Ufology Research

Someone sent a ream of letters to the MoD in 1999. He or she offered to help investigate, give advice on how to handle extraterrestrials they might have found, and suggest ways to more efficiently deal with all the reports of spacecraft they were getting.

Here's a sample of his or her missives:



In its standard form letter, the MoD reply includes the statement that it's not interested in UFOs and has "no expertise" in dealing with aliens and flying saucers.

If that was true, the letter writer argued, then how could he (or she) be the expert that he (or she) is? Furthermore, since he (or she) must know more than the MoD about UFOs, they should have asked him (or her) for help.

Can't fault the logic.

Yeah, MoD! What's the deal?

Another goodie from the MoD UFO Files. This one is tucked in with other reports from the year the 2000.

This might explain why the MoD UFO desk staffers might have become jaded after a while.

Okay, so we've established that the RAF didn't really take UFO reports all that seriously, as evidenced by the Leuchars alien cartoon on its reporting form (see previous post). But is there any evidence of a UFO "cover-up?"

Now, I'm not one to promote such a thing. In fact, anyone who's read my writings can see I don't buy into the whole cover-up scenario.

But when you find a blatantly incorrect statement made by a military communications officer about UFOs, you have to wonder.



Buried deep in the newly-released MoD UFO files is a case from April 16, 2000. It's in the set of files accessed as: http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pdfs/defe-24-2009.pdf and consists of a letter from someone who appears to be a civilian UFO investigator, a photograph of a UFO, and the MoD's reply. The civilian told the MoD about a sighting that had been reported to him (or her) and asked if they had any info or explanation for it. The incident had occurred near Beeston in Cheshire and involved the sighting and photograph of a "pulsing" object that changed shape and vanished after a few minutes of observation.



It was a very polite letter, intelligent, with many details and very respectful in tone. In it, the writer asked if the UFO might have been a military aircraft from a nearby base called Hack Green.

The reply from MoD was a form letter, with a few additions to personalize it. Basically, the MoD said no, they had not received any other reports from that day, and that they did not consider the incident a "breach" of UK airspace by "unauthorised military aircraft."

Apart from the fact that statement itself can be construed in many ways, it was the next comment that made me curious.



"There is no current RAF station called "Hack Green" and we are not aware of any previous station by that name."

I thought that was odd, because somewhere I recalled hearing about a place called Hack Green and immediately looked it up. Sure enough, Hack Green was definitely a British military base, especially a radar installation during WWI and after it as part of an early warning system. It was then developed as a nuclear bunker. It was decommissioned in 1998 when it was sold to a private developer as a museum. It's now a tourist attraction called the "Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker!"

Here's a link to some info about it: http://www.rocremembered.com/hack-green-r6-rotor-station-rg/

And yet... the MoD had never heard of it.

Cover-up, incompetence... or simply not taking the inquiry seriously?

It's all over the net today that the British Government has released a final batch of UFO files, covering 1994 to 2000. (It's probably not the last batch, but some are hyping it that way.) It's several thousand pages, covering the usual kinds of cases. Mostly nocturnal lights, mostly explainable as stars and planets, but there are some odd things in the mix.

I tried downloading one set of the documents. They're in sets of about 300 pages each - about 30 megs on average. Their server was swamped today and it took 40 tries to get one set. even one set is a lot to read and go through.

The Guardian and the Times picked out some interesting cases and headlined them, so I won't go into these in any detail.

Here's the Guardian's story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/18/mod-records-ufos-encounter-absurd-kind

And the Beeb's:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/8521868.stm

But I found a few other odd things and I'll be noting them in weeks to come.



One thing I did find was really telling. The UK RAF base at Leuchars (Scotland) filed many of the UFO reports in the set I looked at. I found it remarkable that the base's own official UFO reporting form featured a cartoon alien and UFO on its masthead!

So, did the RAF really take the reports seriously?

In the "why didn't they just ask me?" department, Canadian media have heard from a Finnish ufologist who says that "winter Sun" on aircraft contrails created the UFOs seen over Newfoundland last week.

Link: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/breakingnews/83274607.html

And an expanded article from CTV is here:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100201/ufo_nl_100201/20100201?hub=TopStoriesV2

My call to Newfoundland media has found that the case seems to have been closed.

Today, I was told by a reporter that as far as the Newfoundland media are concerned, the photos of the missile-like object over Harbour Mille are only of a jet contrail, backlit by the Sun.

"The consensus is that it was all just contrails," the newsman told me.

That would explain why the story seems to have died on the wires over the weekend.

But there's still some loose ends that need tying up. For example, why did RCMP tell the witness it was a missile launched by France? Why did National Defence and the RCMP later retract that explanation and simply say the UFO was "something" without offering any details?

It would have been nice, for example, to give us the flight numbers of the aircraft so the explanation of contrails could be verified, then offered to the curious and very puzzled populace.

The reality is that there are dozens of planes in the air at any given time around Newfoundland, since it's on many paths from the US Eastern Seaboard to Europe. A contrail of a high aircraft heading east could have been any one of several flights that might have been in view at about 5:00 pm Newfoundland time on a Friday night.

When I first saw the photos, my first impression was that the UFO was a contrail, having seen so many videos and photos of them as UFOs during the past 20 or 30 years.

What threw me off was the RCMP's comment about missiles. I mean, it was possible, I suppose, but why? And then the government's suggestion it was an amateur rocket. Silly, but possible, I guess, but... then they decided it wasn't after all.

I still wonder why this plausible explanation of aircraft contrails, and the providing of simple details, could not have been offered to media by National Defence, rather than their evasive response? All this does is fuel suspicion and give conspiracy theorists more fodder.