Officially documented reports of cases of attempted alien abduction may not feature strongly in daily Downing Street briefings but the release of the latest batch of the Ministry of Defence's UFO files reveals a hidden British obsession with flying saucers and such close encounters.
The 14 files released today by the
National Archives include more than 800 sightings reported between 1993 and 1996, and contain more than 4,000 pages of material dating back to 1981.
This is the fourth batch of UFO files to be released since May last year
The files do show, though, that not all the sightings and reports were without foundation. Bright lights seen across Devon and Cornwall, South Wales and Shropshire in the early hours of 31 March 1993 by 70 police and
military witnesses were documented in more than 30 sightings reported to the MoD over a six-hour period. The reports said it was very big, shaped like a catamaran and was completely silent.
The MoD's UFO desk, known as section (AS)2a, asked the RAF to replay its radar tapes but nothing unusual was detected.
The head of the UFO section told Sir Anthony Bagnall, the assistant chief of the air staff, that given the quality of the witnesses the sightings could not simply be written off: "It seems that an unidentified object of unknown origin was operating in the UK air defence region without being detected on radar; this would appear to be of considerable defence significance."
Explanations can be found for most of them. Even the ufologists agree that in 99% of cases they will be aircraft lights, satellites in orbits or debris re-entering the atmosphere, high altitude kites, helium or weather balloons, searchlights or lasers.
But even the defence specialists admit there will always be some sightings that appear to defy explanation: "We remain open-minded about these," is the official position. Or as the president of Strange Phenomena Investigations put it: "There are still many wonders out there … The search must go on."
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