UK News

"Is there anyone out there?" - Britain reveals UFO secrets (Roundup)

May 14, 2008, 13:06 GMT

London - They used to be stamped 'Secret: For British Eyes Only' - but on Wednesday files about the sighting of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in the skies over Britain were made public for the first time. The release of the previously classified documents followed pressure from UFO enthusiasts who insisted that Britain's new Freedom of Information Act required 'open and transparent government.' On Wednesday, an initial eight files were published by the National Archives in Kew, near London, with a further 200 in the pipeline. The documents, sure to rekindle the interest of sceptics and believers alike, will be available to download for free for the first month. (http://ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk). In a pre-emptive strike to curtail 'irrational' expectations, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in a statement that the information, collected between 1978 to 1987, contained no proof of alien life forms. It also pointed out that the number of reports doubled after the release in 1977 of Steven Spielberg's science-fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Most of the UFO sightings were probably mis-identifications of aircraft lights and meteors, but some are more difficult to explain, and include UFOs seen by police officers and pilots, and cases where UFOs have been tracked on radar, UFO specialist Nick Pope said. However, it was immediately clear Wednesday that the government would not be able to convince doubters that there is an entirely rational explanation for all mysterious movements in the sky. Many UFO spotters believe that governments are 'covering up the truth' because they fear to admit to something that is 'beyond their control.' Accounts published on the website include the sighting of strange lights and unexplained objects spotted by the public, the armed forces and police officers. They reveal, among many others, the experience of 78-year-old Alfred Burtoo, who said he met two men in green overalls on a walk along a canal in Hampshire, southern Britain, in 1983, who invited them for a trip in their craft. But when quizzed about his age, the aliens told him: 'You can go. You are too old and too infirm for our purpose.' Another man reported his 'physical and psychic contact' with green aliens since he was a child, and related that one of the aliens, codenamed Elgar, was later killed by 'another race of beings' as he was about to make contact with the British government. A further document reveals how, in 1982, a group of customers and staff at a pub in Tunbridge Wells, in the southern county of Kent, reported seeing an unknown object with green and red flashing lights heading in the direction of London's Gatwick airport. In addition to some more easily-explained sightings, fuelled by the power of suggestion, or perhaps a drink too many, the files also contain reports compiled by official sources. In December, 1980, the United States Air Force submitted a report from two officers who saw 'unusual lights outside the back gate' of a Royal Air Force (RAF) base in Suffolk, south-east England. The incident, explained with a number of drawings, has been dubbed 'Britain's Roswell' after the supposed contact made with aliens at Roswell, in the US state of New Mexico, in 1947. A report by Scotland Yard officers called out to a house in north London in 1984 said the policemen 'spent an hour observing the object in the sky, which moved erratically from side to side, up and down and to and fro, not venturing far from the original position'. One of the men, who saw the object through binoculars, described it as 'circular in the middle with what appeared to be a dome on top and underneath' with different coloured lights.' According to the files, pedestrians on London's Waterloo Bridge were stopped in their tracks gazing at what they believed was a flying saucer high above the Thames. 'This is a very interesting illustration that, actually, UFOs are seen in built-up areas. People have this idea that they're seen in desolate, rural places,' said Pope. And even the MoD, which said it was mainly interested in checking that UFOS 'were not in fact signs of earthly covert spying missions by other countries,' admitted that the whole truth may never be known. 'The Ministry of Defence does not deny that there are strange things to see in the sky. It certainly has no evidence that alien spacecraft have landed on this planet,' it said.