Files detailing mysterious sightings of UFOs are released by MoD

It was black, U-shaped and flying over the Firth of Forth. The drawing of a mystery object in 1995 is just one of a host of sightings made public today.

Nick Pope, an ex-MoD civil servant who worked on the files, said: "Most sightings turned out to be misidentifications of things like aircraft lights or meteors, but a small proportion could not be explained."

Among the 18 files are an apparent cover-up by Winston Churchill of a close encounter between an RAF plane and a UFO.

View them online at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos, where the files will be free to read for a month.

Cold War scares

RAF jets were scrambled to investigate UFOs picked up on radar 200 times a year during the Cold War.

Most of them were believed to be antisubmarine aircraft and spy planes into British airspace by the Russians.

The number fell to zero after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

However, the RAF continued to scramble aircraft in missions against known targets, including hijacked airliners, suspected drug smugglers and jets launched from a Russian aircraft carrier.

The information is revealed in an MoD briefing note for a response to a 1996 Parliamentary Question from MP Martin Redmond.

The note said the RAF occasionally helped customs officers monitor activity in certain areas to detect drug running.

It added: "The existence of this sensitive activity has never been publicised and, to date, has not resulted in any successful seizures of forbidden substances."

Dr David Clarke, an expert in unexplained phenomena, noted that public interest in UFOs increased at the same time - partly due to TV shows.

He said: "Between 1991 and 1996, no scrambles were recorded.

"In contrast, during the same five-year period the MoD received almost 1200 reports of sightings from the public, most of which were filed away.

"In 1996, there were more than 600 reports, 343 letters from the public and 22 inquiries from MPs, perhaps related to shows such as The X-Files."

The aliens bet

A gambler appealed to the Government after a bookmaker refused to pay out on a bet that aliens would land on Earth.

The punter had £17 placed with Ladbrokes on extraterrestrials being found dead or alive by the end of the 20th century.

But the bookie said they would not pay up because the United Nations had not confirmed their existence.

Asked to intervene, the MoD agreed there was no evidence of visits by lifeforms from other planets.

The unnamed man, from Beeston, Leeds, put a wager on "aliens to have landed (dead or alive) on Earth before December 31, 1999" at 100-1, meaning he stood to win £1700 if it had been confirmed.

But when Ladbrokes refused to pay out, he complained to the Minister for Sport's office, which passed it to the MoD.

He said he had found 19 books in Leeds Central Library on the subject, adding: "I placed my bet on facts, Ladbrokes hide behind government propaganda weighted heavily to prevent public alarm and panic."

The Churchill 'cover-up'

Sir Winston Churchill was accused of covering up a close encounter between an RAF aircraft and a UFO during World War II.

The Prime Minister was said to have ordered that the unexplained incident over the east coast of England should be kept secret for at least 50 years because it would provoke "mass panic".

The claim was made by a scientist who said his grandfather was one of Churchill's bodyguards.

The incident involved an RAF reconnaissance plane returning from a mission in Europe towards the end of the war.

It was over or near the English coastline when it was intercepted by a metallic object which matched the aircraft's course and speed for a time before accelerating away and disappearing.

Allegations of the cover-up emerged when the man, from Leicester, wrote to the Government in 1999 seeking to find out more about the incident.

He described how his grandfather, who served with the RAF in the war, was present when Churchill and US general - and later president - Dwight Eisenhower discussed how to deal with the UFO encounter.

The man, who is not named in the files, wrote that Churchill was reported to have said: "This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic amongst the general population and destroy one's belief in the church."

In September 1999 an MoD official replied, writing: "It was generally the case that before 1967, all UFO files were destroyed after five years.

"Therefore, any UFO report files from the WWII era would most probably have been destroyed."

The Welsh Roswell incident

A UFO incident dubbed the "Welsh Roswell" was dismissed as a combination of an earthquake and a meteor, files show.

Locals heard a huge bang and saw a brilliant light in the sky over the Berwyn mountains in north Wales on the evening of January 23, 1974.

It was compared to the Roswell incident, where an alien spaceship was reported to have crashed in New Mexico in the US in 1947.

Some researchers claimed the Welsh explosion was caused by a spaceship crash that was covered up by the authorities.

But an MoD investigation concluded the scare was the result of a noisy earth tremor that coincided with a meteor burning up in the atmosphere.

A search and rescue team from RAF Valley on Anglesey was scrambled to look for wreckage but found nothing.

MoD inquiries uncovered five other reports of UFOs seen over the UK at about 10pm on January 23, 1974 - three in England's Home Counties, one in Lincolnshire and one in Sussex.

The witnesses generally reported seeing a bright light in the north-west which seemed to fall towards the horizon.

An expert who carried out research into the Berwyn mountains incident reported that a "fireball" was seen in Edinburgh, Somerset, Norfolk and Manchester, where it burned up.

But the MoD's conclusions did not convince many witnesses.

One wrote: "It is certain to the minds of both my friends who came with me and to me that we were visited by an object that evening."

The eyewitness sketches

Eyewitness sketches of a rocket forming part of a possible alien invasion fleet and a space station covered in pulsating lights are included in the newlyreleased files.

Among the drawings sent to the Ministry of Defence to illustrate unusual sightings are the following: A black U-shaped object seen from Edinburgh travelling above the Firth of Forth without disturbing the water on October 9 1995.

Three triangular UFOs resembling stealth aircraft, two of them with round or lozenge-shaped lights along the wings.

A resident of Torrisholme, near Morecambe in Lancashire, wrote to the MoD in May 1997 to try and find out more about "what is going on around the country and in particular our area".

The correspondent said the UFOs hovered over people's homes and followed cars, but were not helicopters, normal planes or balloons.

A small rocket with a rear engine shaped like a "10-petalled flower head" reportedly seen orbiting the moon in 1984.

A Briton living in Toronto in Canada told the MoD in October 1995 that the craft was part of a group of spaceships resembling a "naval task force" captured in the background of a magnified photograph of the planet Jupiter.

The writer warned: "I see this as a potential serious threat to our security from a totally unexpected quarter by people who are technologically more advanced than we are."

A black triangular craft with a pulsing red light at the front and two continuous white lights at the rear seen in Stanley, County Durham, on the evening of September 29, 1995.

The witness said it travelled at about 40mph and was accompanied by a high-pitched tone, like an aircraft in a dive.

A shiny tubular object with a single tail wing at each end seen travelling slowly from the east in the sky above Billingham, Teesside, on October 17, 1995.

A circular "space station" with red, green and white lights pulsing like a heartbeat in an anti-clockwise direction around the outside.

The UFO was seen six miles above Crumlin in Gwent, Wales, on the night of May 9, 1998.

An oblong craft with a curved front and a series of small nozzles at the rear that a witness saw over Manchester Airport on the day of a near-miss between a British Airways Boeing 737 and a UFO on January 6 1995.

The UFO expert who sent the sketches to the MoD said he was "a little dubious" about aspects of the report, including a claim that the object was "20 times the size of a football field".

Circular formations of lights seen by a number of people over Bristol in July 1996.

A UFO shaped like a kite that hovered for up to four minutes before zooming off at "incredible speeds" reported to the MoD in December 1996 by an enthusiast from Blackpool, Lancashire, who believed it was an experimental stealth aircraft.