September 1952. NATO staged Exercise Mainbrace, a simulated Soviet attack on Western Europe. About 80,000 personnel, more than 200 ships and about 1,000 aircraft took part. During the exercise, a sighting at RAF Topcliffe on 19 September made headlines around the world. The event also revived Air Ministry interest in such reports, two years after the RAF Tangmere Meteor case of 1950 had been closed. Once the exercise ended, the next RAF encounter, at Little Rissington, stayed secret for about fifty years.
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