The Devon "Flying Cross" Police Chase

October 1967. England was in the middle of an autumn of strange lights. Reports of a glowing "flying cross" came in from Devon, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset and beyond. The most famous of them began on a quiet road in West Devon.

Tuesday, 24 October 1967. Shortly after 4 a.m. Two Devon police constables, Roger Willey and Clifford Waycott, were driving from Holsworthy to Hatherleigh on the A3072. The night was cold and damp.

Then they saw a light above the trees, about 400 yards ahead. "It looked like a star-spangled cross radiating points of light from all angles," Willey said. Waycott described a "brilliant white, brilliant light," while to Willey, the inner parts looked "somewhat similar to the points of a compass." It seemed as large as a conventional aircraft and it pulsated. "There was no noise."

They drove towards it, and it moved away. "It then led us on a chase as if it was playing a game with us." The object travelled at about tree-top height over wooded countryside. The police car reached 90 mph trying to keep up. "The acceleration away from us was terrific."

At 04:23 a second object joined the first. The chase ran for fourteen miles on the road near Brandis Corner. A motorist, Christopher Garner, also saw it and thought he was having a nightmare. At around 05:00 the two objects disappeared together. Willey had no doubts: "It was definitely either manned by some sort of being or remotely controlled."

The story made The Times. Julian Mounter wrote that the thing had "observed" the constables for about 50 minutes and "played an elaborate game of catch me over the tree-tops". RAF Chivenor said none of its aircraft could do what the object had done. ITN filmed both officers with their patrol car.

On 8 November 1967 the case reached the House of Commons. Peter Mills, MP for North Devon, cited the officers and the engineers at the North Hessary Tor transmitting station, who had seen low objects "moving for over an hour". For the government, Merlyn Rees answered that "some proved to be aircraft and some were lights. Of the lights, the majority were the planet Venus; but the source of a few lights has not been positively identified." He added that "none of these unidentified lights was an alien object."

An investigator from the Ministry of Defence's Defence Intelligence branch, DI55, interviewed the two constables. The report noted that the men "had rehearsed their story several times as a result of interviews with the Press". Its verdict was blunt. "The object is Venus." The papers, including file AIR 20/11889, later went to The National Archives.

Howard Miles of the British Astronomical Association and Arthur Smith of the Daily Mirror also named Venus, which was particularly bright in the dawn sky. Ian Ridpath treats the case as typical of UFO reports, with size and brightness overestimated and "spurious motion" attributed to the object. Miles later admitted, "I did not carry out any astronomical observations on this event." On Metabunk, one analyst calculated that Venus sat only a few degrees up at 04:00, dimmed by the atmosphere, and suggested Jupiter instead. Believers point to the second object, the tree-top height and the crosses reported across England that month.

In 2004 BBC Devon interviewed the retired officers again. Willey had not changed his view. "It was something that I hadn't seen before, I haven't seen since, and something that nobody can explain exactly what it was."