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The National Archives issued this UFO research briefing guide, written by Dr David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University in March 2008 and revised in August 2011. It traces British government interest in UFOs from the 1909 phantom airships and wartime foo fighters through the 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, Air Ministry and MoD investigations, and the 1979 House of Lords debate. It lists key files held at Kew, including Rendlesham Forest papers, plus suggestions for further reading.
“UFO Files”11 pages
6 5. MoD investigations 1964-present From 1958 a civilian Air Staff secretariat branch known as S6 (Air) took over responsibility for dealing with public relations on the topic of UFOs. During that year an S6 desk officer decided their policy would be 'politely unhelpful' in response to any public or press inquiry on the subject (DEFE 31/118). From this point onwards two separate branches of the Air Ministry were involved in dealing with the UFO problem. DDI (Tech), was responsible for investigating reports and assessing their defence significance, whilst S6 (Air) fielded questions from members of the public, the press and MPs. In 1964 the Air Ministry became part of the new Ministry of Defence and the three separate service intelligence sections of the Army, Navy and RAF were merged under a new unified structure. S6's UFO remit passed to a new MoD secretariat, S4 (Air) and in 1967 responsibility for inquiries into UFO incidents deemed to have possible defence significance were inherited by a Defence Intelligence branch, DI55. Although more than 11,000 UFO reports have been logged by DI55, S4 (Air) and a number of other MoD branches between 1959 and 2007, no detailed studies have been carried out on the accumulated data until relatively recently. Following a new wave of sightings in 1967 the Government faced a series of Parliamentary questions on their UFO investigations and policy. In response, the head of S4 (Air), James Carruthers, produced a detailed briefing for the Secretary of State for Air, Merlyn Rees MP. In his report dated November 1967 Carruthers said the MoD had kept a statistical analysis of UFO reports received since 1959 'and has found no evidence to suggest [UFOs] have other than mundane explanations.' He added that MoD 'does not consider that a separate study by [UK] Government departments or by a university or other independent organisation would produce results to justify the expenditure, time and money involved' (DEFE 31/119). Following the conclusions reached by the Flying Saucer Working Party the MoD continued to reply upon studies carried out by USAF for their policy lead on UFOs. There was never any British equivalent of the publicly funded study by the University of Colorado on behalf of the USAF that was completed in 1969. The 'Condon report' - named after the project head, the physicist Dr Edward Condon - was based on an analysis of 12,618 reports collected by the USAF Project Blue Book between 1947 and 1969 (Blue Book followed Projects Sign and Grudge in 1952). Of this total 701 remained unexplained. The main findings of the US study were: • About 90% of all UFO reports prove to be plausibly related to ordinary phenomena. • Little, if anything, had come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that added to scientific knowledge. • Further extensive study of UFO sightings was not justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby. • No evidence came to light in the study to indicate that UFO sightings may represent a defence hazard. • The Department of Defence should continue to handle UFO reports in its normal surveillance operations without the need for special units such as Project Blue Book (S4 briefing to MoD, 24 March 1970, copy in BJ 5/311).
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