Phil the force
ROYALS AND THEIR UFO CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
★ PRINCE Philip was obsessed with UFOs and now investigators are calling for the Duke of Edinburgh’s secret alien files to be released, as we reported yesterday.
Philip began researching the phenomena after his uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, told him about a close encounter tale from a bricklayer near his home in 1955.
★ Fred Briggs claimed to have been knocked off his bike by a mystery force and saw a figure emerge from a spacecraft.
But it’s not the only blue-blooded link with
“little green men”, as
JAMES MOORE
reveals…
WINDSOR WONDER: One of the earliest UFO accounts comes from Windsor Castle in Berkshire, the Queen’s favourite Royal residence.
At 9pm on August 18, 1783 – in the reign of George III – four witnesses saw a brightly luminous object in the sky from the terrace of the castle.
The craft apparently stopped and changed shape from spherical to oblong and some accounts estimated it to be travelling at around 20 miles per second 58 miles above earth.
One report described how it “soon it set off again towards the East. Then the object changed direction and moved parallel to the horizon before disappearing to the South-East”.
GREAT SCOT: Files released in 2011 showed that the Ministry of Defence looked into a report of two Harrier jets engaging in a dogfight with a “bright light” over the Queen’s Scottish estate at Balmoral in 1996. The episode was explained away as a “routine night goggle vision training” exercise.
An account in Flying Saucer Review – a magazine to which Prince Philip is said to have subscribed – also told of a weird night-time encounter with two 8ft alien-looking creatures by soldiers on a hill at Braemar, just a few miles away. They apparently took fright and fled the scene.
WED THE HELL: Ahead of Prince
William’s marriage to Kate Middleton in April 2011, retired air force officer George Filer warned that it could be the target for UFOs.
Sure enough a holidaymaker from the Netherlands posted a video of a mysterious object above the venue, Westminster Abbey.
They wrote: “First we thought it was a parachute but it was way too high up. It changed shape but stayed there for at least 30 minutes. Then I lost sight of it.”
At the time UFO expert Nick Pope said: “I think it should be investigated if it’s feared it could be a threat to the Royals.”
JUBILEE FLYOVER: The Queen joined other Royals for her Platinum Jubilee celebrations this June on the balcony of Buckingham Palace for a fly past. But multiple social media users highlighted a strange white circle travelling across the TV screen, passing by the smoke trails left behind by the Red Arrows.
EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL TRIBUTE: Former sports presenter and conspiracy theorist David Icke, inset, once bizarrely claimed the Royal family were shape-shifting alien lizards.
But TV spoonbender Uri Geller reckoned aliens would want to pay their respects at the Queen’s funeral earlier this week, later posting images of photos of potential UFOs in the London skies.