A Perfect Line
Perhaps something was in the atmosphere in 1967, something that, once breathed in, inspired young men to do UFO trickery. Take Chris Southall, David Harrison, and other students at Farnborough, England’s Royal Aircraft Establishment, and Farnborough Technical College. The group fabricated six fiberglass discs and placed them in a line stretching 155 miles west to east across southern England, from Bristol to Kent. Each saucer measured about a yard in diameter, and weighed enough to require two men to lift. They were in the classic saucer configuration, with perky center domes rising from the upper fuselages; the saucers had no portholes or other apertures. In a confluence of events that was lucky rather than planned, police stations along the saucers’ trail took a barrage of calls on September 4. Shortly, someone realized that the objects had arrayed themselves in a perfectly straight line. What could this mean? Invasion? Hoax? Higher authorities were notified.
In an amusing and possibly deliberate turn, the young men executed their hoax during Rag Week, a period of charitable fund-raising undertaken by students at many UK and Irish universities. But instead of raising money, the saucer hoax caused the government to spend it: on a helicopter and crew from RAF Manston (to investigate a saucer found in Sheppey, Kent), a Scotland Yard bomb squad, police from four municipalities, and investigators from the Ministry of Defence.
As a precaution, engineers hauled the saucer discovered by a farmer at Chippenham, Wiltshire, to a dump and blew it up. Elsewhere, a high-ranking engineer at the British Aircraft Corporation examined the saucer found by a paperboy at Somerset. Another saucer—discovered by a letter carrier in Newbury, Berkshire—got a scrupulous going-over from Home Office investigators and USAF scientists attached to the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston.
A satellite tracking station was notified when one of the saucers was found at Ascot.
The hoax unraveled when the saucer found on a golf course at Bromley, Kent, was delivered to South London’s Bromley police station, where it was X-rayed and found to be, well, nothing.
A note appended to Ministry of Defence files declassified in March 2011 describes the saucers as “a very successful practical joke.”
