From: David Clarke <cd292@crazydiamonds.fsnet.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 13:50:28 -0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 09:30:25 -0500
Subject: British MoD UFO Study


FOCUS magazine 112 (March 2002)
www.focusmag.co.uk

SECRECY BREEDS CONSPIRACY

A 50-year-old government report on UFOs has just been
released.
But it tells us more about Cold War paranoia than strange
new worlds.

by David Windle

Since its publication in 1951, the existence of a secret British
intelligence study of UFOs has been denied in Parliament, not
once but twice. This was in 1955 and 1962, not so long after it
came off the press. In the wake of persistent inquiries,
researchers were told eventually that, yes, it did exist - but
had been 'routinely destroyed.' Finally, the study rose
phoenix-like from the ashes when the same researchers managed to
track it down in the Public Records Office.

Furthermore, instead of being released under the 30-year-rule,
it remained sealed for a further 20 years and, even now,
sections of the report are censored. So is DSI/JTIC Report No 7
Unidentified Flying Objects the smoking gun UFO researchers have
been hoping for?

Anyone looking for news of alien bodies and captured spacecraft
will be disappeointed. But, the report does give an insight into
the lengths Cold War intelligence personnel would go to, post
World War II, in order to debunk any UFO report - even one that
came from six highly trained test pilots. More of that later.

First, a little historical perspective: around 1946, unexplained
objects began to appear over Sweden. Nobody was sure what these
'ghost rockets' were, where they came from, or what their
purpose was. For military minds, there were too many 'don't
knows' for comfort. It wasn't space invaders they were worried
about, but a threat closer to home.

Back in 1950, a Cold War chill blew through the corridors of
power on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Tension between the two
sides had been heightened by the recent test of the first Soviet
nuclear bomb. The advent of bombs that could destroy a city in a
single blast had drastically raised the stakes of modern
warfare. The last thing any politician wanted to do was give the
order to launch an accidental, pre-emptive strike on another
country.

Neither was it acceptable to admit that these UFOs were
seemingly able to violate controlled airspace at will, making a
nonsense of radar defence networks. What would a potential enemy
make of that? On these two accounts alone, more information was
needed to avert a potential disaster. The best scientific and
military minds were applied to finding an explanation. Just how
seriously UFOs were taken in Britain can be seen in the choice
of the head of the 'Flying Saucer Working Party,' Sir Henry
Tizard, a highly trusted, senior scientific advisor to Prime
Minister Winston Churchill, and a key figure in the development
of Britain's wartime radar defences. With his team from
technical intelligence and military backgrounds, Tizard began an
eight month trawl through all the reports.

Of the hundreds they read, only three reports were of interest,
due to the calibre of the witnesses. The first came from a pilot
at RAF Tangmere in Sussex, who saw a fast-moving 'bright
circular metallic object' while on patrol at 20,000 feet. A
report from four RAF radar operators, who tracked a fast-moving
"unusual response" at around the same time and place, supported
his sighting. The official response claimed that the pilot was
either the victim of an optical illusion or he had seen a
'meteorological ballon.'

It didn't say where the balloon had been launched from, or offer
any details about who was operating it. The apparent radar track
was explained as a common anomaly, involving interference from
another radar transmitter. Werre four such experienced operators
really fooled by what could have been a high speed enemy missile
or aircraft?

The second and third reports had a feature in common: a test
pilot at The Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough named
F/Lt Hubbard - who was later to retire from the RAF as a Wing
Commander.

In August 1950 he and two other Farnborough pilots heard a
subdued humming sound in the sky above them. Hubbard, who was
the only one wearing sunglasses, saw a pearl grey disc making a
series of high speed turns. The others saw nothing.

A few weeks later, Hubbard saw the object again: but this time
five other senior RAF officers saw it too. They all reported
being dumbstruck at the sight of the disc that carried out
several high speed manouevres. At times it would stop and
execute a 'falling leaf' motion, then carry on its aerobatic
display.

The report's conclusion on this sighting by highly trained
observers is illuminating. Predictably, it says that F/Lt
Hubbard's first sighting was an optical illusion and that the
witnesses to the second aerobatic disc display had been
influenced by the earlier sighting.

What they had seen, the report said, was just a normal aircraft
at extreme range. It is curious that, although the aircraft
described was clearly a military jet because of its degree of
manoeuuvrability, the report's authors were unable to say where
the aircraft was from, or what type it was.

The report concluded that it was simply "impossible to believe
that an unconventional aircraft manoeuvring for some time over a
populous area could have failed to attract the attention of
other observers." It doesn't say whether anyone had reported a
conventional aircraft performing aerobatics in the area.

The release of DSI/JTIC Report No 7 Unidentified Flying Objects
came about thanks to the patience and persistence of Dr David
Clarke and his colleague Andy Roberts.

Their forthcoming book, Out of the Shadows, covers the history
of British MoD investigations of UFOs and aerial phenomena from
World War II through to the end of the Cold War.

Dr Clarke, a lecturer at Sheffield University, is a historian
and expert in folklore. He is convinced there was a cover-up,
but not of the type normally associated with UFOs: "What they
were covering up was not knowledge of alien visitors, but simply
the fact that they did not have any real answers, he says.
"Rather than coming clean, they decided to keep the contents of
this report secret, and that has given rise to all the claims of
Government cover-ups and conspiracies that lie behind the
X-Files mythology."

So, the conclusions of Tizard's elite group exactly mirror those
of the earlier US studies: Project Sign and Project Grudge. UFOs
were explained away, either as natural phenomena, conventional
aircraft spotted in unusual circumstances, optical illusions, or
just plain hoaxes.

Embarrassingly for the elite US and British study groups, 1952
saw a spate of mass UFO sightings over Washington DC. They
turned up again that year, during NATO's Mainbrace exercise (a
mock Soviet attack on Europe). Clarke believes this led to the
re-convening of the UK's Flying Saucer Working Party,

When its later findings will be released to the public is
anyone's guess. But it dosen't take much intuition to guess what
they'll be.