UFOs "As Big As A Battleship" by Gordon Creighton

Flying Saucer Review/Volume 45/1, Spring 2000, pp. 13 & 14

If you glance through the bound volumes of Flying Saucer Review since
Spring 1955 you will find that the phrase "as big as a battleship" has
been employed a surprising number of times, and that in quite a lot of
the cases the eyewitnesses, frequently numerous, were serving British
personnel in the Radar and Observation branches of the Royal Air Force,
who sent in to FSR private confidential reports of what they had seen -
no names revealed.

An interesting recent case - and one which owing to the difficulty of
getting everything of note into FSR we have not yet chronicled - was
revealed early in June 1999 during a Space Symposium (!) at the R.A.F.
Staff College, Cranwell.

Speaking there, a senior R.A.F. officer said that the latest Phased
Array Radar at the former "Cold War Listening Post" at Flyingdales
in North Yorkshire had been picking up some "very interesting
mysterious craft".  He said: "What we have seen are not weapons.
They are craft of which we have no technical knowledge.  We know
their shapes, speeds, and heights, but cannot explain what they are."

This most spectacular case related to a machine spotted by Flyingdales
and also by the Dutch Air Force, at 28,000 ft above the North Sea.
Describing it as "the size of a battleship", he said that it had zigzagged
around at up to 24,000 m.p.h. for 15 minutes - "as if it wanted to be spotted".

Another tape display showed a group of 12 oval objects seemingly changing
shape, to the amazement of the observers.

This most important big thing, at 28,000 ft over the North Sea, was seen
on February 3, 1999, and reported by the pilot of a private charter flight
from Linkoping in Sweden to Luton in England.  This chartered plane was a
Bae 146 jet, owned by Debonair Air Line, Luton.  The pilot said he was some
58 miles off the coast of Denmark, when his cockpit was "immersed in an
incandescent light".

According to a CAA spokesman, the pilot "saw an unidentified bright light
below his aircraft.  The area was illuminated for ten seconds."  Pilots in
three other aircraft reported seeing the UFO, either moving at high speed
or static. (!)  And the spokesman concluded: "As far as we are concerned, the
matter is closed".

But the Civil Aviation Authority and the British Ministry of Defence both
confirmed that they were aware of the alleged sighting, while both denying
that they were investigating it.  The CAA spokesman said: "This may sound
silly - but is a matter for the M.O.D."  And the M.O.D. commented: "Our
people have been looking for it but we are not investigating."

(One UFO investigator remarked: "WELL - THEY WOULD SAY THAT -
WOULDN'T THEY!")

The Debonair Air Line office at Luton refused to name the pilot.  They said:
"He is on four days leave.  He definitely saw a big red light".

However, - and this is very interesting - the press reports seem to agree
that the UFO, tubular, was "silver-coloured and long and pencil-thin, with
square windows along the fuselage".

And this is precisely the type of tubular UFO that has very often been
reported, just as the square windows have often been reported.  One of the
press reports (Express, London, April 27, 1999) mentions that "at one stage,
the UFO came to an abrupt halt before accelerating past the jet plane at
thousands of miles an hour". (!)

It is evident that not all the press reports mention the shape of the UFO,
its row of square windows, and its extraordinary behaviour in halting and the
to a speed of thousands of miles an hour.  Instead, they prefer to keep
referring to "the great red light", or "the incandescent light".

A spokesman for the British Ministry of Defence insisted that there were no
military aircraft in the area.  He said: "We saw nothing".

A spokesman for the British Pilots' Associated (6,000 members) said: "We
get reports of this nature from our members but they are few and far
between.  In the past 10 years or so I would say that there have been
around six cases (!) of UFOs being sighted.  Many pilots are reluctant to
make such claims because it tends to lay them open to ridicule.  So when
they do go as far as making a report we do expect it to be given credence".
NO WONDER THE PILOTS DON'T REPORT THEIR CASES!

The number of private and commercial pilots from around the entire world
who admit to having seen UFOs is - so we are told - 3,500!  That is certainly
not the total figure of pilots who have seen or encountered UFOs.

According to the last reports seen, Mr. Toke Havnstrup, President of
Scandinavian UFO Information, had expressed a definite intention to
investigate this case of the UFO over the North Sea.

PRESS REPORTS SEEN
Daily Mail April 27, 1999
Express April 27, 1999
Express April 28, 1999
Scotsman April 28, 1999

NOTE BY EDITOR, FSR
O.K.!  So what about this little item of thirty years ago?:
Reprint from FSR Vol. 5 No. 2 (March/April 1959) page 13.

SECRECY OVER FLYING SAUCERS ANGERS PILOTS:  UFOS TRACKED BY
RADAR ALL OVER USA

Commercial aviation pilots are incensed over the secrecy of the U.S. Air Force
on flying saucers, states the Newark Star Ledger (newspaper), which has
published a report that the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) has been
tracking unidentified flying objects by radar in all parts of the United
States.

A group of 50 commercial pilots who fly into Newark, one of the busiest
air-freight and passenger centres in the world, told reporter John Lester
that the Air Force's policy of secrecy is just plain silly.

Every one of the 50 pilots had reported to the Air Force having seen at
least one UFO.   Each pilot had been subjected to Air Force questioning
and then told, in effect, that he had seen a mirage.  Then, to cap it off,
he was warned that, if he told anyone else what he had seen he might face
up to 10 years in prison for revealing military secrets!

The pilots said this policy makes no sense.  If gthe UFOs are mirages, as
the Air Force claims, then why all the secrecy?  And why does the CAA
bother to track them by radar!

"They are very strict about requiring us to report the mysterious objects
and then they are downright insulting in telling us that we haven't really
seen anything!", say the pilots.  G.C.

A few years later, as I recall, we published in FSR another, similar,
protest, also from the pilots flying in and out of Newark, saying that,
if their senses and their faculties of perception are so dangerously
defective as the authorities suggest, how then does it come about
that these pilots can be permitted to go on exercising their arduous
and heavily responsible tasks as pilots!  (This report not yet located
in bound set of FSR volumes).  G.C.