Prestwick, we have a problem: the UFO files

Published on Wednesday 2 March 2011 17:04

EYEWITNESS accounts of unidentified flying objects following planes above Scottish airports and claims by hillwalkers of close encounters atop remote Highland mountain ranges are among thousands of newly declassified documents released by the National Archives today.

The files detail insistent claims from a member of the public of unusual lights in the night sky above Glasgow, and also include a letter from a sheepish UFO watcher admitting he may have got his facts wrong following a visit to an optician.

Across the UK, the documents include apparent sightings of UFOs by the military and a "War of the Worlds" style emergency in the 1960s prompted by a student hoax. They also show that the phenomenon was discussed at the highest levels at the United Nations, the CIA and the House of Lords.

The files, which contain an array of UFO-related documents, drawings, and letters, detail several incidents in Scotland.

The most descriptive account comes from a member of the public in West Kilbride, who wrote to the Ministry of Defence to report an object approaching a plane near Prestwick Airport at around 11pm on 27 August 2003.

"There was a fluorescent green UFO, saucer shaped," they wrote. "The pilot could not have missed it as it was level with (the plane] but say 50 feet away to its left as they passed each other. The UFO started to tilt slowly downwards."

The Ayrshire resident added they were speaking "hand on Bible truth" but the MoD gave a brief reply, saying: "Thank you for your two letters. The contents have been noted and placed on our departmental files."

In another file, a hillwalker describes an eerie incident at the summit of Beaclach an Lapain in the Five Sisters of Kintail area in the north-west Highlands.

The walker, who is not identified other than being from Dumbarton, explained that he was at the top of the mountain with his partner on a "clear cloudless day" when the fast moving object came within their earshot.

Estimating its speed to be between 60 and 100mph, the man said the UFO emitted a "steady whooshing or swishing sound like a Guy Fawkes rocket".

Recalling the incident on 6 April, 1996, he said: "The line of flight of the object appeared to be horizontal or very slightly rising. The prevailing impression was that something travelling very fast had just missed us."

In its reply, however, the MoD pointed out that identifying the nature of each UFO sighting was not part of its remit.

Not all of those individuals who wrote to the MoD did so to claim they saw a UFO. One man from Aberdeen informed officials that a sighting he had reported in 1997 may have been erroneous. "I saw my optician this week to ask him if the fact that I have scarring behind one eye could cause this effect and he said, yes, it was perfectly possible," he wrote.

"So it is no wonder no-one else reported having seen my UFO."

The documents also report a War of the Worlds incident in 1967 that was treated as a potential "alien invasion" of the UK after the RAF was flooded with reports of six "flying saucers" in southern England. Four police forces, bomb disposal units, the army and the MoD's intelligence branch were all mobilised before it emerged the saucers were a "rag-day" hoax by engineering students from Farnborough Technical College..