Although for the public and the media UFO has since become a synonym for 'alien spaceship,' for the military forces of the world it is simply refers to something in the sky the observer can see but does not recognise.
In the vast majority of cases, investigations have discovered ordinary explanations for UFO reports such as bright stars and planets, meteors, artificial satellites, balloons, aircraft seen from unusual angles and space junk burning up in the atmosphere. However, there are some cases on record where no common explanation can be found. For the Ministry of Defence, these types of report remain 'unidentified' rather than 'extraterrestrial'. Some branches of the MoD, such as the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), prefer the term UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) to describe those UFOs that remain unidentified. UAP does not imply the existence of an 'object' of extraterrestrial origin.
UFOs in the early 20th century: 1909-1950
An understanding of the factors that lay behind the British government's interest in the UFO issue can be found by studying the range of documents available at The National Archives. The vast majority of the records are found in the post Second World War period. This reflects the growing post-war fascination with the idea of UFOs as extraterrestrial visitors, as portrayed in popular science fiction films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). In contrast, official policy was restricted to establishing whether UFO sightings could be considered to be a threat to national security. During the Cold War, for example, the major threat came from behind the Iron Curtain. Once Soviet aircraft were discounted, the identity of a UFO was of no further interest to the British military.
To understand the origins of the British government's interest in UFOs it is necessary to look back to an earlier period of 20th century history. In 1909 and 1913 phantom airships - dark cigar-shaped flying objects carrying searchlights - were sighted at night moving over many British towns and cities. As tension grew in the build up to the First World War, newspapers and some politicians accused the Germans of sending Zeppelin airships to spy on dockyards and other strategic areas around the British coastline.
In October 1912, when sightings of an unidentified aircraft were made over the Royal Navy torpedo school at Sheerness, Essex, questions were asked in the House of Commons. This led the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, to order an investigation. Inquiries by naval intelligence failed to establish the identity of the aircraft but the Germans were widely believed to be responsible.
Both the War Office and Admiralty investigated further sightings of unidentified airships, aircraft and mysterious moving lights. These were usually seen at night and were frequently reported to the military authorities from many parts of the British Isles during the First World War. In 1916 a War Office intelligence circular found that 89 percent of the reports could be explained by bright planets, searchlights and natural phenomena. It concluded: 'There is no evidence on which to base a suspicion that this class of enemy activity ever existed' ('Alleged Enemy Signalling 1916').
More sightings of aerial phenomena were made during the Second World War by RAF aircrew. These included balls of fire and mysterious moving lights that appeared to pursue Allied aircraft operating over occupied Europe. American pilots dubbed these UFOs 'foo-fighters', from a character in a comic strip whose catch phrase was 'where there's foo there's fire.' Although the foo-fighters did not appear to be hostile the sightings alarmed air intelligence branches of the Air Ministry and US Army Air Force as they prepared for the invasion of France. The RAF began to collect reports of 'night phenomena' from 1942 and later in the war, the Air Ministry shared intelligence on the subject with the US authorities. They assumed the phenomena were German secret weapons, such as the Me262 jet fighter. At the end of the war no traces of advanced aircraft or weapons that could explain the 'foo fighters' were found by the Allied occupying forces. In addition, intelligence officers such as Dr RV Jones discovered that German pilots had observed similar unexplained aerial phenomena. (See bibliography)
There are Air Ministry reports on 'night phenomena' and reports from aircrew with Bomber Command's 115 Squadron seen December 1943.
In 1946 and 1947 the War Office and Air Ministry became involved in an investigation of mysterious ghost rockets sighted over Scandinavia. Initially intelligence officers at the Air Ministry believed the 'flying bombs' (RV Jones memoirs, 'Most Secret War' chapter 52, pg 510-11, 1978) were modified V2 rockets fired by Soviets, from captured Nazi rocket plant at Peenemunde in the Baltic. Dr RV Jones, Director of Intelligence at the Air Ministry in 1946, was sceptical of this theory. Drawing upon his wartime experiences, he believed the scare was triggered by sightings of bright meteors in countries that feared
Reports and correspondence between the Foreign Office, Air Ministry and the British air attache? in Stockholm were officially recorded. An air intelligence report on the 'ghost rockets' was recorded in 1946.
Reports of ghost rockets preceded by six months the first sightings of 'flying saucers' over the mainland of the United States. In December 1947 the newly created US Air Force set up a project, code-named Sign to investigate the growing mystery. USAF Lieutenant General Nathan F Twining's initial conclusion was 'the phenomenon reported is something real and not imaginary or fictitious.'
The British Government did not begin any official inquiry into the UFO mystery until 1950. During the spring and summer of that year a large number of 'flying saucer' sightings were made in Britain for the first time and the media started to take an interest. Two Sunday newspapers serialised the first books on the topic that had been published in the USA. This led a number of senior figures, both in the establishment and the scientific community to treat the subject seriously for the first time. The Sunday Dispatch was encouraged to publish stories by Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was later to become Chief of Defence Staff. Mountbatten was one of a small group of influential military officials who believed UFOs were real and of interplanetary origin.
Another senior official who took reports of UFOs seriously was Sir Henry Tizard. He is best known for his work on the development of radar before the Second World War. Post-war Tizard became Chief Scientific Advisor to the Ministry of Defence and came to believe that 'reports of flying saucers should not be dismissed without some investigation' (DEFE 41/74). It was as a direct result of his influence that the MoD was asked to set up a small team of experts to investigate reports of flying saucers under the Directorate of Scientific Intelligence/Joint Technical Intelligence Committee (DSI/JTIC).
The Flying Saucer Working Party operated under such secrecy that its existence was known to very few. However, a reference to a study of flying saucers emerged in 1988 when a file of correspondence between Winston Churchill and the Air Ministry was opened under the 30-year rule. On 28 July 1952 the Prime Minister asked the Air Minister: '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.' The response, dated 9 August 1952, began 'The various reports about unidentified flying objects, described by the Press as "flying saucers", were the subject of a full intelligence study in 1951'.
Several unsuccessful attempts were made to trace this study but in 1998 the minutes of the DSI/JTIC were released by the British Government. These revealed how the working party was established in August 1950 under the following terms of reference:
The working party included intelligence officers from each of the three armed services and was chaired by G. L. Turney, head of scientific intelligence at the Admiralty. This team reviewed what was known about the subject and investigated a number of sightings reported to it by RAF Fighter Command. During their inquiries they questioned a group of test pilots from the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough who had reported sightings of aerial phenomena. In June 1951 the working party produced a brief final report that debunked the sightings and concluded that flying saucers did not exist. A surviving copy of DSI/JTIC Report No 7 was found in MoD archives in 2001. It was released in the following year. A copy of the original report and covering letter to Sir Henry Tizard was released in July 2008 by The National Archives of the UK.
Classified as 'Secret/Discreet' the six-page report concluded that all UFO sightings could be explained as misidentifications of ordinary objects or phenomena, optical illusions, psychological delusions or hoaxes. They concluded with the following statement: 'We accordingly recommend very strongly that no further investigation of reported mysterious aerial phenomena be undertaken, unless and until some material evidence becomes available.'
The members of the working party reli ed heavily upon information supplied by the US Air Force UFO project (now renamed Grudge) and the CIA. US policy was to debunk the subject and restrict the release of information to the public about UFO sightings made by the armed services. The Assistant Director of the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence, Dr Harris Marshall Chadwell, was present at the meeting of DSI/JTIC in 1951 when the report was delivered to MoD. American influence upon the team's methodology can be seen both in the adoption of the USAF term UFO in its title and the conclusions. Circulation was restricted within MoD with just one copy sent to Sir Henry Tizard.
The sceptical conclusions of the Flying Saucer Working Party set the template for all future British policy on UFOs. After the report was delivered the team was dissolved and investigations ended. However, during the summer of the following year a new wave of sightings were made across the world. In July 1952, as Cold War tension increased, UFOs were detected by radars in the US capital Washington DC, prompting the USAF to scramble jet interceptors. The scare made headlines across the world and led Winston Churchill to send his famous memo to the Air Ministry on 'flying saucers.'
The Prime Minister was told on 9 August 1952 that 'nothing has happened since 1951 to make the Air Staff change their opinion, and, to judge from recent Press statements, the same is true in America'. In September this policy was revised as a direct result of further UFO sightings that occurred during a major NATO exercise in Europe. The most dramatic were those reported by a group of Shackleton aircrew who saw a circular silver object appear above the airfield at RAF Topcliffe in North Yorkshire. In a report made to the base Commanding Officer one of the men, Flt Lt John Kilburn of 269 Squadron, RAF, said he watched as the object appeared to descend to follow a Meteor jet, rotated on its own axis and then accelerated away at a speed 'in excess of a shooting star'.
According to Capt Edward Ruppelt, of Project Blue Book, it was the Topcliffe sighting that 'caused the RAF to officially recognise the UFO.' Soon afterwards the Air Ministry decided to monitor UFO reports on a permanent basis. Responsibility was delegated by the Chief of Air Staff to a branch within the Deputy Directorate of Intelligence (DDI (Tech) known as AI3. In December 1953 HQ Fighter Command issued orders to all RAF stations that in future reports of 'aerial phenomena' should be reported directly to DDI (Tech), Air Ministry, for further investigation. The order said it was important that details of sightings made by RAF personnel and from radar stations should be carefully examined and its release 'controlled officially.' The Air Ministry letter stated that 'all reports are to be classified 'Restricted' and personnel are warned not to communicate to anyone other than official persons any information about phenomena they have observed, unless officially authorised to do so.
From 1953 reports from all sources were sent to DDI (Tech) for 'examination, analysis and classification'. Advice on likely explanations was obtained from Fighter Command, the Meteorological Office and the Royal Greenwich Observatory. Each year a special report 'summarising all UFO sightings by types' was submitted to the Air Staff (DEFE 31/118). None of these summaries have survived before 1956. However, an analysis of 80 reports up to 1954 formed the basis of an article published in Vol 10, No 3 of the Air Ministry Secret Intelligence Summary (AMSIS) during March 1955. This summary, based upon a longer report now lost, was classified 'Secret - UK Eyes Only.'
The existence of this summary study came to light in May 1955 when the Conservative MP Major Patrick Wall asked the Secretary of State for Air, in a Parliamentary Question, if he would publish the 'report on flying saucers recently completed by the Air Ministry.' In reply the Air Minister George Ward said: 'reports of "flying saucers" as well as any other abnormal objects in the sky, are investigated as they come in, but there has been no formal inquiry. About 90 percent of the reports have been found to relate to meteors, balloons, flares and many other objects. The fact that the other 10 percent are unexplained need be attributed to nothing more sinister than 'lack of data' (AIR 2/16918).
The outstanding 10 percent of 'unexplained' sightings remained UFOs (or, as the Air Ministry preferred, 'insufficient information'). This explains the policy decision to continue collecting reports. The reasons given in the AMSIS article were that 'there is always the chance of observing foreign aircraft of revolutionary design.' This factor remained a concern for intelligence agencies until the end of the Cold War. The Air Ministry was careful to qualify this interest with this caveat: '...as for controlled manifestations from outer space, there is no tangible evidence of their existence'.
The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) initiated inquiries into 'aerial phenomena' on two occasions during the late 1950s. Following press reports of UFOs tracked by radars at RAF West Freugh, Scotland, in April 1957 the Air Ministry informed the JIC it was unable to explain four recent incidents. Aerial phenomena were again the subject of JIC discussion in March 1959 following a sighting made at London airport. Additional copies of these minutes and a background briefing prepared by the Air Ministry and published in the Red Book.
From 1958 a civilian Air Staff secretariat branch known as S6 (Air) took over responsibility for dealing with public relations on the topic of UFOs. During that year an S6 desk officer decided their policy would be 'politely unhelpful' in response to any public or press inquiry on the subject. From this point onwards two separate branches of the Air Ministry were involved in dealing with the UFO problem. DDI (Tech), was responsible for investigating reports and assessing their defence significance, whilst S6 (Air) fielded questions from members of the public, the press and MPs.
In 1964 the Air Ministry became part of the new Ministry of Defence and the three separate service intelligence sections of the Army, Navy and RAF were merged under a new unified structure. S6's UFO remit passed to a new MoD secretariat, S4 (Air) and in 1967 responsibility for inquiries into UFO incidents deemed to have possible defence significance were inherited by a Defence Intelligence branch, DI55.
Although more than 11,000 UFO reports have been logged by DI55, S4 (Air) and a number of other MoD branches between 1959 and 2007, no detailed studies have been carried out on the accumulated data until relatively recently. Following a new wave of sightings in 1967 the Government faced a series of Parliamentary questions on their UFO investigations and policy. In response, the head of S4 (Air), James Carruthers, produced a detailed briefing for the Secretary of State for Air, Merlyn Rees MP. In his report dated November 1967 Carruthers said the MoD had kept a statistical analysis of UFO reports received since 1959 'and has found no evidence to suggest [UFOs] have other than mundane explanations.' He added that MoD 'does not consider that a separate study by [UK] Government departments or by a university or other independent organisation would produce results to justify the expenditure, time and money involved'.
Following the conclusions reached by the Flying Saucer Working Party the MoD continued to reply upon studies carried out by USAF for their policy lead on UFOs. There was never any British equivalent of the publicly funded study by the University of Colorado on behalf of the USAF that was completed in 1969. The 'Condon report' - named after the project head, the physicist Dr Edward Condon - was based on an analysis of 12,618 reports collected by the USAF Project Blue Book between 1947 and 1969 (Blue Book followed Projects Sign and Grudge in 1952). Of this total 701 remained unexplained. The main findings of the US study were:
Project Blue Book was closed by USAF following publication of the Condon report in December 1969. In the UK the MoD used the findings to further reduce their workload on UFOs. From 1973 members of the public who reported sightings received only a polite acknowledgement. Unlike the USAF, the MoD decided it should continue to maintain an interest in the subject so that it could answer questions from MPs and where necessary, reassure the public that UFOs posed no threat to national defence. This policy rethink, the first of many, took place between 1970 and 1975.
The last time the Government made a full public statement on its policy was in January 1979 when UFOs were the subject of a lengthy debate in the House of Lords. This was initiated by Lord Clancarty (Brinsley le Poer Trench), the author of several books on UFOs and related subjects. Clancarty believed the MoD had evidence that UFOs were of extraterrestrial origin and was convinced they were concealing 'the truth' from the public. In the summer of 1978 he tabled a motion that called on the Government to set up an inquiry and for the Defence Minister to make a televised statement on UFOs. In the Lords, the Government's response was delivered by a retired Royal Navy officer and Labour peer, Lord Strabolgi (David Kenworthy). His closing remarks were: '...as for telling the public the truth about UFOs, the truth is simple. There really are many strange phenomena in the sky, and these are invariably reported by rational people. But there is a wide range of natural explanations to account for such phenomena. There is nothing to suggest to Her Majesty's Government that such phenomena are alien spacecraft'.
UFO report files contain a mixture of letters from members of the public and reports from official sources such as the police, coastguard and Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Many reports take the form of military signals received by MoD via a variety of RAF and RN stations. The most frequent method of reporting a UFO sighting was via a standard proforma, originally based on a USAF questionnaire. An early draft of this report format can be found at DEFE 31/118. A version of this questionnaire is still used today by the Ministry of Defence. The proforma contains 16 questions, a-q:
From 1966-67 UFO reports and correspondence between members of the public and MoD were preserved in two separate sequences of files. Five separate file series held at The National Archives contain papers relating to UFO sightings and UFO correspondence from 1962 in chronological order:
One of the first UFO files to be released by the Ministry of Defence under the Code of Practice for Access to Government Information, the precursor of the FOIA, in 2001 was that containing papers on the famous Rendlesham Forest incident, often called 'Britain's Roswell'. (UFOs: Persistent Correspondence, Dr David Clarke, 2000-2001). The sightings took place over two nights late in December 1980 at RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, an airbase loaned to the USAF. Mysterious lights were seen to land in the forest beyond the perimeter of the base and a group of airmen went to investigate. They reported seeing lights they were unable to identify moving through the trees. The next day marks were allegedly found on the ground and on trees in the forest where the men claimed the UFO had landed. Two nights later UFOs were again sighted from the base and the deputy base commander, Lt Col Charles Halt, took a team of handpicked men into the woods to investigate. During the expedition Halt saw several unidentified lights and made a live tape recording of the incident.
Early in January 1981 Halt produced an official report on the incidents, titled 'Unexplained Lights' that was sent to Defence Secretariat 8 (DS8) at Whitehall. Halt's original typewritten report and the follow-up inquiries made by MoD can be seen at the British National Archives.
A file dedicated to the Rendlesham incident was opened by the MoD several years after these events. This file was opened at The National Archives in August 2009 (DEFE 24/1948/1). This contains Halt's memo and briefings prepared for a Parliamentary question tabled by Major Patrick Wall MP in 1983 when the News of the World published the story. The remainder of the file covers internal discussion of the case and correspondence from the public between 1983 and 1995.
Another file transferred to The National Archives in August 2010 contains details of the 2002 judgement by the Parliamentary Ombudsman that led to the release of further MoD papers on the incident which were not part of the original 2001 release (DEFE 24/2042/1). The Ombudsman's judgement can be found in DEFE 24/2028/1, released in March 2011. Another file opened to the public in August 2010 (DEFE 24/1995/1) contains the transcripts of interviews with two of the key US Air Force witnesses, Jim Penniston and Charles Halt, while DEFE 24/1983 contains the MoD's position statement on the incident. Two files of parliamentary correspondence on UFOs, DEFE 24/2033/ and DEFE 24/2034/1 contain responses to a series of questions on the Rendlesham incident tabled by Lord Hill-Norton in the House of Lords between 1998-2001.
Four files containing correspondence between Dr David Clarke and MoD on UFO issues and copies of papers released under the Code of Practice and Freedom of Information Act between 2003-2008 can be found at DEFE 24/2032/1, DEFE 24/2043/1, DEFE 24/2061/1 and DEFE 24/2090/1, opened in July 2012.
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Dr David Clarke of the Department of Journalism and Communication, Sheffield Hallam University)