UK's UFO sightings archive released
The newly-released documents show how UFO sightings have been dealt with
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Wednesday, 14, May 2008 11:30
Government documents detailing UFO sightings from 1978 to 2002 have been released today by the National Archives.
The documents describe what has been seen and how the government responded.
These include people saying they saw lights in the sky over London's Waterloo Bridge, near-misses by pilots and claims of crop circles.
One of the sightings described is known as the Rendlesham forest incident, or 'Britain's Boswell'.
Over two nights in December 1980 mysterious lights were seen to land in the forest beyond the base of RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk.
All the documents relating to the MoD's inquiry about the lights can be found in the archives.
Dr David Clark, an academic from Sheffield Hallam University interested in UFO sightings, said the release of the files is significant as there has been "lots of speculation as to what the Ministry of Defence" did with the sightings reported.
"It's been known for some time that the Ministry of Defence [MoD], and before the MoD the Air Ministry, have been collecting these reports from people seeing something in the sky that they haven't been able to explain since at least the early 1950s," he added.
"There's a lot of conspiracy theories that have grown up both in this country and in the USA about the military interest in UFOs and what we're actually getting to see in these papers are the actual facts.
"People can now examine the actual papers and the modest inquiries that were done by the ministry over the years."
The documents can be found at http://ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk.