The view from the cockpit
JENNY RANDLES looks at some close encounters that recall Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 sighting
Kenneth Arnold was in the cockpit of a small aircraft flying across hazardous terrain
When Kenneth Arnold saw a strange formation of ‘aircraft’ over the Cascade Mountains of the western USA on 24 June 1947 (see FT137:34-39) he innocently set in motion a modern mystery that still grips the imagination 70 years later. As we mark the anniversary, it’s worth remembering something: Arnold saw his UFOs from an unusual vantage point. He was not on the ground looking up at the heavens as in the vast majority of cases. He was in the cockpit of a small aircraft flying solo across hazardous terrain in search of a missing aviator. From here he saw the now infamous formation of objects ‘bouncing’ through the sky and giving birth to the image of the ‘flying saucer’.
I thought it might be interesting to look at other cases involving light aircraft to see what they reveal about how the UFO mystery has evolved since 1947. One of my first sightings involved something like this in 1969. I was working at Manchester Airport on a summer holiday job, collecting the fares for a company which gave pleasure flights in an old Auster. I made a few flights in the tiny plane and it let me experience something of what it must have been like for Kenneth Arnold 22 years earlier.
A decade later a sighting happened in the area where I then lived, close to Barton Aerodrome in Salford. It was 11 December 1979 at 11.45am when a flying instructor was tutoring a young pupil aboard a Cessna 150, call sign Whisky Echo. They had flown over my house in Irlam, heading across the M62 and north towards Bolton. The pupil was flying the aircraft and being monitored by the instructor, who spotted something strange up ahead. It appeared to come out of cloud above Winter Hill where a powerful TV mast was located. The Cessna was at 4,500ft (1,370m) at this point but the object seemed much lower. It was clearly solid as it passed in and out of cloud and the instructor initially assumed it was another light aircraft. Paying careful attention to the object he asked the pupil to bank in order to minimise any risk of a collision, as the UFO was now close enough to pose a threat. The pupil was able to see the object at this point after it had emerged from another clump of cloud. By now it was pulling away in an arc described as a “well controlled swooping motion”. The experienced instructor said it was a solid ball of white light like a very large tennis ball, and he measured its altitude as about 2,500ft – so 2,000ft (760-610m) below them.
At that time I investigated local cases with my colleague Ron Sargeant. He worked at the airfield and flew regularly from there, so he knew the aircraft, the witnesses and the route. We considered the possibility that sunlight reflecting off a bird such as a seagull had created the phenomenon (this was a likely explanation for one of the earliest films taken of a UFO at Tremonton, Utah, in 1952). However, that idea was not to survive the investigation, as weather and sunlight levels were not supportive. Plus, the instructor had seen no such effect from known birds or similar objects on the flight, and at close proximity he had little doubt that this was some kind of solid object.
Over the years there have been a number of reports from the ground of unusual small craft flying over this part of the Pennines and there have long been suspicions that they are experimental technology that has been under development in local aerospace plants. These days we would likely regard a case where a small constructed object flew near to a light aircraft as a possible close encounter with a ‘drone’. These are now used widely for recreation and aerial surveying and in recent years have led to several near misses with commercial jets heading into major airports. How serious such a collision might be is as yet untested, but with a smaller propeller-driven light aircraft the risks are likely enhanced.
Although drones of the type sold in hobby shops today did not exist 40 years ago it is not impossible that some covert experimental technology was under development. Indeed the UK was one of the leading pioneers in this area of research so it would be a surprise if this was not the cause of a few UFO encounters made at close quarters from inside another aircraft.
Another case from that same era, investigated by Omar Fowler of BUFORA, puts that into much sharper focus and has many comparisons with the Barton episode. Just weeks before that event, on at 2.40pm on 27 August 1979, another Cessna 150, call sign November X-Ray, had left Blackbushe Airfield in Surrey with a flying instructor aboard. He was taking Lieutenant James Plastow, from Sandhurst Military College, on his pilot’s licence test. They were at 2,000ft (610m) when the instructor suddenly grabbed the controls from his student and threw the Cessna into a steep bank and descent to evade what he judged a risk of collision. That was proven fully justified as an object sped past the front of the aircraft, coming within a few feet of the windscreen. This, of course, allowed them a very good view of what had almost hit them. The rotating object was about a foot in diameter, like a doughnut in shape, reflected light with a bright silvery glow “like a blob of mercury” and was close enough to reveal that its surface seemed to be made up of a series of ‘honeycomb’-like cells. The instructor called Blackbushe to say that the object was ‘tagging’ the Cessna, flying around them in a terrifying cat-and-mouse chase. He was wrestling the controls, twisting and turning to avoid a collision, until the thing flew underneath them and then streaked upwards and away to about 3,000ft (914m). It appeared to be under remote control: they even saw a hint of an aerial on the side. I think the big clue here is that another Blackbushe pilot had a more distant view of what seems to have been the same object the following day. It was heading off in the direction of Farnborough – the home of much advanced aircraft technology and experimental devices. Most likely this was an early kind of RPV – Remotely Piloted Vehicle – as now commonly used in war zones for surveillance in dangerous terrain where lives would be at risk if manned aircraft were used.
When Kenneth Arnold saw those first flying saucers over the Cascade Mountains in June 1947 he was not thinking of alien visitors but suspected they were some new kind of aero technology (see pp46-49 for some of the suspects). So, perhaps very little has changed over seven decades.