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This research guide from The National Archives was written by Dr David Clarke in March 2008 and revised in August 2008. It traces British government interest in UFOs from the phantom airships of 1909 through the 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, Air Ministry and MoD investigations, and the 1979 House of Lords debate. It notes that official bodies found most sightings had ordinary explanations. It also lists key National Archives file references, including papers on the Rendlesham Forest incident.
10 and DEFE 24/1972/1 (dealing with alleged UFO involvement in the crash of a Lightning F6 aircraft in September 1970) UFO correspondence files opened in August 2009 include: DEFE 24/1962/1-1965 /1 (covering 1992-1993). Sighting reports files include DEFE 24/1959/1 (1993); DEFE 24/1960/1 (1994), DEFE 24/1961/1 (1995) and DEFE 24/1974/1-1976/1 (1996). DEFE 31 contains a series of UFO records created by the Defence Intelligence Staff branch DI55 and their predecessors, Air Ministry DDI (Tech). Policy files are DEFE 31/118 and DEFE 31/119. UFO report files include DEFE 31/171 (1975-76) and DEFE 31/163 through to DEFE 31/167 (1979). Four files in the DI55 UFO reports sequence were opened in May 2008. These are DEFE 31/172/1 (UFO reports 1978-1983), DEFE 31/173/1 (UFO reports June 1983- March 1985), DEFE 24/174 (UFO reports April 1985-December 1986) and DEFE 31/175/1 (UFO reports December 1986-November 1987). Six DI55 UFO files were opened in March 2009. DEFE 31/1976/1 - DEFE 31/181/1 contain details of reports received by DI55 between November 1987 and April 1993. Short 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). Details of some well-documented UFO sightings investigated by the Air Ministry and Ministry of Defence can be found by searching the reports files. AIR 2/18564 and AIR 20/9320 contain reports from various RAF stations including RAF West Freugh in 1957. The West Freugh incident involved the tracking of UFOs by a number of trailer-mounted radar units at a RAF bombing range in southern Scotland. It led to national interest when the story leaked to the press. Newspaper stories led to questions in Parliament and at the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). A report on the incident prepared by DDI (Tech) contains in its conclusions what is possibly the closest the Air Ministry ever got to recognition that some UFOs remained inexplicable and therefore of possible defence interest. The report stated: „It is concluded that the incident was due to the presence of five reflecting objects of unidentified type and origin. It is considered unlikely that they were conventional aircraft, meteorological balloons or charged clouds‟ (AIR 20/9321). 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. 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.‟
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 13 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.