Scramble, UFO! Part Three: The Team
JENNY RANDLES concludes her investigation of the MoD’s involvement in 1950s UFO sightings
In 1986, I interviewed Cyril Townsend Withers, who wanted a last chance to tell me about something that had bothered him since 1953. He was terminally ill and wanted to go on record “before it is too late” as “there is little they can do to stop me now”. Although ‘they’ did still try.
Withers had remained loyal to the MoD and waited for the 30-year period for data release to elapse before he let me visit him at home and record his story before he died.
In early 1953, he was an RAF science specialist working on developing radar and electronic counter measure technology. He climbed the ranks in MoD science and retired as a Wing Commander. He told me that his sighting was investigated by a science team working on anomalous ‘UFO’ reports at Farnborough – something related to him in confidence by a scientific intelligence officer when Cyril asked why he had been shut out of his own story. “Apparently I trod on some toes in 1953 and was not supposed to have been told about the investigations at Farnborough.” Indeed, even in 1986 he was instructed not to talk about it to me. I feared he might back out of the interview, but he bravely went ahead.
Like ‘Wilbur’ Wright (FT386:26-27), Withers was aboard a brand new aircraft – in this case a Canberra with its interior empty so as to accommodate top secret equipment for tests. Introduced just after the war, the Canberra was the first jet aircraft to cross the Atlantic non-stop. It was designed to operate at height and set a world record above 70,000ft in 1957. Indeed, Withers actually flew over 63,000ft during his UFO encounter – a record at the time, but kept secret because of the nature of the mission.
He told me: “I was asked to test some new electronic counter measure equipment. Because it was important work, a pilot and I were given a prototype... Pared down we could fly much higher... and put the equipment through the motions.” They had taken off from Boscombe Down and were over Salisbury Plain when “just after noon on a cloudless day... on a northwesterly heading my radar picked up a target at five miles behind us, pacing us like an echo... We switched off the system, reset it, and did a number of internal checks. This did not clear the target. Now we knew that something really was following us... virtually impossible at this height.”
They considered Soviet snooping, but airspace had been cleared of known traffic. Observing from the gun turret, Withers saw
“an object trailing behind. It was round and silvery, reflecting sunlight like a giant mirror… Although we got to 225 knots the object stuck with us, so I recommended ‘a big radius turn’ in order to shake it. The object vanished from the radar now because the system was only operating in a rearwardfacing mode. However, the object was not visually absent for long. Within moments it was dead ahead. As we came out of the turn, we flew towards the glinting object and closed the gap very fast.” For about 30 seconds on a collision course.
Withers described it: “Silvery, very thin in body shape. Overall it appeared a remarkably flat oval without any sign of wings or windows just the faintest hint of a tail fin at the rear... we were just stunned... preparing to pull out and fly around the object. It never gave us the chance. Suddenly the thing just shot vertically upwards without acceleration going from zero to an incredible speed in moments. It climbed up like a rocket… We soon lost sight of it far beyond any height that we could hope to emulate.”
After they landed, they recorded the event: “Then I was instructed to work with the radar manufacturers. We stripped the equipment and reassembled it. There was nothing wrong.” So the matter was passed ‘up channel’. Withers expected a full debrief but was advised that at Farnborough that these “things” were being studied as part of “a new programme by scientific intelligence”. When he asked why they never contacted him, he was told: “Remember the real threat comes from the Russians, not UFOs.” But, he confessed, “I got the definite impression that our sighting was of interest to sources other than the channels that I dealt with.” Despite asking around, Withers only discovered that the new team at Farnborough was handpicked to study evidence by “assessing incoming reports”. He added: “I even heard whispers they had developed a working assumption that alien craft might be coming to Earth. But it was made very clear that none of this was for public discussion.”
The timing here may be key. Churchill ordered a UFO study after RAF planes and a US aircraft carrier saw UFOs during Operation Mainbrace, a NATO exercise over the North Sea in September 1952, just weeks after the sightings over Washington DC that caused major changes in US policy. So in the six months immediately preceding this incident over Salisbury Plain rapid restructuring was occurring on both sides of the Atlantic. So this case – given the tech involved – was likely subjected to intense scrutiny at Farnborough. We also know that Ed Ruppelt, head of Project Blue Book, said that in early 1953: “Two RAF intelligence officers who were in the US on a classified mission brought six single-spaced typed pages of questions they and their friends wanted answered.” At the same time, the US involved the CIA. A memo just before that Washington RAF visit said: “It is strongly urged that no indication of CIA interest or concern reach the press or public.”
In January 1953, when the RAF visit occurred, the CIA convened a top-secret panel in Washington; but Ruppelt and Hynek, the Blue Book officers, though asked to brief the panel, were excluded from sessions where decisions were taken. A lot of attention was focused on making UFOs seem amusing so they could be investigated covertly. Clearly, the plan was to put research on both sides of the Atlantic into secure hands and stop public questions. Hence Flt Lt Withers experienced the warning to keep out of his own case.
Even in the late 1960s, when working for the MoD as a senior science officer, Withers tried to have discussions with Whitehall but was told to leave it to Farnborough, where it would appear research still went on.
Days after the CIA panel met in Washington and a few weeks before the incident over Salisbury Plain, on 13 January 1953, a new signal was sent to all senior RAF personnel that looks as if it was meant to protect the secret Farnborough team. It ordered that any sightings involving “RAF personnel” must only be reported by “officers commanding units”. They must “do so immediately… direct to the Air Ministry (technical intelligence units)” – whence the two RAF officers had been sent to Washington. Senior staff were told: “It is essential that [information] release should be controlled officially,” and that “Personnel are to be warned that they are not to communicate to anyone other than official persons any information about phenomena they have observed.”
Withers, aboard that Canberra, was flying into a perfect storm that would prove a test case for this new edict. What we may be seeing here is the birth of the UFO coverup and the reasons for it. But why would it still continue in 1986 – 17 years after the US government, with whom the MoD collaborated, had officially ended its UFO study and closed down Project Blue Book?