by trained observers, especially members of the military, are held in high regard. They are less likely to be fooled by misidentifying known natural phenomenon although they are not infallible of course. They are after all only human like the rest of us. This sighting would seem to fall in to that category. It seems highly unlikely that it was not a misidentification of the launch of Mariner 9. If it was, then why ask for all the reports to be collected? Mariner 9 was a mission to Mars and was launched in the full blaze of normal publicity.  This case has the potential to be quite unique simply by the amount of military observers involved. One would of course like to speak to more of them and as a researcher I’d like to know where within the Ministry of Defense these reports are stored because so far they have not been released. Are they simply buried in red tape and languishing in a dusty file somewhere, or are the conspiracy theorists correct and there really is a cover- up? I for one don’t have the answers but hopefully one day someone will.

References: PUFORG Report No: 9308.

Winston Keech (private correspondence)

Dr David Clarke (private correspondence)

Wing Commander Alan Turner (private correspondence)

The interviews and UFO photographs are reproduced here with permission of Bob Boyd, PUFORG.

Ministry of Defense

We received a tip on our Open Minds Twitter that the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) had stopped taking UFO reports.  The tip included a link to their site.  Sure enough, this statement was posted:

“How to report a UFO sighting

The MOD has no opinion on the existence or otherwise of extra-terrestrial life.  However, in over fifty years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom.

The MOD has no specific capability for identifying the nature of such sightings.  There is no Defence benefit in such investigation and it would be an inappropriate use of defence resources.  Furthermore, responding to reported UFO sightings diverts MOD resources from tasks that are relevant to Defence.

Accordingly, and in order to make best use of Defence resources, we have decided that from the 1 December 2009 the dedicated UFO hotline answer-phone service and e-mail address will be withdrawn.  MOD will no longer respond to reported UFO sightings or investigate them.  The ongoing programme to release Departmental files on UFO matters to the National Archive will continue.”

I immediately contacted the internationally known expert, Nick Pope, who served with the MOD as the official point of contact and investigator of UFO reports as part of a government project between 1991 and 1994.  He has been on American TV often recently regarding British files that have been released regarding UFOs.  He wrote me back this note:

Nick Pope (image credit: www.nickpope.net)

“With effect from December 1, 2009, the UK Ministry of Defense terminated its UFO project, ending over 50 years of research and investigation into the phenomenon.

The news was slipped out in a way designed not to attract attention, by making an amendment to an existing document in the Freedom of Information section of the MoD website, entitled “How to report a UFO sighting”. The announcement states that “in over fifty years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom” and goes on to say that “MoD will no longer respond to reported UFO sightings or investigate them”:

http://tinyurl.com/btezh3

Having worked on the UFO project from 1991 to 1994 I am sorry to see MoD disengage in this way. I believe that where evidence suggests that UK airspace has been penetrated by an unidentified object, this must automatically be of defense interest and should be investigated properly. Indeed, I am sure that as is almost certainly the case in the US, sightings from pilots and uncorrelated targets tracked on radar will continue to be looked at by someone, albeit outside of a formally constituted UFO project.

From the Fifties to the present day, MoD received around 12,000 UFO reports. While most were misidentifications of ordinary objects and phenomena, around 5% remained unexplained.”

It is certainly peculiar that the Ministry of Defence began releasing UFO documents en masse last year, which have included reports from credible witnesses, such as military personnel, police officers, radar operators, University professors, and others, and then subtly cancel their investigations into a subject that should obviously be of concern.