Broad Haven School Sighting and the Dyfed Triangle

Pembrokeshire, in what was then the county of Dyfed. The coast around St Brides Bay sat close to RAF Brawdy, with its Hawker Hunters and a US Navy facility, and to the oil refineries of Milford Haven. In December 1976, a flashing, dome-shaped light had already been reported on the road from Broad Haven to Milford Haven.

Friday, 4 February 1977. It was raining and the ground was boggy. At lunchtime, children at Broad Haven Primary School were playing football. David Davies, then 10, later described how "the object just popped up from behind some trees. It was about 50 foot long, about the size of a bus with a pearlescent silver finished to it." He remembered more. "It had a central dome on top which covered the middle third of the vehicle and on top there was a red pulsating light."

Michael Webb saw it as "silver and a cigar shape with a big dome and a red light flashing on top." Michael Pugh described windows around the edge of the dome. Six children said a tall man in a silver suit stood beside the craft. They were scared. They ran back to the school. At first, the adults did not believe them.

The children took a petition to the local police station. On Monday 7 February, headmaster Ralph Llewellyn interviewed about 15 of them separately and had them draw what they saw under exam conditions. The drawings were almost identical. Davies recalled the moment. "The accounts were so similar, that there was this resignation that hit him that we had, in fact, seen something." On 17 February, a teacher and two dinner ladies reported a humming, domed object of their own.

Over the following months the reports multiplied. Pauline Coombs said a luminous object followed her car to Ripperston Farm, and the family later described a 7-ft figure in a silver suit at their window. At the Haven Fort Hotel in Little Haven, Rosa Granville described two tall figures in whitish suits beside an oval object. The tabloids had a name for it. The Dyfed Triangle.

Pembroke MP Nicholas Edwards asked questions on behalf of constituents. Defence Under-Secretary James Wellbeloved replied that the MoD had "no record of unusual activity in the area." Yet on 14 June 1977 the Ministry asked the RAF Police for a "discreet enquiry." UFO desk head James Peduzie wrote: "I have not even told the Minister I am consulting you." A December 1977 briefing concluded: "There is general speculation in the neighbourhood that a practical joker may be at work." The files later surfaced through The National Archives at Kew.

In 1996 Glyn Edwards, a Milford Haven businessman, admitted walking around in a silver suit borrowed from oil refinery workers. "Alien sightings were all the rage, so I took a stroll around for a bit of fun." His confession covered the later spaceman reports, not the craft the children saw. A farm vehicle, a sewage tanker and a Harrier jet have all been suggested. The headmaster rejected the tanker. The ground was too boggy. David Clarke has pointed to Forbidden Planet, shown on BBC television in 1977. Nick Pope said "there isn't a single, neat solution to the mystery."

Davies has never wavered. "I did see something unexplained that day and I will stick to that story for the rest of my life." The case has since featured in Netflix's Encounters, BBC Radio 4's Uncanny and BBC Three's Paranormal: The Village That Saw Aliens. As Emlyn Williams, who organised the 40th anniversary event in 2017, put it, "one child can lie, but can a whole class?"