Captain Edward J. Ruppelt (The Report on Unidentified Flying
Objects; Chapter 10, page 130):
During the time that I was chief of the UFO project, the visitors who passed through my office closely resembled the international brigade. Most of the visits were unofficial in the sense that the officers came to ATIC on other business, but in many instances the other business was just an excuse to come out to Dayton to get filled in on the UFO story. Two RAF intelligence officers who were in the U.S. on a classified mission brought six single-spced typed pages of questions they and their friends wanted answered Fran Ridge:
This report was extracted from The UFO Conspiracy by Jenny Randles (pages 41-42), and radar case selected and submitted by Jan Aldrich. Page 41: Some military officials are "seriously considering the possibility of interplanetary spaceships": FBI Memo, 27 Oct 1952 Three thousand miles from Washington DC, about the time the
CIA panel met, an RAF pilot and his science officer were on another
secret mission.
The officer was Flight Lieutenant Cyril George
Townsend-Withers (later to become a senior scientific officer,
specializing in radar and working with the MoD at the rank of Wing
Commander). It was a crisp, sunny day in early 1953 and they were
flying a new experimental Canberra aircraft, not yet into production.
The jet had been stripped of all removable parts to make it
as light as possible. With this modification they were able to leave
the RAF test base in Boscombe Down in Sussex and soar to 55,000 feet,
then a record for the aircraft. At this lonely elevation they could be
sure of no company and complete freedom from the problems of the
atmosphere. This was necessary in order that they could test a new
breed of radar being fitted to the plane.
Cruising over Salisbury Plain just after noon,
Townsend-Withers picked up the blip on his screen. It showed an object
travelling five miles behind them and maintaining station. His
immediate reaction was to curse the 'anomalous propagation' effects
which they had gone to so much trouble to avoid. Having soon
established it was no such thing, however, became very aware that this
was an image of something real - something actually flying right behind
them.
The science officer went up to the turret to take a look at
the sky behind the aircraft. Sure enough, glinting in the sun or
pouring out a fantastic amount od its own light, he could make out a
round shape trailing in their wake.
Townsend-Withers called his pilot on the microphone and told
him that he could see an unknown. He suggested they try to fly faster
and outpace it. They reached 225 knots but the thing would not be
shaken off. So the pilot executed a sweeping radius turn, which meant
that they lost the target from ??? because it was rearward facing only;
but it was not to be gone for long.
As the Canberra came around from its turn the object swung
back into
view. It was dead ahead. Both men could now see it, as they
raced through the sky.
For half a minute they were on a collision course with the
unknown, swiftly trying to calculate what to do next. In those seconds
they had a very clear view. They could see that the object was
completely unlike anything which they had ever encountered before. It
was round, like a thin disc, but with two small tailfins at the rear.
It seemed to be metallic and enormous, and it was simply sitting there
waiting for them to fly right into it.
During the decision about evasive tactics to get out of its
way the UFO suddenly made this irrelevant. It flipped vertically into
the air and climbed upwards at an astonishing rate. 'Fifty, sixty,
seventy thousand feet - as quick as you could say it.' Leaving no
vapour trail, wake or detectable sound, the thing vanished within just
a couple of seconds way into the blue.
Of course, the two RAF men knew that they had encountered
something utterly fantastic. In 1986 Townsend-Withers was still
describing it as 'a reconnaissance device from somewhere else - that is
all I could say about it.' No earth-bound aircraft looked like it,
behaved like it or could reach such a height. They knew that some sort
of official report was essential, but who would believe them? They had
heard tell of flying saucers' - garbled stories carried by the media.
The assumption was to treat these as an American craziness, something
'Yanks' were seeing but nobody else. Certainly not conservative,
stiff-upper-lip British airmen.
However, when they did report, the reaction on the ground
was surprising. Townsend-Withers says, 'once we satisfied them it was
not a Russian plane they just weren't interested'. He was debriefed by
the radar manufacturers, who were convinced their system was working
perfectly. The radar return had definitely been of a real object.
Boscombe Down also apparently channelled the report through to the Air
Ministry (now the Ministry of Defence) and told the science officer in
confidence, that they had a project evaluating UFO sightings from the
point of view that they might be extra-terrestrial. This, of course,
was not to be made public as it could be interpreted as governmental
support for the idea.
Yet this project never contacted Townsend-Withers again. A
classic daylight UFO sighting, with two experienced officers as
witnesses, radar back-up and a near collision with a secret mission,
was practically ignored. Townsend-Withers was almost as concerned by
such a lack of action a was by the UFO encounter itself. Surely
somebody, somewhere, was taking note of such things?
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