The Last Batch of MoD UFO Files

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?