The UFO files extract

this dramatic incident were subsequently destroyed. On his retirement, Air
Commodore Swiney made inquiries with the MoD hoping to locate a copy
of his original report on the incident. He was amazed to learn that most
records of UFOs before 1962 had been routinely shredded. Today all that
remains in the files at the National Archives is a single surviving reference
in the flying school’s operations record book which simply records how the
two men ‘sighted three mysterious “saucer-shaped objects” travelling at
high speed at about 35,000 feet whilst on a high level navigation exercise.’
The document adds that air traffic control later reported radar plots that
appeared to confirm their report ‘but Air Ministry discounted any possibil-
ity of “extra terrestrial objects.”’22
Writing in 1988 Ralph Noyes, who was private secretary to the Vice
Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Ralph Cochrane, at the time
recalled their ‘own embarrassed unease, widely shared by the [RAF] opera-
tions staff, that “our own people” had begun to fall for “that saucer non-
sense”.’ Indeed, as a direct result of these incidents a decision was taken in
1953 that the Air Ministry should investigate UFO reports on a permanent
basis and responsibility was delegated by the Chief of the Air Staff to a sec-
tion of the air technical intelligence branch, DDI (Tech). The memoirs of
Captain Edward Ruppelt refer to an exchange visit to Project Blue Book’s
base at Wright-Patterson airfield, Ohio, by two RAF officers shortly after-
wards. In his Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, published in 1956, Rup-
pelt revealed the officers were in the USA ‘on a classified mission’ during
which one admitted the sightings during Operation Mainbrace had ‘caused
the RAF to officially recognise the UFO.’
From angels to aliens
One of the features of the UFO phenomenon that most concerned the Air
Ministry was visual sightings that appeared to be corroborated by radar
operators, as featured in the report by Michael Swiney and David Crofts.
Unexplained phenomena had been tracked on RAF radars early in the Sec-
ond World War (see p.25 of The UFO ) and again during the ‘ghost plane’
flap of 1947 (see p.33 of The UFO Files), but until 1952 none of these had
involved visual sightings.
In his history of UK air defence radar systems, Watching the Skies, Jack
Gough says that ‘angel’ and ‘ghost’ echoes continued to plague RAF radars
during the early 1950s. They sometimes appeared from the ground ‘as a
cloud of responses very similar to the echoes obtained by small aircraft’.
When tracked as individual echoes they could easily be mistaken for mili-
tary aircraft as they followed a steady course and were plotted at heights
from 2,000 ft to 10,000 ft.23
The Air Ministry turned to their scientists to provide a solution to this
T H E F LY I N G S A U C E R A G E 5 1