Near-miss – with what?

I can add some extra information to “TheView from the Cockpit” by Jenny Randles [ FT355:29]. Jenny doesn’t identify the flying instructor involved in the August 1979 incident, probably because he encountered so much ‘banter’ (to put it mildly) that he told me he just wanted to forget the whole thing.

The man in question was the late Laurie Adlington, Chief Flying Instructor (CFI) with 3 Counties Aero Club at Blackbushe. I had known him for some years and prior to becoming a civil flying instructor, he had been in the RAF based at the Empire Test Pilots School (ETPS) at Farnborough as a test pilot instructor, so must have been very experienced both in flying and in observing and reporting unusual occurrences. It was (and still is) normal for Blackbushe-based club aircraft to contact Farnborough Radar after departure (Blackbushe do not have their own radar), since the area where they operate – roughly between Reading, Basingstoke and Newbury – is very busy. Not only do Farnborough arrivals and departures transit this area but Odiham-based military helicopters operate there too.

I was the radar controller on duty at Farnborough when Laurie called in ‘November X-ray’, (actually G-BBNX, an aircraft I knew well, having flown it often myself). I had several other aircraft on frequency and watched them all to ensure they didn’t get too close to each other or to Odiham airfield. As far as

I remember, it was a ‘normal’ sortie with the aircraft being manoeuvred around the sky for about 45 minutes before returning to Blackbushe. After landing, Laurie phoned me and described what they had seen. I was amazed, as I had not seen any object solid enough to ‘paint’ on radar close to him at any time. Next time I went to the flying club to fly, Laurie supplied me with a sketch of the object. Back at work, I photocopied it and sent it to a scientist in RAE Royal Aircraft Establishment] Space Department for his comments. He replied it could be a balloon with extra appendages stuck on (why?). Unfortunately, I lost this sketch in a house move.

As a meeting of Omar Fowler’s Surrey Investigation group on Aerial Phenomena (SIGAP) was pending, I invited Laurie to attend and this is when he told me he was trying to forget about it. I wasn’t aware Omar was a member of BUFORA at the time, although I certainly was.

A few days after the incident, when it had appeared in the local press, I was contacted at work by an inventor called Searle who lived in Mortimer, a village just south-west of Reading. He claimed to have built and launched the object himself. I checked with my Farnborough Space Department contact and he said they knew all about Searle’s invention, which (as described to me) was an electromagnetic cannon capable of launching projectiles. Terry Clark Chobham, Surrey