Return of the Silent Vulcan
JENNY RANDLES finds echoes of a classic Cold War UFO case in recent events in Ireland
“The Silent Vulcan” was a term coined by UFO investigator Graham Hall, of the Leicestershire UFO group, following a spate of unusual sightings in 1978. It caused a stir, as it was widely observed by independent witnesses and was clearly a real event: the only thing missing was the identity of the unexplained flying object. Such was the notoriety of the case that it even inspired a recent trilogy of novels by the late James Follett about weird events over England, in which a village was covered by some kind of shield: the final book of this series is actually entitled The Silent Vulcan.
The Silent Vulcan returned to our skies on the night of 1 March 2022, over Ireland, where many witnesses contacted the media to report a V-shaped object crossing overhead without the loud sounds expected from an aircraft. In Sligo, Leitrim and Donegal, in the far north west of the country and just south of the border with Northern Ireland, dozens of people reported seeing the object, saying it was low and very bright but made no sound – a puzzle very like the events in England 44 years earlier.
One likened this new UFO to a “B-52 bomber, huge – silent – I am speechless.” It “moved very slowly and was made of light,” said another. Again, we have the classic V shape of the post-war Vulcan bomber (hence the name given in 1978, when it was still flying). Reports in Ireland piled up, and most mentioned near silence apart from a quiet buzz or hum; again, very similar comments were made in the original case.
Those sightings, which led to the original “Silent Vulcan” label, began just after dusk on the clear night of 23 October 1978. Multiple witnesses saw it cross Leicestershire and Warwickshire over a period of two or three hours. That fact alone tells you this was not an actual UFO – such a duration is all but unheard of. Any alien intruder that circled for hours and was visible to anyone looking up would have been detected by the authorities, with civil air traffic diverted and military interceptors alerted. But this did not happen. Indeed, East Midlands airport confirmed they had nothing on radar as the Silent Vulcan circled, but affirmed that the crew and passengers of an inbound Air Malta flight landing at East Midlands around 7.26pm actually reported the UFO, as it was rather hard to miss given its three large spotlights.
So what happened next? An extraordinarily well constructed investigation by local UFO investigators and a fine report sent to me by Mark Brown, which showed the tortuous path of the Silent Vulcan. But what was it, and how and why was it traversing a busy civilian air corridor?
As in 1978, there is no question that the 2022 event was real. Many commercial aircraft from Europe to Canada do cross over this part of Ireland, but at heights around 39,000ft (11,900m), and nothing like the size of the object reported by these witnesses. The sound from a high jet is faint and takes seconds to travel to the ground, creating a notable lag with our visual perception of its location. So viewing an aircraft at that altitude creates a perception anomaly that we are used to experiencing and compensate for, especially as aircraft cross the sky slowly as they cover many miles in view. Our brains match sight and sound without any disconnect. This is one of those little quirks of nature that may seem trivial until you are trying to unravel the cause of a UFO experience.
Aliens and UFOs are, as usual, the media explanation for the events over Ireland, but we need to ask if something else could be going on, as I suspect is the case here.
A key clue is the date – just four days into the Russian ‘special operation’ in Ukraine, putting us on the brink of another European war. In such circumstances, you would expect rather more mundane things than alien spacecraft could be flying in preparation for whatever might come next.
Back in the 1970s, the East Midlands sightings were not the end of the story. Over the next few weeks repeat runs followed just north of the original sightings. In one case I pursued there were independent witnesses to the phenomenon moving from the north Midlands up to south Derbyshire, with sightings in places such as Ashbourne and Whaley Bridge. Witnesses did not call this a Silent Vulcan. They called it a “jellyfish” or “manta ray”, but reported much the same thing as had been seen days earlier coming from the south, hinting at the same origin.
It seemed likely that this UAP originated
somewhere near the East Midlands and was flying ‘missions’ over a relatively small area, leading to speculation that it might be an experimental silent airship (but its alleged very low height would make that dangerous at night, especially over northern hills in later reports). However, as we saw with the new sightings in Ireland, estimation of silence is subject to common perception errors based on presumptions as to an object’s height, which are themselves based on assumptions of its size – difficult to estimate against a dark sky.
We may not know what was really flying over Ireland in 2022, but I think we now know what was seen in 1978 – although it took two decades to find out, thanks to allied security.
I interviewed the Under Secretary who ran the department overseeing UFO reports in the 1970s. He confessed he suspected testing of some secret technology – probably by the Americans with British support. Stealth aircraft – radar invisible, quiet and covert – were under development by the USA, but this was not admitted at the time. In particular the Aurora, as it was later called, was in early development and had several accidents during testing. I was told by US aviation specialists in the 1980s that they were deployed for secret testing in Europe, the expected theatre of engagement, with England being the first testing location in the late 1970s. When Peter Hough and I were talking to officers and crew at RAF Shawbury in Shropshire, it became clear that it was by then an open secret that the Aurora was first test flown from RAF Alconbury, not far from the East Midlands, with the first flights in 1978, but kept secret for obvious reasons.
Bearing all that in mind, and the fact that at the time the Cold War was at its peak, I am convinced that the “Silent Vulcan” was no such thing: it was an Aurora.
Could something similar explain the recent events over Ireland? Was this a lowlevel test flight of a 21st century aviation secret, not picked up on conventional radar? Or was it a case of multiple lights much higher up misperceived as lower, slower and quieter, merged by the mind into one silent craft because the high altitude was misinterpreted? Either way, it might be a long time before we find out what the new “Silent Vulcan” truly was…