Archive / search
The people, organisations, programmes and places that keep turning up. Each page gathers every case that mentions them.
People20
A folklorist and senior lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University, Dr David Clarke advised The National Archives on the Ministry of Defence UFO files released from 2008 to 2013.
A ufology cataloguer and archivist, Patrick Gross compiled case sources online and gave many of them a verdict.
A British ufologist, Jenny Randles turns up across the archive's home-grown cases as an author, an investigator and a sceptical voice.
Aimé Michel was a French writer and ufologist.
A sceptic of the Cercle Zététique, Éric Maillot spent decades looking for ordinary answers to France's strangest cases.
George Van Tassel was a former aircraft mechanic and flight inspector for Douglas, Hughes and Lockheed.
A naturalist and writer, Ivan T.
John Greenewald runs The Black Vault.
A NASA scientist who later studied encounters between aircraft and UFOs.
A Navy F/A-18F pilot with VFA-11, the Red Rippers, flying out of Naval Air Station Oceana.
A sceptic who writes in SUNlite, Tim Printy has offered his own readings of several classic cases.
A former intelligence officer turned whistleblower.
Tyler Rogoway was a journalist at The War Zone who kept turning up the records behind strange aviation encounters.
A 23 year old farmer near São Francisco de Sales, Brazil.
Friday, April 24, 1964.
Martin Kottmeyer is a sceptical writer who looks for ordinary sources behind famous encounters.
An author who returns again and again to British cases, often working from official files.
An illustrator with a recurring role in Italian sightings.
Ross Coulthart is a journalist and commentator with NewsNation.
He says he worked a handful of days at a hidden site called S-4.
Organisations9
Kew is home to the files.
America's space agency appears across the archive in two roles.
Britain's Air Ministry turns up again and again in the archive's RAF cases.
A British university, it appears in the archive mainly as the academic home of Dr David Clarke.
Air Materiel Command operated from Wright Field, which is now part of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
The War Zone is a news outlet that kept turning up in airline sighting cases.
An air traffic control centre, and the voice on the other end of the radio for crews who saw something they could not name.
NATO is the Western military alliance.
Robert Bigelow's National Institute for Discovery Science ran a hotline and looked into strange reports.
Programmes and projects3
In the early years, the US Air Force ran its UFO investigations through Project Grudge.
January 1953.
The Flying Saucer Working Party was a British official study set up to look into reports of flying saucers.
Places5
A stretch of Suffolk woodland between two twin bases, RAF Woodbridge and RAF Bentwaters.
Lakenheath was an RAF base in Suffolk used by the United States Air Force in the summer of 1956.
Giant Rock rises seven stories out of the Mojave Desert near Landers, California.
Washington National Airport sits at the heart of the capital's most famous radar mystery.
Eglin Air Force Base sits on the Florida Panhandle.
Craft and objects1
An uncrewed drone, filming with its sensors.
Events3
June 21, 1947.
September 1952.
May 20, 1967.
Terms2
A wartime name for lights that would not explain themselves.
In the field, a mothership is a large craft that seems to carry or command smaller ones.