Air traffic controllers' touch-and-go UFO at an eastern England airport (UK MoD files), 1984

May 2008. The National Archives opened the first batch of the Ministry of Defence UFO files. Eight files, covering 1978 to 1987, released after Freedom of Information requests. Many reports had ordinary answers. Lights over a pub in Tunbridge Wells, for example, turned out to be airliners approaching Gatwick. One report was different. It came from the control tower of an unspecified small airport near the eastern coast of England. The airport was never named.

April 19, 1984. About 4 p.m. The controllers were doing routine work. A small plane was on approach to runway 22. Then they "were distracted by a brightly lit object approaching a different runway without clearance."

The senior officer on duty was the SATCO, a controller with 14 years' experience. Every controller in the room had more than 8 years in the job. According to the report, the object came in "at speed," made a touch and go on runway 27, then departed at "terrific speed" in a "near vertical" climb. The report puts it simply. "Everyone became aware that the object was unidentified."

The story had surfaced before. The March/April 1986 issue of International UFO Reporter, published by the Center for UFO Studies, carried a short item about air traffic controllers at an eastern airport in England. They had watched a glowing sphere that looked like "masses of silver paper crinkled up" touch down on a cross runway. Then it rocketed skyward in a maneuver they judged impossible for aircraft. It climbed 3000 feet in under a second. The item was later listed in the NICAP chronology for 1984. Who passed the story to ufologists, two years after the event, remains unknown.

The official record is a Report of Unusual Aerial Phenomenon. The controllers' names are blacked out. They had asked for that themselves, because they feared losing their jobs. The Ministry of Defence logged such reports to judge whether they posed any threat to defence. When the files came out, its general position was that it had found no evidence of alien activity. For this case, it offered no explanation at all.

David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University advised The National Archives on the release. He summarised the object as a "bright, circular object, flashing different colors" that "disappeared at fantastic speed." "The report comes from very qualified people, and it's one of the few that remained unexplained," he said.

No one has alleged a hoax. No sceptic has put forward a specific explanation. The files record mundane answers where they were found. Here, none was.

The Associated Press story ran around the world in May 2008, through NBC News, CBS News, Fox News and Gulf News. The airport's name has still not been published, and the controllers have never spoken in public. What remains is a handful of words from a redacted report. A small plane on approach. A bright object approaching without clearance. And a touch and go on runway 27 that no one could explain.