by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”
In part 1 of this blog, we looked at a 1993 case from Southern England that has become known as “The Cosford Incident.” It involved a series of UFO sightings reports, many from police, on March 30 and 31, 1993. British UFO researcher Nick Pope was manning the UFO desk in Sec(AS)2a of the Ministry of Defense at the time and described himself on an episode of NEWS 7 Spotlight as being “broadly skeptical” when it came to UFOs and that his investigation of this case was “the turning point.” The case became a British classic due in part to Pope’s description of it in his 1996 book, Open Skies, Closed Minds. However, other researchers, such as Jenny Randles of the British UFO Research Association, suspected that some of the sightings were of a satellite rocket booster from Cosmos 2235 (sent up by the Commonwealth of Independent States) re-entering the atmosphere. One report from RAF Shawbury that was highlighted by Pope was later reconsidered by the witness as also having a prosaic explanation. Because the file (Part 1, Part 2) on the case was released to the public by the MoD, details can be examined by anyone with an interest.
Pope posted descriptions of the most dramatic reports on February 20, 2007, on the Physics Forum website. One was from the Quantock Hills section of Somerset from an off-duty police officer who reported seeing a craft that looked “like two Concordes flying side by side and joined together.” Another came from a meteorological officer at RAF Shawbury who said he saw a large UFO around the size of a Boeing 747 travelling at 30-40 mph. He said it was shining a white beam of light at the ground, and sweeping it back and forth as if it was looking for something which then, in Pope’s words, “retracted in an unnatural way.” According to the witness, the craft then accelerated and moved off to the horizon many times faster than any military plane.
The case is looked at in much more detail by Joe McGonagle on the website Flying Saucery. The reports as they are documented come from written reports from the night before, phone calls received by Pope while he was at his desk, police reports, filled out MoD reporting forms, and an “Interim Report” (pages 19-25 in Part 2 of the MoD file) sent to Pope by private investigator Doug Cooper of the Devon UFO Research Organization and the British UFO Research Association. According to Cooper, the majority of his reports (7 or 8, mostly from police officers) were of “two very bright white lights or objects, travelling across the night sky from approximately N.W. to S.E. in complete silence and trailing some form of illuminated vapour trail behind them – it!”
On the Australian News 7 Spotlight episode hosted by Ross Coulthart, which features Pope discussing the case, animations throughout show a large triangular-shaped craft shining a spotlight down on the ground, and Coulthart describes the one sighted over RAF Shawbury as “a clearly structured black, triangular craft.” Going through the files, one can see that almost all of the reports are of “two bright white lights.” McGonagle was able to glean a total of 29 reports from the files and of these there was only one of a “triangle with a central red glow” reported on the 30th from Bradway near Sheffield, and two reports of three lights: one from Devon on the 31st of “3 large, very bright lights;” and the one from the RAF Shawbury meteorological officer on the 31st of “2 red lights side by side, and a larger third red light flashing slightly behind these.”
McGonagle provides a link to a report by Gary Anthony & Chris Fowler, UFOs of March 30th/31st 1993 Explained!, posted in November, 2006. Anthony (we assume, because McGonagle attributes the article to him) describes being an astronomical consultant to BUFORA at the time and that Jenny Randles was interested in the sightings and believed witnesses had seen something explainable. According to Anthony, an investigation by the BUFORA National Investigations Committee was able to determine that the “re-entry of satellite rocket booster (R/B) 22586 from Cosmos 2238” was the explanation for most of the sightings. BUFORA had seen a similar series of reports generated by a Cosmos 1068 launcher re-entry in December 1978.
Pope mentioned in a Loose Minute that he was contacted by BUFORA and informed about the Cosmos booster. He acknowledges that the re-entry could be an explanation for some of the sightings, but not all of them.
Significantly, the time indicated on at least thirteen of the reports was around the time of the re-entry, which could have been seen in England on the 31st starting at 1:10 a.m. BST. Also significant was the fact that England had just switched over from Greenwich Mean Time to British Summer Time, which is one hour later, and this could have caused time errors in some of the reports.
McGonagle makes note of a handwritten message on MoD stationery in the files that might offer an explanation for some of the March 30th sightings prior to midnight. Whoever wrote the message reported that after speaking with HQ MATO (Head Quarters Material Air Traffic Operations at RAF Uxbridge) that day, “All they could suggest was a pair of Sea Kings from RNAS Yeovilton who were operating in LFA2 up to 2400 local on 30 March.” LFA2 is a Low Flying Area in Southwest England where many of the reports came from. There is nothing in the files indicating there was any sort of follow-up on this possibility.
While most of the reports seemed to have been explained, there remained the mystery of the Shawbury report, which stands out as the most dramatic of all of them. According to the posting by Anthony and Fowler, David Clarke interviewed the meteorological officer, Wayne Eliott, who said that in contrast to Pope’s “excitement” about his sighting, he was “more ambivalent” about what he saw. Clarke asked Elliott if what he saw was triangular and Elliott replied that he preferred to describe it in terms of lights rather than any discernable shape.
According to Anthony and Fowler, in 2005, a man who had been stationed at RAF Shawbury at the time read Pope’s account of Elliot’s sighting and wrote, “The UFO supposedly seen at RAF Shawbury was later identified as a Dyfed-Powys police helicopter following a stolen car down the A5 between the A49 junction. The observer was using his NiteSun to illuminate proceedings.”
Elliott reconsidered his sighting with this information in mind:
At the time, it did not strike me as being something familiar. However, it’s clear in hindsight that what I saw was not the same object seen at Cosford, as it was much later. I never made anything of it, I just reported what I had seen. Nick Pope was very excited about it and made a great deal of the fact that I was an official observer, which was true. He assured me that he had checked with all the military sources for aircraft and ruled them out. I believed what I was told at the time, but now I’m convinced that what I saw has been explained. I have to accept that the noise like a humming and the beam of light are very similar to what you would expect of a police helicopter.