by Timothy Good
“‘If you at any time see fit to pursue the matter, make no mistake you will face a charge of the highest magnitude. The business of UFOs may be of casual interest to you, but whatever you see, hear, or learn of the subject during your time at this base is never to be discussed with other air force personnel, and certainly not with any civilian agencies beyond the perimeters of this establishment.
“‘It is my understanding that you are a competent, extremely pleasant and reliable individual with an interest in music,’ conceded the squadron leader. ‘Don’t let that standing be compromised by neglect of duty and of the things you may learn in your role in the air defence system.’
“It was a serious ‘hands-off’ call, and it left me somewhat shaken but not entirely stirred,” Ian reflected. “I had no option whatsoever other than to comply with what was in effect an official order. That they reacted in the manner they did sent clear messages that the military did indeed take the UFO status quo very seriously…. It has long been my belief that this particular sighting represents what I would consider the most significant daytime happening to have taken place in U.K. airspace following the end of WWII, in terms of the actual size and shape of the aeroform, the sheer duration of the event, and how it behaved during the timeframe, its altitude and, more importantly, the intervention of the military, who of course denied any involvement whatsoever….”
Mother Ships
With regard to the enormity of alien craft, in 1963, during a private meeting in London, which included two high-ranking British officials (Chapter 19), George Adamski described the “mother ships” in considerable detail, which he said served all the needs of space travelers for long journeys through space. “These gargantuan vessels varied in size,” reported my friend Emily Crewe, who was present at the meeting, “but none ever landed on terrestrial ground. They were approximately one to three thousand feet long and hundreds of feet in width. They had many decks, and vast spaces to section off the life support systems, for the growing of foods and the freeze-storage of these supplies. They contained water purified in tanks so big, large sea creatures could swim in them, but this water was fresh and taken from terrestrial waterways such as ours here on Earth.” The water could also be recycled; for example, in our skies.1
In 1965, not long before he died, Adamski revealed additional details to Fred Steckling, some at variance with what he had stated two years earlier. A main base for these giant craft on Earth, he claimed, was alleged to be in a deep ravine some two hundred kilometers west of Mexico City, in very rugged terrain virtually inaccessible except by helicopter. Some of the craft were claimed to be several miles in length and “stacked side by side with their noses pointing to the ground, not actually touching the ground but about three feet above the ground, pointing downward, while the rest of the craft pointed at a slight angle straight up into the air, as if held by some magnetic beam,” Henry Dohan reports. “Near each nose was a hatch and steps of a sort for descending out of the cigar-shaped craft.” Top-level meetings with several of the world’s leaders were said to have been held in this remote location.2
Police Patrol
In the small hours of one night in the early 1980s, two Metropolitan Police officers were on patrol in Middlesex, Greater London. “I was a young Police Officer on night duty in a marked vehicle,” Robin Perry wrote to me. “It was the Area Car—an old SD1 Rover—and I was the R/T [radio-telephone] operator, being driven by my colleague. We were traveling very slowly at about 3 a.m. from the White Hart roundabout along the Ruislip Road, Northolt, toward Greenford. Someone had been setting fire to parked cars at this location in recent days, so we were skulking along the road keeping a watch for any dodgy-looking characters. I have to point out that, back then, the road and pedestrian traffic at this time of the morning was almost non-existent—not as it is today.
“As we were driving along I noticed a large orange light in the sky over to our left—toward RAF Northolt3—and brought it to my driver’s attention. The strange thing is that when we started to talk about it, the object flew directly toward us. As it did so, it flew over a large open park area which was on our left side, leading directly onto the Ruislip Road (Rectory Park).
“As it got closer, I could see that it was a huge black triangle with a light on each point and an orange ball on the middle underside. It was very large, and I estimated it to be at least the size of two football pitches (there were a number of pitches that it flew over toward us). It was very low and made absolutely no noise. It was so low, I couldn’t see any of the sky around it.
“The object flew alongside our vehicle on the near side, matching our speed. I was leaning out of the car window and waving at it. We carried along the Ruislip Road for about three quarters of a mile with this thing still flying alongside and matching our speed, which was still slow. It was barely skimming the rooftops of the houses as it did so. My driver then stopped the car in the middle of the road opposite Greenford [Assembly] Hall and we both got out. The triangle then hovered directly over us at no more than thirty feet, or the height of the Hall to our left. It was huge, dead still, and silent. The driver even turned off the car engine, and we could still hear nothing.
“I then turned on the blue light on the roof and was waving up at the craft, but got no response. After a few minutes (yes, minutes), it turned around and then slowly glided away back along the Ruislip Road. After a couple of hundred yards, it suddenly shot up into the sky at an unbelievable speed and disappeared from view. We sort of ‘came to our senses’ and jumped into the car and drove around the corner to Greenford Police Station. We told the Station Officer—an old ‘sweat’—who advised us to keep quiet, otherwise face ridicule from our colleagues. However, I called RAF Northolt straight away and had an interesting conversation with someone who claimed to be in their flight [control] tower. He basically stated that they too had seen it, had no idea what it was, and it was not worth filing an official report. So I never did.
“I know it sounds far-fetched, and I can’t explain why neither of us tried to radio for other units to join us. We also passed neither other cars nor pedestrians throughout the whole incident. Just as a footnote, about a week or so later a very distressed driver burst into Greenford Police Station in the early hours of one morning claiming that his vehicle had been buzzed by a bright orange light as he drove along the Ruislip Road. This time, the Station Officer did report it, and that incident made the front page of our local newspaper….”4
Further Events in the U.K.
An enormous craft, described as “looking like a flying fairground,” was reported high in the sky over Exmouth, Devon, on the night of August 4, 1987. Gordon Baker viewed the craft from his garden, and was joined by his wife Gloria and a neighbor, Heather Palmer, as they took turns at viewing the craft through binoculars. The object looked like two cross-shaped objects joined together (see sketch on the next page).
From the Exmouth Herald, August 7, 1987
“It was definitely not an aircraft,” insisted Mr. Baker. “There was no sound whatsoever. I believe the object was traveling at about thirty-five thousand feet. Then I heard the noise of a jet aircraft. I saw it pass under the lit objects, and I even checked with Exeter Airport to see if the pilot had reported seeing it. They said they had not received any reports. However, a man in air traffic control said he had a couple of objects on his radar, but did not know what they were. We watched it for about fifteen minutes until it disappeared on the horizon. I don’t know what it was, but it certainly had hundreds of lights on it.”5
Further witnesses came forward following publication of the report in a local paper, including former RAF technician Tony Millington and his wife Claire. “It certainly wasn’t an aircraft,” he said. “It is very difficult to say how high they were, but there was no noise at all. That is what seemed so odd to me. As we watched, the two objects seemed to get close together…. We watched [them] for about fifteen minutes bef
ore they disappeared over the horizon toward Haldon Hill. The lights were uniform in brilliance.”
A Ministry of Defence spokesman evinced little interest when contacted.6
Of the hundreds of British reports of large craft sighted that year, one of the most interesting came to me from Barbara Forrest, of Brierley Hill, West Midlands. At around 19:00–19:15 on November 19, 1987, Barbara’s 27-year-old son Brett spotted two very bright lights in the sky, one small and one large, close together, from outside the three-story block of flats where she resided in Moor Street. “My son said that they seemed to join together, and then it took on the shape of a diamond and became brilliant,” she wrote to journalist Peter Rhodes of the Wolverhampton Express & Star two days later, asking to be put in touch with me.
Brett and Barbara sent me colored sketches, depicting how the craft appeared in three stages, finally coalescing into a huge elongated triangle with a series of grooves underneath, colored black, silver, and bronze. As Barbara recounted for me:
“The craft came over the street light where he had been watching it for quite some time. Brett thought he had to tell someone or he would never be believed, so he ran down the grass embankment to my living room window, knocked very hard, and as I opened it he said, ‘Mom, look up!’ And there it was, massive, wonderful—and frightening! Here was something that in the first instance had been two very bright lights, very still in the night sky, then the whole thing lights up in the shape of a diamond. Then it starts to move, and as it came nearer and lower it dimmed its lights. It passed right over the block of flats where I live.
“I was amazed at what I saw—a great floating airship all lit up underneath with many, many white lights. There was no noise. It was massive. That thing was so low, it was unbelievable. I watched it go right out of sight as it went in the direction of the High Street. There were two aircraft in the vicinity at the time, with their normal red and green lights.”
Her first sketch depicts what she saw as the craft was directly above her, with black serrated edges “which when a little distance away looked as though they were kind of grills. The inner part of the craft was a gray or silvery color. There were strips underneath. The lights were fluorescent, very white and bright.” The second sketch—varying from her son’s depiction—shows the object “seen floating silently away. One could no longer see the individual lights or the shape of the craft….
“This thing must have wanted to be seen, otherwise it would just have zoomed away. It seemed to follow my son. I have never seen anything like it in all my fifty-seven years. In actual fact, this is starting to worry me now … perhaps whoever was in that floating city may not like us very much.”7
Brett’s sketches of the craft appear on the next page:
I had a lengthy correspondence with Barbara, but it was years before we finally met, together with her son, at a conference in Stourbridge organized by UFO Research Midlands in July 2005. My conviction in their sincerity was reinforced.
Three weeks following the Brierley Hill sighting, another event occurred, one of numerous reports from Nottinghamshire at that time. “It was obvious to all the witnesses that it was not a normal aircraft and it immediately drew their attention,” reported a journalist. “Most reports say there was a deep humming noise, faint but distinct. All agree that the object was huge [and] most say that a jet aircraft was seen shortly after the UFO.”
“I knew it was huge, twenty or thirty times the size of a normal aircraft, and it made a distinctive deep throbbing noise,” said Edward Fell, of Long Eaton.8 (See photo section.)
France and Canada
On the night of November 5, 1990, numerous sightings were reported over Europe, some involving enormous craft reported by air force pilots as well as civilians. In my previous book, I cited a report from Jean Gabriel Greslé, a former French air force fighter pilot (who also flew U.S. Air Force jets on an exchange in the 1950s), as well as an Air France captain. He is now one of Europe’s leading UFO researchers. A précis of this important case is warranted here.
At 19:00, together with six of his martial-arts pupils, Jean was standing outside a gym in Gretz-Armainvilliers when an enormous crane-like object came into view at a height of around three hundred meters. “It projected two huge, divergent beams of light, not quite touching the ground,” he told me at the actual site in November 2004.
“It must have been at least a thousand feet long, with a thickness of about 200 or 250 feet, and it had triangular substructures and many, many lights [see photo section]. I ran around a tree to watch it as it turned its back on us, and the lights dimmed very quickly, which is surprising, because the beams must have been at least a kilometer in length—then it disappeared in the clouds…. It carried with it what I can only describe as a ‘zone of silence,’ because as it flew over us—at never more than 100 mph—we suddenly didn’t hear the nearby traffic. And I had the impression that my mind was blanked out…. It was absolutely incredible—like a city floating through the clouds!”9
The following report was sent to me by Dr. Richard Haines, the well-known researcher, whose past employment includes posts with the National Research Council, Boeing Airplane Co., and at NASA’s Ames Research Center, where he served as Chief of the Space Human Factors Office and in other research positions. Co-author of the report was Bernard Guénette, a professional computer graphics expert—and a witness to the event.
On November 7, 1990, between forty and seventy-five people, including Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Montreal Urban Community Police (MUCP), witnessed a huge aerial object, beaming shafts of light, which hovered at around six thousand feet above downtown Montreal between about 19:30 and 22:00 EST. Many of the witnesses were located on the 17th floor of the International Hilton Bonaventure Hotel. Three journalists from La Presse arrived at the scene. One, Marcel Laroche, took two photos of the craft, but owing to cloudy conditions only the light beams could be seen. One of these photos was published in La Presse the following day. “The lighted object had six lights on the perimeter of a large circle with a ray of light emitting from each one,” stated the paper. “Most witnesses described the rays as white, while some also claimed they saw blue, yellow, and red lights.”
An Air Canada pilot who witnessed the event from the rooftop of the Hilton Hotel estimated the altitude of the object at between eight and ten thousand feet. While driving home from work between 22:30 and 23:00, a M. Pierre Caumartin saw “very big and strong lights” in a boomerang shape low in the sky. On arriving at his home, not far from the Longue-Pointe military base [CFB Longue-Pointe], he watched the object hover near the Hydro-Quebec Longue-Pointe power station. When he got out of his car, he heard a “purring” sound and thought the object was a dirigible, with only its gondola visible below the cloud base.
As Dr. Haines points out, CFB Longue-Pointe contains “forty-eight regular forces, detachments and units, of about 1,900 persons, twenty-five reserve units, and ninety-seven cadet corps with 7,500 persons. It also supports three military schools. No one at the base could be found who saw the aerial object on November 7. A power failure (hors tension) was experienced between 23:08 and 23:50 at the Longue-Pointe military base. The base is fed by a 12,000-volt lead from the Hydro-Quebec-Longue-Pointe power station. It is the only one which broke down on November 7 [and] a check of the operating records of telecommunications networks [etc.] did not uncover any unusual malfunctions….
“Perhaps of equal importance with the overall scope of the aerial phenomenon was the almost total lack of official response to it. No action of any kind was taken by personnel of the St. Hubert military base after they were notified of the aerial object hovering above the center of the city. As far as is known, they did not even report it to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) coordination center.”10
The Williamsport Wave
On February 6, 1992, the Pennsylvania Association for the Study of the Unexplain
ed (PASU), headed by Stan Gordon, began to receive numerous reports of a series of low-level sightings in the vicinity of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, which had occurred the previous day. To assist in his investigations, Gordon sought the collaboration of Dr. Samuel D. Greco, a retired Air Force major and aerospace engineer who served as the Pennsylvania state section director for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), which liaised closely with PASU.
The wave of sightings on February 5 occurred from about 18:00 to 19:00. “Two different kinds of object, boomerang- and triangular-shaped, had been seen in the evening sky, and there had been numerous persons who had witnessed the sightings,” Dr. Greco reported. “All the sightings followed a similar pattern. Apart from one, all originated in the houses of the witnesses.” Typical descriptions follow:
A loud or heavy rumbling noise above the house which shook or vibrated the building and rattled its windows
Witnesses would then leave the house, see the object, and alert others
Object usually boomerang-shaped. One witness, who stood directly underneath, described it as triangular-shaped. A few other shapes were reported (see sketches). Lights or portholes on the craft could be seen
The span of the boomerang-shaped object was variously estimated at 100 to 600 feet
The object moved very slowly, at low altitude, often surrounded by moving red and green lights
