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British UFO Secrets
A Welsh chemist has apparently pierced Britain's government secrecy on reported UFO sightings, said the London Observer over the weekend. In an article distributed by the Observer's news service, author Antony Barnett says a British government ombudsman intervened to enable Wales chemist Colin Ridyard to receive two reports of UFO encounters in 1999 from "a little-known department in the ministry known as Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a, the secretive section which collates reports of unidentified flying objects that cross British airspace." Barnett said the British government "has traditionally treated reports of UFO sightings as highly classified and only released information to the public after 30 years." Ridyard had asked the Ministry of Defense for information relating to UFO reports by pilots or radar between July, 1998 and July, 1999. The ministry refused until parliamentary ombudsman Michael Buckley urged the it to do so. And while Ridyard received two reports, the Observer said the British Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has additional sightings reports that Defense did not disclose. Even so, the two reports Ridyard received recount high-speed objects, one flying over the Midlands region in late 1998, described as an aircraft with "very bright strobe lights flashing once every 20 seconds." It was reported by a commercial pilot. The other report, from Feb. 15, 1999, came from an air traffic
controller in Scotland, who noticed "something strange on his radar screen," said the Observer. "A bright blip on his screen suggested there was a very large object traveling at 3,000 mph over the Scottish coastline heading southwest. The size of the blip suggested the object was 10 miles long and two miles wide. Two minutes later, the object disappeared." That same month, according to CAA reports, a pilot flying over the North Sea was "startled when his aircraft became illuminated by and incandescent light, with three other aircraft in the area (also) reported seeing a ball of light moving at
high speed." No air traffic radar picked up the object, but five minutes later, a weather station did on its radar. And another incident reported by the CAA to the Defense Ministry in June, 1999 involved a Boeing 757 jet pilot's report of an unidentified military looking aircraft over the North Sea, with no
targets reported either by the 757's or air traffic controllers' radar. "This is not about little green men, but about freedom of information," Ridyard told the Observer. "It is clear that there are many strange incidents that happen in the British skies that are kept secret. There may be issues of aircraft safety or natural phenomena, but by keeping this information secret these incidents cannot by scrutinized by the public or the scientific community."
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