by Clive Harold
Navy and Air Force bases, some engaged in top secret research, to be studied. Just for good measure, Ripperstone Farm is also set at the cross-over of two Ley Lines - those mysterious lines that seem to trace grid patterns of Earth's magnetic force - along which UFOs seem to navigate and draw electromagnetic power of some description.
But who knows the reasons for the extra-terrestrial activity in the Welsh Triangle - that's for the experts to decide. The Coombs only want the phenomena to be acknowledged, never mind explained.
They know they are likely to have little scientific support in this country, but have taken solace in the knowledge that science and scientists in other countries are taking seriously the sort of phenomena they have witnessed.
A recent survey of Astronomical Society, physicist at Stanford University - revealed that over half of the membership now considered UFOs 'worthy of serious consideration'.
the membership of the American conducted by Peter Sturrock – a
Dr Jastrow, who is the' director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, believes extra-terrestrial intelligences are currently trying to make contact with Earth, having monitored high intensity radio and TV signals that have by now reached deep space. 'Word has reached these distant beings that there is something going on here,' he affirms. 'They know we are here they must want to know more...
Former Director of American Air Force Intelligence, General John Samford, warns: 'If we persist in refusing to recognise the existence of UFOs in our air space, we will one day end up mistaking one of these craft for a missile and shooting it down and the worst may be upon us...
Former American Navy Missile Chief Admiral Delmer Fahrney confirms his belief in their existence: 'There are, indeed, reliable reports to indicate that there are extra-terrestrial craft entering our atmosphere regularly at very high speeds that are controlled by thinking intelligences...'
Will we soon be able to examine, under President Carter's new programme of investigation, these reliable reports? Most of America's astronauts are hoping so. On a four-day flight in 1965, astronauts James McDivitt and Ed Mitchell both reported being shadowed in their capsule by an alien craft that they refused to believe was human-made. 'I'm not satisfied with NASA explanations that I saw my booster rocket in orbit with me,' said McDivitt. 'It was in the wrong place at the wrong time to have been that...' He further claimed that he made an inflight estimation of the speed the accompanying craft was doing.' It turned out to be over 17,000 miles per hour. He took extensive film footage of the craft and wrote a report of the sighting in detail after handing them in to the authorities when he returned, he never saw them again.
Astronaut Gordon Cooper sympathises. 'The American Space Agency and Government know very well that inteffigent beings from other planets regularly visit our world in an effort to enter into discreet contact with us and observe us. They have an enormous amount of evidence to this effect but have hitherto kept quiet in order not to alarm people...' Cooper knows what he is talking about. Like his other astronaut colleagues, he has had close looks at alien space-craft himself.
And so the expert opinions run. Stanton T. Friedman, an American nuclear physicist who has worked on space-related nuclear technology exclusively for the past fifteen years, says he is genuinely worried about the lack of investigation into such experiences as the Coombs have had:
'Encounters frequently occur between people on Earth and spacecraft and their occupants,' he asserts. 'There are hundreds of reports I know of, of creatures seen near their craft. Sightings by highly responsible and respectable people are much more common than most people realise. Reporting and detailed investigation of these sightings is much less common than I, as a scientist, would like One of Friedman's eminent colleagues, Dr J. J. Kalizkewski, a Cosmic Ray Scientist with the US Navy, agrees with him: 'Such is the certainty of the existence of UFOs, that I think the Government must now set up a 24-hour UFO alert with radar, telescope, sky cameras and other instruments, to accurately monitor their activity...'
Pauline and Billy Coombs, their family, their friends and their neighbours would whole-heartedly agree. Their participation in the UFO story is now completed - for the moment, anyway but the final chapter of the story is far from written. The mystery continues to unfold. Maybe, ultimately, the choice belongs to all of us. To accept or to reject, to suffer the consequences either way.
We are not alone. It is scientifically stupid to assume we are. We know that now. And yet they remain the unbelievable, the unacceptable, the unwelcome - the uninvited.
Clive Harold.
Ripperstone Farm. January 1979.
ADDITIONAL CONTENT
Originally published in Fortean Times 200 in 2005 The West Wales flap of 1977 is second only to the Warminster “Thing” in British UFO history. Documents released in 2005 have revealed how a secret military
investigation was launched into claims that alien craft and their tall humanoid occupants were taking a
particular interest in the Welsh coastline. DAVID CLARKE investigates.
The death in 2003 of veteran Welsh UFOlogist Randall Jones Pugh
passed without notice within the UK
UFO community. But less than three
decades ago Pugh, a retired vet, was
a leading spokesman for the subject and the key promoter of Britain’s
hottest new UFO“flap”. This was focussed upon a strip of rugged coastline within the Pembroke National Park near Pugh’s home which became, for a short time in 1977, the scene of strange encounters which made national headlines.
Earlier in the year Pugh, in an interview for a local paper,
discussed sightings in 1976 and
predicted there soon would be a
spate of similar events in West Wales. But even he was not prepared
for what happened next. During lunchtime on 4 February 15
schoolchildren at Broad Haven Primary School said they watched a silver cigar-shaped UFO in fields
behind their school. Some of the group, aged from nine to 11 years, claimed they saw a silver man with pointed ears emerge from the craft. Their stories were dismissed as fantasy but the children were so adamant they had seen something unusual they handed in a petition to the police station. Their head teacher later asked them to draw the UFO and was amazed at how similar their pictures were.
Randall Pugh was instrumental in bringing the story to the attention of the media and it became an overnight sensation. Journalists and TV crews flocked to the Welsh coast from all corners of the UK. Flying saucers were soon the main topic of conversation in the principality. By May straightforward lights in the sky had been replaced by stories of giant humanoid figures in spacesuits, similar to those used by astronauts, seen prowling around remote countryside late at night.
A whole gamut of Fortean phenomena appeared to cluster around the Coombs family at Ripperston Farm. Here a dairyman, Billy Coombs, his wife Pauline and their five children told of repeated close encounters with UFOs and their occupants which left a trail of burned out cars and TV sets and spiralling electricity bills. Pauline had a sighting almost every month and one occasion the car she was using to drive her children along a country lane was pursued by a fiery object shaped like a rugby football. Later the couple claimed a herd of cows were inexplicably teleported from a locked field into to an adjacent farmyard. But the most terrifying incident of all happened in the early hours of 23 April as the couple watched a late movie. Suddenly they were terrified by the
appearance of a 7ft tall figure in a spacesuit, whose blank face was framed in the window of their sitting room. While later investigators were sceptical of some of the more sensational claims, others were impressed by the genuine terror displayed by the couple at the time. Indeed the policeman who responded to their 999 call said in 1996 that in all his 26 years service “that was the most frightened family I have ever been to see.” There was no doubt the couple had seen something unusual, but what? some local people -
was founded on the fact that within a 20 mile radius of Broad Haven, where many of the reports were concentrated, there were a range of military bases. To the north was the top secret rocket testing station at Aberporth while Brawdy, near St David’s, trained pilots on Hawker Hunters and housed both a Tactical Weapons Unit and a US Navy underwater research station – in reality a unit which tracked the movements of Soviet submarines using a network of microphones.
The weird events at Ripperston Farm were chronicled in three books one of which, The Welsh Triangle by Peter Paget had been partly inspired
by The Sun headline “Spaceman Mystery of the Terror Triangle.” What exactly constituted the Welsh version of the Bermuda Triangle was never entirely clear, but it included most of the southeast corner of St Bride’s Bay along with the towns of Milford Haven and Haverfordwest. The third and last book to chronicle the Welsh weirdness was The Dyfed Enigma, produced by Pugh in collaboration with cryptozoologist Ted Holliday, which linked the UFO stories with Welsh fairy folklore and ley-lines.
Journalist Hugh Turnbull, who chronicled the events for the local weekly, Western Telegraph, told me his pet theory was that “something military” lay behind the sightings. A more extreme version, favoured by Paget, was that aliens had
established an underground base beneath the Stack Rocks in St Bride’s Bay, where UFOs had been seen to hover and disappear. This form of speculation – shared by RAF Squadron Leader Tim Webb, who oversaw pilot training from the base, said the description of the suits worn by the “spacemen” did not match anything used by base personnel. By a curious coincidence Webb’s son Michael happened to be one of the youngsters who claimed they saw a UFO land behind the primary school at Broad Haven. “I believe him implicitly,” he told The Observer at the time. “I’ve yet to see a UFO but I think there has to be something supernatural or paranormal.” Heady words for an RAF spokesman who would normally be expected to debunk sightings of flying saucers! lady’ ghost haunting the grounds this did not prepare her for the events of 19 April 1977. In the earlier hours of that morning Mrs Granville was disturbed by a strange buzzing noise and, on looking out, saw an oval-shaped brightly-lit UFO and two human-like figures in boiler suits that appeared to be measuring something. The following day, she found a flattened area of grass in the area which, it emerged, overlooked a field which contained a bunker used by the Royal Observer Corps.
Meanwhile, demands were increasing for an official inquiry into the West Wales UFOs. One witness, hotelier Rosa Granville,
asked her MP Nicholas Edwards – later to become Welsh Secretary in Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet – to demand answers from the Ministry of
Defence. Mrs Granville ran the Haven Fort Hotel which stands in a dramatic location overlooking St Bride’s Bay. Although she was aware of a legend about a ‘white
Within days of the MP’s intervention a Squadron Leader from RAF
Brawdy visited the hotel to interview the owners. According to their account, he told them there “absolutely nothing at RAF
Brawdy” that could account for the UFO. And, Mrs Granville claimed “he asked me not to say anything about the incident to anyone, as he
thought it was best not to alarm the general public.” However, in his reply to the MP the Parliamentary
Under Secretary for Defence James Wellbeloved, said that apart from Mrs Granville’s report the MOD had “no record of unusual activity in the area.”
But behind the public platitudes it seems a discreet investigation was indeed going on, hidden even from
the politicians. For on 14 June 1977 the head of S4 (Air), the MoD
branch which dealt with UFOs, took
the unusual step of asking the RAF
Police, in the form of the Provost &
Security Service (P&SS) to make a “discreet enquiry” into events in Wales. The P&SS are responsible for policing the RAF and have a section which investigates
complaints about low-flying aircraft. Early in 1977 they moved to a secretive facility deep in the Wiltshire countryside called RAF Rudloe Manor. UFO authors Tim Good and Nick Redfern have claimed that Rudloe – rather than
the UFO desk in Whitehall - has for
many years been the real HQ for the British Government’s UFO taskforce.
The papers released this year throw new light on claims of a conspiracy involving Rudloe Manor. While they
do support the claim that P&SS were involved in secret UFO work they suggest it was hardly a priority for them. In their letter to P&SS the MOD wrote: “We have not invoked the assistance of P&SS before on UFOs…and the last thing I want to do is involve you in extraneous
problems which would divert you from your more immediate work on low flying complaints.” It goes on to
ask them to assess “the volume of local interest and/or alarm and whether there is a readily discernable rational explanation, or whether there is prima facie evidence for a more serious specialist enquiry.” And the writer went to some length to emphasise his request must be treated in confidence, adding: “I have not even told the Minister I am consulting you.”
UFOs and from time to time it tends to increase unaccountably…[in the summer] there was some concern in Wales, although the RAF Police thought this could have been the work of a practical joker.”
Due to the covert nature of the investigation, no final report on the P&SS investigation of events in the Welsh Triangle has survived. But in December 1977, in a secret briefing
on UFO policy submitted to the MOD’s Defence Intelligence Staff, the head of S4 wrote: “There is
always a steady public interest in
The fact that inquiries led the RAF Police to suspect a hoaxer may have been responsible for some of the Welsh UFOs fits with a strong local
rumour which persists to this day. Hilary Evans, who debunked some of the more exaggerated stories in an article published in 1982, heard that two members of a round table
club were responsible for the sightings of “spacemen” at the Haven Fort Hotel and Ripperston Farm. They came up with the idea after borrowing silver-lined asbestos suits worn by local oil refinery
workers for a fancy dress evening in Broad Haven shortly after the children’s sighting.
In 1996 BBC presenter Ray Gosling tracked down one of the jokers for a Radio 4 documentary on the West Wales flap. Shortly afterwards Glyn Edwards, a member of Milford Haven’s Round Table confessed his part to the Western Mail. He described the spaceman outfit as having: “… a solid in-built helmet so I would have looked about 7ft tall. Alien sightings were all the rage, so I took a stroll around for a bit of fun. I remember when I visited the garden of a certain lady, who later called the police that I had to dive into a hedge because she appeared to be aiming a rifle or a shotgun at me.”
But despite all Gosling’s attempts to persuade the witnesses from Broad Haven school to confess, the boys– now in their forties– stuck doggedly by their story. One of them, David
Davies, told him: “I did see something unexplained that day and I will stick to that story for the rest of my life.” The Welsh Triangle may hold onto its secrets for some years to come.
Copyright 2005 David Clarke
RIPPERSTONE FARM: The Visitation by Brian Richards During 1977, a fairly remote area of the west Welsh coast was subjected to an extraordinary amount of UFO sightings, landings and reports of 'aliens'. The national and local British press had a field day, running witnesses accounts that were written at best 'tongue -in-cheek,' and at worst, cruelly vindictive.
This is the true story of the Coombs family and their harrowing experiences over a twelve month period from mid-January to mid December 1977. Whether they encountered true paranormal phenomena or unknown laws of physics applied by aliens, is open to conjecture. Maybe the two are one and the same. What is known by Clive Harold, who wrote The Uninvited, from which much of this account is taken, is that the Coombs could not have been a more honest, hardworking farming family. They knew nothing about UFOlogy
, shied from publicity and sought no financial gain. Some UFO groups blamed the Coombs experiences on a fertile imagination, whilst others offered unequivocal support.
In this rather isolated area of Wales there were (in 1977) a number of high security if not top secret, military establishments: RAF Brawdy, RAE Missile Range Army Pendine Tank Range and an American Navy submarine hacking station. UFO's were reported over these bases and it is known the military were involved in some 'rather unusual activities' and searches. But the sheer number of sightings over a twelve month period would suggest more than a modicum of interest from a higher intelligence. Perhaps there was an anthropological/ ecological survey, surveillance, monitoring, testing or what you will. But then any 'wave' or 'flap' of UFO 's may be just this. To human logic and reasoning, many of these socalled 'higher intelligence activities' border on the absurd. The actions themselves may not have been frightening, but the unknown and the loss of control generate the fear and apprehension.
This story should not be confused with The Uninvited 2 by Frank Taylor 1984. His account relates to the Ellis family of Matlock, Derbyshire who experienced a series of events in many ways similar to the Coombs, but in other ways more sinister.
14th January 1977. Hanging motionless over the field near the cliff top, a great ball of incandescent light transfixed Pauline's gaze. With so much military activity in the area she had seen many lights in the sky over the years; flares, rockets, planes - but this was different. Twenty minutes later it started to move, gently at first, swinging side to side like a pendulum. Then it dropped out of the sky to disappear below the cliff. Pauline's husband was asleep in his chair. She shook him awake and related what she had seen. Curious, he put on his boots and headed out in to the cold night to search the cliff top path for whatever it was that came down. He found nothing.
Pauline remained troubled by her sighting. The next day the papers were full of UFO reports. Billy had laughed off the suggestion that Pauline's 'light' was a flying saucer. But he added that there were some strange things going on. 'There were nigh on fifty frogmen below the cliff. Unmarked army trucks, soldiers in camouflage. Navy there too' he added, 'building the same path beneath the water. Doesn't make sense'.
