home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- RIDDLE IN THE SKY 09/02/96
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Source: Manchester Metro News
- Date: February 9, 1996
-
- By John Jeffay
-
- Two pilots saw it... now official report can't explaine the UFO over Ringway.
-
- IT had been a routine flight for Captain Roger Wills and his crew on the Boeing
- 737 from Milan.
-
- The 60 passengers on board had their seatbelts fastened for touchdown, British
- Airways flight 5061 was making its final approach to Manchester Airport... and
- then it happened.
-
- Something dark, silent and wedge-shaped suddenly flashed past the cockpit. It
- seemed so close that first officer Mark Stuart ducked involuntarily as it went
- passed.
-
- And two seconds later it was gone. Radar hadn't picked it up and air traffic
- control had no idea what it was - but the two pilots were so certain they'd
- seen something that they took the highly unusual step of loggin it as an
- official air miss.
-
- They believed that whatever they'd seen had come so close there'd been a real
- risk of collision.
-
- A lengthy inquiry by the Civil Aviation Inquiry has now concluded that it
- wasn't an aircraft - civil, military or remote-controled -it wasn't a hang
- glider, paraglider or microlite, it wasn't a balloon, it wasn't a kite and it
- wasn't a meteorological phenomena.
-
- "Unfortunately the nature and identity of this object remains unknown. The
- incident therefore remains unresolved," the report concludes. It adds,
- significanty, that it can't speculate on extra-terrestrial activity, but
- praises the pilots for their bravery in having reported the incident.
-
- Captain Wills and first officer Stuart still stand by their accounts, despite
- having risked ridicule from their colleagues, who are generally sceptical about
- reports of unidentified flying objects.
-
- Immediately after their close encounter, on the night of January 6 last year,
- they both independatly drew what they'd seen.
-
- They sketched a dark, wedge-shaped object, possibly with black stripe down the
- side.
-
- In sise it was somewhere between a light aircraft a small jet, It may have had
- a number of small white lights, rather like a Christmas tree or it may have
- been illuminated by it's own landing lights.
-
- It was definately a solid object, it certainly came very close along their
- right hand side, it made no attempt to deviate from its course, it made no
- sound and as it left at incredible speed it left no wake.
-
- The incident has aroused enormous interet amoung UFO investigators, partly
- because of the reliability of the two witnesses.
-
- One theory, put forward by the British UFO Research Association, is that it was
- a triangular spaceship dubbed the Silent Vulcan by investigators, because of
- its similarity to the old British Vulcan Bomber.
-
- Another, by military insiders, is that it was actually a U.S. Airforce Stealth
- bomber testing its kegendary invisibility on radar screens.
-
- A third, by Jenny Randles, expert on UFOs and the paranormal, is that it was
- nothing more than a bolide - a large piece of metalic space debris burning up
- as it entered the earth's atmosphere.
-
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- LGM NEWSDESK - Avaliable at the Little Green Men BBS. 01342 844517 - 24 Hours
- On the World Wide Web - http://www.netlink.co.uk/users/ddpweb/ufonews.html
- Regularly updated - Fido: 2:440/217.0, Internet: lgmnews@nolimits.demon.co.uk
- Found any UFO related stories in the media? Please forward to the LGM NEWSDESK
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-