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This briefing guide, written by Dr David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University for The National Archives in March 2008 and revised through June 2012, explains the British government's involvement with UFOs from 1909 onward. It covers phantom airships, foo fighters, ghost rockets, the 1950 Flying Saucer Working Party, Air Ministry and MoD investigations, and the 1979 House of Lords debate. It also lists key National Archives file references, including the Rendlesham Forest papers, and notes that MoD found no evidence of extraterrestrial origin.
12 AIR 20/11889 and AIR 20/11890 contain papers and reports on a 'flying cross' sighted by police officers and other witnesses in Devon, Sussex and elsewhere during October 1967. Papers from 1967-68 also contain details of field investigations of selected UFO reports carried out by S4 (Air) and DI55. AIR 2/19083 contains brief details of the so- called Berwyn Mountains UFO incident, reported in North Wales in January 1974, and further details were made available to a member of the public in 2003 (DEFE 24/2045/1). AIR 2/19125 is a collection of UFO sightings compiled by staff at RAF Patrington in North Yorkshire – referred to as 'reports of unusual occurrences (UFO).' This includes details of sightings made by civilians, police, and various flight personnel from the station between 1968 and 1973. DEFE 24/1943/1, transferred to The National Archives during 2008, contains a collection of letters sent to the MoD between 1985 and 1992 describing alleged „close encounter reports, alien entities and [alien] abductions.‟ AVIA 65/33 contains papers and photographs relating to Project Y (1953-55), a Canadian proposal to design a saucer-shaped vertical take off (VTOL) aircraft. This file shows that both the Air Ministry and Ministry of Supply wished to develop ideas for saucer-shaped aircraft but no progress was made due to cost and technical difficulties. Further papers on „unorthodox aircraft‟ designs, including flying saucers, from 1949-52 can be found in DEFE 41/117 and DEFE 41/118. BJ 5/311 contains papers collected by the Meteorological Office relating to UFO reports and policy 1968-1970. The Met Office have provided technical advice to the Air Staff secretariat on UFO matters since 1950, but this is the only surviving file containing evidence of their input to official policy. Sequences of RAF Air Defence/Operations UFO files that have survived destruction include DEFE 71/3 (UFO reports 1975-77) and DEFE 71/4 (UFO reports 1977). DEFE 71/33, dated 1977-78, contains a brief discussion between RAF, Air Traffic Control and the Defence Intelligence Staff concerning UFOs as a potential hazard to civil aviation. AIR 2/19119 and AIR 2/19117 contains papers relating to the MoD's involvement in two BBC TV productions on UFOs. In 1972 the head of S4 (Air), Anthony Davis, appeared on a UFO debate screened by BBC2's Man Alive series. Air Commodore Davis was also interviewed by BBC Radio Oxford for a programme broadcast later that year. A second copy of both files can be found in DEFE 24/2031/1, released in 2011. DEFE 24/1565 contains a transcript of the head of S4 (Air)‟s contribution on a Yorkshire TV programme on UFOs shown in 1979. 7. The Ministry of Defence and the Freedom of Information Act Since 2005 the Ministry of Defence have continued to release information to requests received under the Freedom of Information Act. In March 2011 seven files containing Freedom of Information Act requests relating to UFO matters were opened at The National Archives. These files are DEFE 24/2048/1-2050/1 and DEFE 24/2052/1-2055/1. More UFO related FOI requests and responses can be found from DEFE 24/2056/1- DEFE 24/2076/1 and DEFE 24/2094/1, opened in August 2011. More UFO related FOI files can be found from DEFE 24/2073/1-DEFE 24/2074/1 and DEFE 24/2077/1-DEFE 24/2079/1, opened in July 2012.
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 15 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.