'UFO' over 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony?

My wife is very into sports generally (I'm not bothered on the whole) so of course she's been excited about the 2012 Olympics. So - being the generous soul that I am - I decided to record the whole 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony for her, at the same time as watching it live with her last Friday.

My indifference about sport aside, I have to admit I was very impressed with the whole ceremony and how smoothly it ran and was also quite roused by the monumental and historical event unfolding before our eyes. It also gave me a great sense of respect for all those involved and pride in what they had achieved for Britain and for London.

But I digress, because a tiny part of me was hoping that something truly unusual might happen at this event which - as far as I'm concerned - never actually came to pass.  Given that roughly a sixth of the planet's population was watching an event that celebrates human cohesion, good will and competitive spirit, one would have thought this might be a good time for E.T. to make an appearance.

You see, I hadn't failed to notice that there have been, in the past few months, a number of headline-grabbing articles about people placing wild 1000-1 bets on a 'UFO' or more specifically an alien spaceship appearing over the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony.  Unsurprisingly, Nick Pope has been asked about and has commented on the possibility of E.T. making an appearance at this event. One angry punter having made such a bet now wants his money back from William Hill for what he claims is a 'flying saucer' in the ceremony's video footage as below.

Even more bizarrely, claims have been made about the 2012 Olympics being a platform for the infamous 'Project Blue Beam' conspiracy which I won't elaborate on here (simply because I personally think it's a load of rubbish).

Now Goodyear are already saying that this is likely to be one of their unbranded blimps being used by an NBC camera crew (unbranded because they are not official sponsors of the games). If what they say is true, then the object in question is not a UFO.

My money's on it being an airship or blimp. To me it looks like the lit up cabin on the underside of the main structure of an airship and it's seems to be moving at the right speed. But - as with a lot of such sensationalised footage - it's really too blurry to be sure.

Anyway, there's still a fair bit of the Olympics to go - including the Closing Ceremony - so who knows what else might pop up?

Tony Blair and the UFO files

Just a quick reference to the most recent BBC News article on the British UFO files

Tony Blair's name is used as a headline grabber and I'm unashamedly using it here too.

This comes hot on the heels of Dr David Clarke's article "MOD Files make UFOs history" about the release of the ninth set of MOD UFO case files.

Look through the MOD files published to date and you will not see any revelation about UK Government cover-ups, (as there is unlikely to be one) but you will find some fascinating and as yet unexplained cases such as the 'UFO over Manchester' incident video I posted a couple of days ago.

As Nick Pope discusses in his book 'Open Skies, Closed Minds', the MOD's intention when recording accounts of UFO activity (something they now no longer do), was always to assess whether there was any threat to UK airspace. To this day the MOD's conclusion, after almost 60 years of gathering data, appears to be 'no'.

However, one could argue - as Nick points out to some degree in his book - that 'no threat' strangely allows for numerous accounts of UFOs or UAP that:-

• have near misses with military aircraft; 

• have near misses with passenger aircraft sometimes carrying hundreds of people;

• routinely emerge, unidentified, in UK controlled - and sometimes restricted - airspace with no clear motive, largely unchallenged and vanishing as quickly as they appear; 

• behave in a way that strongly suggests intelligent control; and

• still to this day - after decades of recorded accounts - exceed speeds or manueovers that can be performed by any current civilian or military aircraft.

Hmmm...

UFO sightings by civilian pilots

In a previous post, I promised to highlight select and relatively recent incidents which, to me, definitely fall into the as yet unexplained 5-10 per cent category of UFO sightings - and which are all the more interesting because of the involvement of experienced civilian air pilots.

I wanted to find events that had occurred relatively recently, by which I mean the last twenty or so years, as events that go further back than this become ever harder to corroborate or usefully explain (which I will expand on in a future post).

The three incidents I have selected are below in date order of the event itself with the earliest first. All involve British civil aviation pilots. A short video accompanies each and I have given a brief summary as the video in each case is self-explanatory.

 UFO sighting over Manchester near miss

January 1995

 

Perhaps the most impressive incident of the three in my view. This is a rare example of a 'near miss' event with a UFO or UAP actually being filed for investigation by the UK pilots involved. It was investigated by a representative of the Joint Airprox (An amalgamation of 'Air' and 'Proximity') Working Group or JAWG, which is an independent body tasked with investigating 'near miss' incidents in terms of air safety and which is not normally associated with UFO investigation. After a thorough investigation, the JAWG could not reach any conclusion about what the pilots claimed to have seen. The MOD retained records of this incident which are available to view on the national archives site. Both Nick Pope and Dr David Clarke feature in the video and - coming from opposing camps about the UFO phenomenon - seem to both agree that this is an unusual and compelling case.    

 

 

Lufthansa + British Airways UFO Sighting

November 1995

 

Both German and British pilots observed a cylindrical UFO or UAP over Long Island, New York which they appeared to agree was not a natural phenomenon. What makes this especially interesting is the actual recordings of the comments made by both German and British pilots. Thinking this might be military in origin, civilian air traffic control (at Boston) made a call - also recorded - to 'Giant Killer', a call sign used by controllers responsible for military and restricted air traffic, which in turn confirmed that they had no military flights in the vicinity of the Lufthansa and British Airways planes. Another civil aviation incident also features on this video.

 

 

The Guernsey UFO

April 2007

 

Ray Bowyer  - a civilian pilot of a small passenger plane - and his passengers, saw what they claim was not one but two 'mile-wide' UFOs during a flight over Guernsey. These were not only seen by another plane in the area but were allegedly captured on radar - although local air traffic control didn't appear to confirm or deny the source of the radar return.

 

 

 

My understanding is that all of these remain unexplained to this day

Such encounters are particularly compelling as civilian pilots should, on the whole, be rational, experienced and highly-trained professionals who are expert witnesses where routine air phenomena are concerned.  In addition, they would not normally be prone to making observations or statements that could jeopardise their jobs or status amongst their peers.

The garden party, the ex-policeman and UFOs

Now that Summer is finally here (yeah right!), I have been grabbing what time I can in my own back garden.

Maybe because of this, my thoughts turned to a party my wife and I went to one Summery Saturday afternoon a few years ago - when I would still be slaving away in some Whitehall office or other during the week. It was hosted by a friend and colleague of my wife's who was also reasonably well known to me. As parties go, it was a bit of a lacklustre affair with poor attendance. But the weather was nice and we could languish in our host's hundred foot long garden, the bottom of which was lost in dense trees.

There was the usual party conversation but the real highlight of the event for me however, was when we were introduced to the father of the host's boyfriend. He was a retired former policeman whom I'm guessing was in his seventies at the time we met.  He lived in South Africa and was visiting his son for the Summer.

I found out that he had worked on - if I remember correctly - the training manual for SO19 (as he called it - now SCO19), the firearms unit of the Metropolitan Police, which was interesting enough in itself. BUT when the conversation somehow turned to UFOs (probably my fault but only in jest) he quite earnestly said "I saw a UFO once".

Well the other party guests might as well not have been there, as I recall spending the remaining hours of the party talking with this genial, gently spoken and articulate man about his on-duty encounter with something that, to this day,  he - and another colleague on patrol with him - cannot explain. We also chewed the fat about various theories concerning UFO phenomena in general. The more we talked, it seemed to me that he was quite well informed on the subject and could relate anecdotes about other colleagues having had similar experiences some of which may very well have ended up on the PRUFOS database.

I wish I could remember more details of the encounter he described (sorry folks) and had had the presence of mind to write some of it down on returning home - but alas I didn't think to do so at the time and didn't think I would be writing about this online some time later either.

I came away hoping I hadn't taken up too much of his time but having genuinely enjoyed our discussion - and feeling quite privileged. I suspect that he'd enjoyed talking about it just as much as I had and was glad to share his experience with (what I hope) is an open-minded cove like myself. Part of me did wonder at first whether this was a gentle wind-up, as coppers generally have a wicked sense of humour but I think this chap was being earnest. My wife thought so too and she's a good judge of character.

I think it's fair to say that meeting and talking to this man - and one or two others - sowed the seeds of my move to start this blog, which has been a long time coming. It made me realise that there are potentially hundreds - if not thousands - of credible witness sightings by professionals not only in the police but also in other emergency services, the armed forces and in aviation. Most of these individuals will have had close encounters which have never been recorded,  because of their fear of ridicule by their peers and how this would affect their careers. It's such a shame that many - like this man I met - feel they can only really open up when they have ceased working in those professions.

I wonder sometimes that if the true number of sightings and encounters by such professionals were ever actually known, whether the mainstream scientific community and our Government would treat the subject more seriously (at least openly). But even then I suspect not.

I do think however, that only the inexplicable appearance of something manifestly not faked and 'not-of-this-earth' at a globally broadcast event like the 2012 Olympics for example would be enough...