Britain's X-Files 2017

DAVID CLARKE sifts through the latest batch of UFO files released by the National Archive

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A collection of miscellaneous UFO files were opened at Britain’s National Archives in June. DAVID CLARKE picks out the highlights from a mixed bag of fortean oddness.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE PLAYGROUND KIND

“We were playing at netball in the yard with Mrs Williams and she was showing us how to throw the ball into the net when I saw an object high in the sky.” In immaculate handwriting, ten-year-old Gwawr Jones reported her UFO experience in a letter addressed to the Commanding Officer at RAFValley in North Wales.

The letter, endorsed by her teacher, arrived with a collection of drawings showing an identical flying saucer, produced by her school pals. “I shouted at the others and they looked up and saw it,” her account continued. “It had a black dome on top and a silver cigar-shaped base. It was travelling smoothly across the sky in a northerly direction. It remained in our sight for about three minutes.Then it went behind the only cloud in the sky and reappeared again for about one minute, then disappeared.”

Gwawr was one of nine youngsters, aged eight to 11, who saw the silent object from Rhosybol School in Anglesey, North Wales, on the afternoon of Wednesday, 16 February 1977. Their teacher, Mair Williams, told the Western Mail: “It was a really bright afternoon and the object was flying very high towards Bull Bay… I took the children back into school, separated them and then told them to draw what they had seen. It was really astonishing – their drawings were all similar. I never believed in these things until I saw this!”

Their extraordinary story was one of dozens that reached the Ministry of Defence’s UFO desk, S4 (Air) in 1977. 1 A covering note, from RAFValley, adds “[we] can offer no positive explanation or identification.”