Reports of Unidentified Flying Object: A British Perspective 1988 – The 1988 Flap
With all this new and important data at hand, 1988 offered British UFO researchers a great opportunity to study and act upon the biggest wave of sightings to have occurred within this country for a decade.
We will now present some of the most fascinating UFO case files researched by our team of investigators, who knew full well that our current government would be keenly following developments at every stage, recognizing they were no longer dealing with a more placid UFO re search group. The MoD also appreciated that our research was broadening to cover Stealth technology, the Strategic Defense Initiative program (SDI), and hugely secretive sorties made by Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs). Per haps we had become a threat to those within the Defense lobby who wished to perpetuate the official government stance that they had no interest in UFO research.
Investigators of the UFO phenomenon have no sixth sense in determining just when a major “flap” will occur, but when one begins to receive reports from around the country, and on a daily basis, culminating in twenty-two independent sightings on one night alone, there is ample justification for believing that something peculiar is going on, or is about to happen .
During January 1988, this organization received eighty nine accounts of UFO activity, only four of which originated with the media. As a result, we had a mass of information about the nature of the sightings. But could we draw any conclusions?
January 2
Just before midnight on Saturday January 2, a sixteen year-old girl with a keen interest in astronomy thought she saw a UFO above London. When informed of the sighting, police officers based at Kensington rushed outdoors to catch a glimpse of the object. They did see it, and were convinced it was some sort of UFO. The media reported the sighting, and· a headline proclaimed “Jellyfish over London. ‘ ‘ (Apparently when asked what the UFO looked like, one of the officers made the unfortunate ‘ ‘jellyfish’ ‘ remark.)
It later transpired that the ‘ ‘UFO’ ‘ was nothing more than a brightly shining planet, often misidentified by in experienced observers as a genuine UFO. It is a fact that, while we all have a high regard for the abilities of police officers, very few receive basic astronomy lessons while in the service!
Ray Barron, 200 miles away, had just parked his vehicle in the driveway of his home, situated in a quiet suburb of Leeds, England’s third largest city, and commercial “capital” of Yorkshire. It was a chilly dark night, and the re tired construction engineer was in a hurry to reach the warmth of indoors. What made him stop and stare into the starlit sky for the next two minutes takes us to the heart of a typical UFO report, which our researchers are constantly attempting to explain.
Mr. Barron had caught sight of an object, later de scribed as plate-shaped and colored orange and yellow, which moved across the Leeds skyline, spinning or rolling as it did so. It appeared to descend a fraction, and it was then that he noticed some kind of smoke or vapor being emitted from the rear. Mr. Barron takes up the story: “The light was brilliant and quite large, practically half the size of a full moon. As I watched in the freezing cold, the damn thing ‘switched off’ like a light bulb. I peered up ward and tried to find out where it had gone, but was absolutely shattered to see the spiraling smoke continue its journey! Yet it was coming out of nothing . . . ”
Fortunately, the great advantage of having a network of researchers spread around the country is that we may be able to offer further data that could correlate a sighting with another report that has reached us from a completely independent source. This is exactly what occurred on this particular evening.
Mr. Barron had left his vehicle at precisely 7:50 that evening. Several miles away, in the small market town of Dews bury, West Yorkshire, Jane Marsden and her friend Vivienne 0′ Donnell were sitting in a parked vehicle, engaged in conversation. Suddenly, at 7:50 p.m. they noticed through the offside window of the vehicle a large ball of light passing through the night sky. Their initial reaction was one of dread, for they had no doubt an aircraft was possibly on fire and in serious trouble. However, if it were an aircraft, it was taking an awfully long time to move across the sky. Both ladies had now centered their attention on the object, and were oblivious to people and traffic passing close-by.
The object was now brightly lit, orange and yellow colors could be seen, and the definite shape of a red tail could be seen behind the main body. Both women were perplexed and disturbed. Jane later told us: ‘ ‘Behind the orange ‘ball’ was a pale blue flame, then came a long slender red tail. It was moving very, very slowly indeed.”
Two concise reports, covered in depth by our researchers-but were both objects one and the same? If the consensus is that they were, then what on earth could it have been? It has been estimated that only ten percent of UFO witnesses actually bother to report their experiences to the media, police or local UFO groups. If we had received a further twenty-seven reports from various people and localities, our researchers might well have been better placed to form an opinion. But with only three witnesses to an unusual event, seen over an area containing at least one and a half million people, what chance did we have? And yet . . .
Our investigators were no sooner attempting to resolve the events of that night (by the common practice of contacting the police, civil and military airfields, etc .) when we were further confounded by a reported UFO sighting that had taken place at nine o’clock that same evening in Leeds.
Mr. Ted Johnson lives close to the north-west of the city. He told us of an object that had flown extremely low as it followed the contours of a nearby valley. Yet this was no aircraft, but a large orange- and yellow-colored ball of light. Behind it came a vast stream of grayish smoke, and long after the object had disappeared to the north, this vapor remained visible. Ted is adamant that the time was 9:00 p.m. , but he had no idea, of course, that three other people in the region that night had also seen some kind of strange aerial object.
During the next twenty-four hours we sought out data from our team of investigators and, as luck would have it, a report came back from the Worksop, Nottingham shire, area. Two people, both of whom wish to remain anonymous, were close to their village on the outskirts of Worksop at approximately 7:30 p.m. Apparently, two odd shaped “aircraft” had flown in and around the area for several minutes. The observers noticed some unusual aspects regarding shape: very thin in terms of depth, both triangular, and each with prominent fins.
Were these aircraft or UFOs? The immediate task facing any investigation in an event like this is to discover if there are any known military exercises going on in the area of the sightings. As it transpired, there were none-officially. Yet we have recorded dozens of instances when military maneuvers have taken place, and have invited the MoD to confirm this, yet they usually plead ignorance.
Our organization has made a thorough study of the development of so-called “Stealth” aircraft. It is believed that the F- 117 A Stealth fighter has flown from bases in the U.K. for some years, even before being officially recognized by the U .S. Department of Defense as even existing, in November 1988. However, there is no hard evidence that Stealth craft have flown in this country. To claim that some UFO reports can be attributed to these top-secret aircraft is foolhardy, unless one is in possession of the facts. It is more reasonable to look at conventional aircraft that operate in pairs, have highly unusual designs, and fly in a manner which is calculated to confuse. Such an air craft is the American A-10 Thunderbolt, many of which are based in Britain. These usually operate in pairs, fly at very low altitudes, and sometimes use motorway traffic as ”targets’ ‘ on operational sorties. They will duck and weave among hilltops and trees, and at night such maneuvers will always appear peculiar to the unaccustomed observer.
January 3
Just as we were discussing the merits of whether or not to place this Worksop sighting in the ‘ ‘possible aircraft’ ‘ category, came news of a very disturbing encounter in Humberside (formerly East Yorkshire). It was 5:00 p.m. , Sunday January 3 , almost twenty-four hours after the events in Leeds.
Mrs. Annette McDonaldson and her young daughter had been visiting friends in Grimsby, a fishing port on the east coast, and had just set off to return home to York. Traveling on a road just outside the town, the night had closed in, but traffic was light and there appeared to be no obstacles to delay their journey.
The bright lights which appeared in their car’s rear-view mirror suggested to Annette that some large lorry was fast approaching, and she slowed down in order to let it pass.
Despite relaxing her foot on the accelerator the distance between her and the lights remained the same. She asked her daughter to look behind and see what this lorry driver was playing at.
Clare McDonaldson arched round and focused her eyes on the lights, some 100 yards behind. After a while, she began to make out the surface of the road, and was shocked to realize that the lights were actually airborne, just above the ground. She could see no shape whatsoever behind the bright glare. During the course of the next three minutes, the lights bore steadily closer to the car, but suddenly vanished in an instant .
By now, confused and frightened. Annette instructed her daughter to keep a look-out for the lights. She did not have long to wait before a startled cry told her the lights were directly above their car. Panic set in , and Annette slammed her foot down hard on the accelerator, and in a short while was beyond the legal speed limit. Two more minutes passed by, and then to her horror she saw the two bright lights ahead of her and, above the road. Whatever lay behind the lights was cautious enough not to allow the car to smash headlong into it. It kept an even distance between them for a number of miles. Almost as suddenly as it had appeared, the lights shot straight up into the sky at a steep angle and disappeared. [The McDonaldsons were luckier than the Knowles family, whose car was picked up and dropped back on the road by a UFO in Western Australia only a few weeks later.
The mother and daughter had been left in a shocked state. Their experience had so affected them that as soon as they had an opportunity, the police were called. Good co-operation between our organization and several police authorities ensured that we were immediately given the relevant information. Despite this early opportunity to quiz the witnesses, we were later no nearer to finding any sensible answer as to the probable cause of the incident. Perhaps some lunatic at the controls of a helicopter had decided to stage a terrifying low-level “chase” with a passing motorist? But the two women were adamant: if it had been a helicopter, they would have said so.
As if to reinforce our growing unease that we could be witnessing the start of a major “flap, ” we received a call from Pauline Russell, who had witnessed something rather odd near her home in South Leeds at nine-thirty that same Sunday evening. She had been out walking when she was attracted by a· brightly lit “egg-shaped object” moving slowly across the sky. Its design was so unusual that she stood still in order to try and fathom what it could be. There were no aircraft navigation lights visible on the object, but suddenly a real aircraft displaying its lights came into view from the opposite direction.
The aircraft and object were moving rapidly toward one another. Whatever the UFO was, it moved across the sky in a staggered motion, almost zig-zagging. The conventional aircraft came within a whisker of colliding with the unknown light, and passed just to the right-hand side of it. Pauline later admitted: ‘ ‘The object was unlike any thing I have ever seen in my life, and anyone on that air craft must have seen it. ‘ ‘ Needless to say, no one within aviation circles reported seeing anything.
https://scienceandspace.com/ufos/the-ufo-report-a-british-perspective-1988-the-1988-flap-part-2/
The UFO report: A British Perspective 1988 – The 1988 Flap (Part 3)
https://scienceandspace.com/ufos/the-ufo-report-a-british-perspective-1988-the-1988-flap-part-4/