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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.
11 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. DEFE 71/33 contains a brief discussion between RAF, Air Traffic Control and the Defence Intelligence Staff concerning UFOs as a potential hazard to civil aviation, 1977- 78. 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 Davies, appeared on a UFO debate screened by BBC2's Man Alive series. He was also interviewed by BBC Radio Oxford for a programme broadcast later that year. 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. Ministry of Defence Archives The Ministry of Defence hold a number of UFO-related files dating from 1992 to the present day. Since 2005, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) they have continued to release information to requestors and added material to their FOI publication scheme. In 2008 MoD announced their intention to transfer all their remaining records on UFOs to The National Archives before 2010. This transfer has now begun with 27 UFO files dating from 1979 to 1991 opened to the public via The National Archives UFO website during 2008. Further files will be added in 2009 and 2010. This briefing document will be updated when this material becomes available. . One of the first UFO files to be released by the Ministry of Defence under the Code of Practice for Access to Government Information, the predecessor of the FOIA, in 2001 was that containing papers on the famous Rendlesham Forest incident, often called 'Britain's Roswell'. The sightings took place over two nights late in December 1980 at RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, an airbase loaned to the USAF. Mysterious lights were seen to land in the forest beyond the perimeter of the base and a group of airmen went to investigate. They reported seeing lights they were unable to identify moving through the trees. The next day marks were allegedly found on the ground and on trees in the forest where the men claimed the UFO had landed. Two nights later UFOs were again sighted from the base and the deputy base commander, Lt Col Charles Halt, took a team of handpicked men into the woods to investigate. During the expedition Halt saw several unidentified lights and made a live tape recording of the incident. Early in January 1981 Halt produced an official report on the incidents, titled 'Unexplained Lights' that was sent to Defence Secretariat 8 (DS8) at Whitehall. Halt's
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.