Churchill asked for report on UFOs

18 February 2010

Winston Churchill asked the Royal Air Force for an explanation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) during his second term as Prime Minister, it has emerged.

Documents relating to UFO sightings released by The National Archives include a memo from Churchill to Secretary of State for Air Defence Lord Cherwell in July 1952.

In it Churchill asked: "What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth? Let me have a report at your convenience."

In the official response UFOs were said to have four possible explanations. They were either known astronomical or meterological phenomena, mistakenly identified aircraft, balloons or birds, optical illusions and psychological delusions or deliberate hoaxes.

The papers also reveal that senior MoD official Ralph Noyes was shown gun camera film of UFOs captured by RAF fighter pilots in 1956. He claimed to have been shown footage in an air defence staff at a screening room at the MoD Main Building in 1970. Following a search of the archives by MoD staff in 1993-94 no trace of the films could be found and it was assumed that they had not survived or that the images had been stolen for someone's private collection.

The fifth online release from the National Archive and MoD files is the largest to date, containing 24 files and totalling over 6,000 pages of material spanning 1994-2000.

Other highlights include:
• A UFO sighted by Boston and Skegness Police captured on film and then spotted by a ship's crew in the North Sea. Simultaneously, an unidentified blip was picked up on radar over Boston. A detailed investigation followed, which identified some of the lights as the planet Venus rising and the blip on the radar as 'a permanent echo' made by a tall church spire.

• A Birmingham man arrived home at 4am to find a large, illuminated blue triangle hovering over his garden. The craft 'shot off' leaving behind a 'silky-white' substance on tree tops in his garden, which he saved in a jam-jar. The file that contains the report of the incident does not reveal what happened to the substance.

• Copies of original statements taken from the "UK's Roswell", Rendlesham Forest, and calls for an inquiry into 600 alleged sightings in Bonnybridge, Scotland, known as the 'Bonnybridge Triangle'.

The Ministry of Defence stopped taking reports of UFO sightings in December, saying it was 'an inappropriate use of defence resources'.

The files are available to download for free for a month at the National Archive website.