Britain's X-files

Dear readers

A refreshing cool change swept through Adelaide overnight, after a few days of warmer weather.

The subject of today's post, comes from issue 280, November 2011 of the English Fortean Times magazine.

In an article about the latest release of UK Ministry of Defence UFO files, containing 8600 pages, David Clarke takes a look at some of the contents which interested him.

DI55:

In a document dated July 1995, and written by a desk officer of the Ministry's scientific intelligence area, Clarke writes:

"In what I believe to be the most important revelation so far, an intelligence officer reveals that '...lack of funding and higher priorities' had prevented any detailed study of the thousands of reports they had received since the end of world war II." This was just one year before the Ministry conducted Project Condign (click here for details.)

RAAF Lakenheath:

"...it is worth noting  that the new files contain details of a more recent incident involving RAAF Lakenheath that occurred in January 2007. In this case an unusual object was detected by the pilot of a USAF F-15 on his airborne radar during a routine exercise...When the captain of the F-15 took a closer look he found the "UFO" was actually the size of a soccer ball and was drifting in the wind at between 17-18,000 feet..." For a look at details known prior to the release of these new files click here.

Balloons:

"Balloons were also responsible for a type of UFO sighting that spread like a virus across the British isles from the summer of 2006. These are the ubiquitous orange lights in the sky that drift slowly across the night sky in formation that resembles fleets of flying saucers... Chinese lanterns..."

Comments:

The continuing release of thousands of papers from the UK's UFO files, reveals more about the background interest of intelligence agencies, in the UFO phenomenon. The official line is that intelligence areas of the British Ministry of Defence; the Australian Department of Defence and the New Zealand state in summary that some UFOs are not explainable in conventional terms; that they are scientifically interesting but are of no defence threat. See a previous post on just this topic (click here.)

For more material by David Clarke on these files, click here.