UK X-Files: Britain’s Roswell

The incident, in early morning of December 27, 1980, has become known as ‘Britain’s own Roswell’, and has never been fully explained.

The late Lord Hill-Norton, a member of what he described as the ‘rather ineffective’ House of Lords UFO Group, wrote to Mr Heseltine in May 1985 to express his concern over the ‘puzzling and disquieting features’ of the case.

He referred to the USAF report submitted by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt in which the deputy base commander details the account of three patrolmen.

Lt Col Halt wrote: ‘The individuals reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest.

‘The object was described as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three metres across the base and approximately two metres high.

‘It illuminated the entire forest with a white light. The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering or on legs. As the patrolmen approached the object, it manoeuvred through the trees and disappeared.’

The commander himself described witnessing three depressions in the ground the next day where the object had been sighted.

And later that night he was among several men who saw a ‘red sun-like light’ through the trees which ‘moved about and pulsed’.

He said: ‘At one point it appeared to throw off glowing particles and then broke into five separate white objects and then disappeared.’

Lord Hill-Norton said if Lt Col Halt’s report was accurate ‘there is evidence that British airspace and territory are vulnerable to unwarranted intrusion to a disturbing degree’.

He added that if the report was to be dismissed ‘then we have evidence - no less disturbing, I suggest - that a sizeable number of USAF personnel at an important base in British territory are capable of serious misperception, the consequence of which might be grave in military terms’.
The Roswell incident in New Mexico: A shot of an alleged genuine alien autopsy dollowing the crash of a spaceship in 1947

The Roswell incident in New Mexico: A shot of an alleged genuine alien autopsy dollowing the crash of a spaceship in 1947

An MoD briefing was handed to the Defence Secretary following Lord Hill-Norton’s letter for use in a House of Lords Defence debate.

The note states the MoD’s final position on the incident, saying the USAF report was ‘carefully examined’ and the conclusion was that there was ‘no Defence interest’ and ‘no evidence of anything having intruded into British airspace’.

It noted: ‘Indeed the high visibility of the phenomenon reported - multi-coloured bright lights - is totally inconsistent with a covert entry into the UK’.

The briefing note said UFO sightings were ‘not a matter the MoD take lightly’ and continued: ‘I can accept that people do from time to time see things in the sky which they find difficult to explain.

‘I am sure your Lordships will agree that in many cases normal explanations come to light, such as falling meteorites or satellite debris, unusual cloud formations or aircraft lights… What the true explanation is, I do not know.’