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The National Archives published this edited extract from Chapter 2 of David Clarke's 2009 book The UFO Files, which draws on Ministry of Defence UFO records. It covers Stan Hubbard's 1950 Farnborough sightings, which the Flying Saucer Working Party attributed to optical illusion or normal aircraft. It also covers Churchill's 1952 memo asking about flying saucers, the Topcliffe sighting during Operation Mainbrace, a Meteor crew's sighting from Little Rissington, and RAF research concluding that most radar 'angels' were birds.
“RAF”14 pages
problem. Initially there were two competing theories to explain ‘angels’. The first was they were caused by unusual conditions in the atmosphere that created pockets of air that bent and reflected radar beams to produce false targets on radars. This appeared likely, but could not explain how some ‘angels’ moved against the prevailing winds or faster than measured wind speeds. The second more improbable-seeming theory was that angels were really formations of birds flying to and from their breeding grounds as part of their annual migrations. At the time the few ornithologists who were using radar to study bird movements had problems persuading the RAF to take this theory seriously. However, during the war staff at coastal radar stations had linked ‘angels’ on their screens with flights of seabirds spot- ted with the naked eye. On rare occasions large indi- vidual birds had been known to cause chaos. Barry Huddart, who served with Fighter Command HQ in 1957, recalled one incident ‘when fighters were scrambled to intercept an echo on a radar screen which turned out to be a Golden Eagle at 25,000 ft in a jet stream, very unusual but nonetheless true.’24 By 1957 Fighter Command HQ was so concerned by the ‘angel’ prob- lem that it ordered a secret investigation by its Research Branch. The two- year study was to combine the skills of its radar technicians with the expertise of British ornithologists. Selected RAF radar stations around the east coast were asked to send film from their radar cameras for analysis. Meanwhile, morbid experiments were carried out to measure the echoing area of vari- ous types of birds. Dead animals were obtained from bird sanctuaries and their bodies were wrapped in cellophane and then whirled around whilst radar was bounced off them to measure their ‘echoing area’. The investigation was concentrated around one key radar station where ‘angels’ had been frequently reported. RAF Trimingham on the north Nor- folk coast was one of the first to be equipped with a new powerful radar, the Type 80. Ornithologist David Lack used this to track ‘angel’ echoes for a year. His study revealed the heaviest ‘angel’ activity occurred during the spring and autumn months, usually at night in calm weather when birds were migrating over the sea. Lack and his colleagues were able to demon- strate that what the radar operators were actually seeing were flocks of small birds migrating to and from East Anglia and Continental Europe. These observations led the RAF inquiry to conclude in 1958 that most ‘angel’ echoes on radar were caused by birds after all.25 Nevertheless, a big problem remained. How could ‘angels’ be eliminated 5 2 T H E F LY I N G S A U C E R A G E Staff at coastal radar stations had linked ‘angels’ on their screens with flights of seabirds spotted with the naked eye. On rare occasions large individual birds had been known to cause chaos
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 22 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.