What happened
In the early hours of 31 March 1993, people across western Britain saw bright lights speeding across the night sky. Most of the reports, clustered between about 1:10 and 1:15 am, described two brilliant white lights with glowing trails heading south-east; some saw a third light that suggested a triangle. Police patrols in Devon and Cornwall reported them, and an MoD police patrol at RAF Cosford near Wolverhampton phoned a warning to RAF Shawbury. There, Met Office observer Wayne Elliott later reported a large craft with a searchlight-like beam sweeping the fields, a low hum, and a size he put between a C-130 and a Boeing 747. Nick Pope of the MoD's UFO desk investigated within days. Radar tapes showed no intruder, and checks ruled out known aircraft. Pope told his superiors the object appeared to have entered UK airspace undetected and recommended further inquiries, including with the US. He was told to drop the subject. The case became his best-known investigation.
The official explanation
The British UFO group BUFORA traced the main wave of sightings to the re-entry of the Tsyklon rocket body that launched the Russian satellite Cosmos 2238. US Space Command and NASA data place its break-up over the British Isles at about 1:15 am. In 1994 Pope himself wrote that most of the night's sightings could be attributed to it. David Clarke found Elliott's sighting was logged at 2:40 am, well after the re-entry. In 2005 Elliott told Clarke he accepted it was probably a police helicopter with a searchlight. A high-altitude airliner was also on radar over Shawbury.
The anomalous case
Nick Pope, the official who investigated in real time, wrote that an unidentified object of unknown origin seemed to be operating in UK airspace without radar detection, and he judged this of considerable defence significance. His line manager briefed the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff that the reports matched some characteristics of the rumoured Aurora hypersonic aircraft. Pope argued that the rocket re-entry did not explain the low-level sightings, the hum, or Elliott's account of a beam scanning the ground. Elliott was an official observer used to military jets and helicopters, and in 1996 he told the Met Office magazine he did not recognise it as either. The Air Attaché in Washington drew a blank with the Pentagon, and Pope was then told to drop the case. To proponents, that is unfinished business: either a secret aircraft crossed Britain or something stranger did.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Sources
- Case Closed: 30th anniversary of the Cosford UFO flap David Clarke (Substack)
- UFOs over Cosford (Nick Pope talk notes) 40th Cosford Scout Group
Witness reports elsewhere
These archives can't be republished here, so we link to them instead.