West Freugh Radar Incident

Spring 1957. The Ministry of Supply was running trials at the Luce Bay bombing range from RAF West Freugh, about 5 miles south-east of Stranraer. Mobile radars tracked aircraft during bombing runs.

On the morning of 4 April, the crews were waiting for a trials aircraft from RAF Farnborough. It was delayed. They were told to switch their sets off. At Balscalloch, near Corsewall Point, that message never arrived.

The Balscalloch screen showed an echo over the sea, 20 to 25 miles north of Stranraer. The echo was considerably larger than expected from an aircraft, nearer the size of a ship's echo. And it was almost stationary. For about 10 minutes it held at 50,000 feet. Balscalloch called Flight Lieutenant Ken England in West Freugh air traffic control.

Then it climbed. The station commander, Wing Commander Whitworth, described it later: "After remaining stationary for a short time, the UFO began to rise vertically with no forward movement, rising rapidly to approximately 60,000 feet in much less than a minute."

It moved north-east at about 70 mph at 54,000 feet. At Ardwell, a second mobile radar, Charles Holland and Stan Farley picked up four objects at 14,000 feet, flying in line astern about 4,000 yards apart. Near Newton Stewart, it turned sharply to the south-east, accelerated to about 240 mph, and lost height. "The sharp turn made near Newton Stewart would be impossible for any aircraft traveling at similar speed," Whitworth said. At the end of the 36-minute track, the four smaller echoes appeared to trail the large one.

The press had it within days. An AP wire story said three radar operators reported independently. The Sunday Dispatch called it too large, too fast and too manoeuvrable to have been an aircraft. Whitworth's approved statement was brief: "I have been ordered by the Air Ministry to say nothing about the object. I am not allowed to reveal its position, course and speed."

Air Ministry technical intelligence, DDI(Tech), reported on 30 April 1957. It ruled out private and military aircraft. Its conclusion: "It is considered that the incident was due to the presence of five reflecting objects of unidentified type and origin. It is considered unlikely that they were conventional aircraft, meteorological balloons or charged clouds."

In Parliament the line was softer. The brief for George Ward, Secretary of State for Air, allowed that a private aircraft was possible, though the object "could not have been a balloon since it was moving against the wind." On 15 May Ward told the Commons that the speeds on radar "were nothing like so fast as reported in the Press."

David Clarke and Andy Roberts, in Out of the Shadows (2002), argued for an American U-2 spy plane, with four chase aircraft at 14,000 feet producing the line of smaller echoes. Patrick Gross objected. The echoes were bigger than a U-2 would give, he said, and the hovering, speeds and turn do not fit. Martin Shough has analysed the question in a detailed study.

In 1971 Julian Hennessey, NICAP's representative in Britain, contacted Whitworth, who was allowed to talk but not to reveal what West Freugh's radars could do. The papers survived, probably because the Joint Intelligence Committee had taken an interest. They now sit at The National Archives in AIR 20/9320, and David Clarke ranks the report third among his top 10 UFO documents there. There was no photograph and no visual sighting. Just five echoes, 36 minutes, and an official verdict of unidentified type and origin.