1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,000 Over the last 30 years, there have been thousands of reported sightings of unidentified flying 2 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:14,000 objects over the British Isles. 3 00:00:14,000 --> 00:00:18,800 You think I'm bloodied up, but this is a UFO. 4 00:00:18,800 --> 00:00:23,600 In the summer of 2008, reports of flying saucers and other crafts were capturing the headlines 5 00:00:23,600 --> 00:00:27,760 again. 6 00:00:27,760 --> 00:00:32,960 Over the years, numerous eyewitnesses including military personnel, police officers and experienced 7 00:00:32,960 --> 00:00:38,960 airline pilots have testified to seeing strange lights in the sky and other mysterious phenomena. 8 00:00:38,960 --> 00:00:49,760 It's the brightest light I've ever seen in my life. 9 00:00:49,760 --> 00:00:53,760 Many of these UFO sightings remain unexplained to this day. 10 00:00:53,760 --> 00:00:56,760 But what or who were they? 11 00:00:56,760 --> 00:01:00,760 Could they really be evidence of extraterrestrial life? 12 00:01:00,760 --> 00:01:12,760 It was just something out of the science fiction film. 13 00:01:12,760 --> 00:01:14,760 It was totally unbelievable. 14 00:01:14,760 --> 00:01:20,760 Tonight, we hear firsthand from those who witnessed them and examine the truth behind some of 15 00:01:20,760 --> 00:01:45,760 Britain's most celebrated UFO sightings. 16 00:01:45,760 --> 00:01:57,760 In April 2007, the airspace above the Channel Island of Alderney played host to one of the more unusual British UFO sightings. 17 00:01:57,760 --> 00:02:07,760 I thought initially it was an airplane, but clearly nothing like I'd ever seen before. 18 00:02:07,760 --> 00:02:11,760 I saw a single Lodin shape light below us. 19 00:02:11,760 --> 00:02:17,760 I didn't see any outline to the shape because the light was so bright. 20 00:02:17,760 --> 00:02:19,760 I was in the front looking at it through binoculars. 21 00:02:19,760 --> 00:02:21,760 Pretty scary. 22 00:02:21,760 --> 00:02:25,760 The second one appears to be beyond the first from where I am. 23 00:02:25,760 --> 00:02:30,760 This is probably the best witness that I've interviewed in 30 years. 24 00:02:30,760 --> 00:02:37,760 If it was designed by an engineer, that man would like to shake him by the hand because it was a fantastic piece of equipment. 25 00:02:42,760 --> 00:03:01,760 On April 23rd 2007, Captain Ray Bogier was making a routine passenger flight from the south coast to the Channel Islands. 26 00:03:01,760 --> 00:03:07,760 He've flown the same route for almost 10 years. 27 00:03:08,760 --> 00:03:13,760 We're loading the passengers normally, ordinary day, little wind, nice smooth conditions. 28 00:03:13,760 --> 00:03:18,760 Very good visibility, you can see very well. 29 00:03:18,760 --> 00:03:26,760 Normal day, into the cruise, 4000 feet, no problems. 30 00:03:26,760 --> 00:03:31,760 The 80 mile journey to Alderney takes just 45 minutes. 31 00:03:31,760 --> 00:03:38,760 From France, it's the most northerly of the Channel Islands. 32 00:03:38,760 --> 00:03:43,760 Ray Bogier was expecting it to be a routine flight. 33 00:03:43,760 --> 00:03:47,760 Just a little bit of paperwork, getting a good look out for other aircraft. 34 00:03:47,760 --> 00:03:53,760 And that's when I saw the first signs of the sighting on that day. 35 00:03:53,760 --> 00:03:57,760 It was about 10 miles south of the island. 36 00:03:57,760 --> 00:04:02,760 Basically, what was a brilliant yellow lamp, brilliant yellow light ahead. 37 00:04:09,760 --> 00:04:13,760 Sometimes these are reflections from the ground. 38 00:04:13,760 --> 00:04:19,760 And in fact, I could see even from that distance that Guernsey was immediately behind that light. 39 00:04:19,760 --> 00:04:26,760 So I presumed at the very first sight that it was a reflection of the sun on a greenhouse. 40 00:04:26,760 --> 00:04:32,760 I looked at it for a moment, then expected it not to be there the next time I looked back at it. 41 00:04:34,760 --> 00:04:40,760 This didn't go away, it wasn't a couple of moments, it was a minute and then a couple of minutes. 42 00:04:42,760 --> 00:04:47,760 I thought, that's strange, that's very different to anything I've seen previously. 43 00:04:47,760 --> 00:04:51,760 It wasn't a reflection, it was an emission of light. 44 00:04:51,760 --> 00:04:56,760 And I thought, well, better have a look at this, and that's when I picked up my binoculars that I always carry. 45 00:05:08,760 --> 00:05:12,760 It was a definite shape. 46 00:05:12,760 --> 00:05:21,760 I pointed at each end about 15 to 1 ratio, brilliant yellow and a dark band about two thirds away along from left to right. 47 00:05:23,760 --> 00:05:29,760 Don't forget, I'm looking at it through between 7 and 10 times magnification to normal eyesight. 48 00:05:29,760 --> 00:05:36,760 I could see exactly very quickly and quite plainly that it was nothing like an airplane that I'd ever seen before. 49 00:05:37,760 --> 00:05:46,760 I actually had to take my glasses off and lift them up just to make sure that there wasn't a reflection from behind or something like that. 50 00:05:46,760 --> 00:05:49,760 Just to be sure that I was seeing what I was seeing. 51 00:05:54,760 --> 00:05:59,760 By now the other passengers in the plane were aware that something unusual was going on. 52 00:06:00,760 --> 00:06:07,760 He sort of looked over the nose of the aircraft and when he put the pilot does that you take notice. 53 00:06:08,760 --> 00:06:12,760 Kate and John Russell fly regularly between their home and Alderney and the mainland. 54 00:06:12,760 --> 00:06:16,760 I thought, okay, there's something unusual going on here. 55 00:06:16,760 --> 00:06:20,760 Kate then drew my attention to what was going on. 56 00:06:20,760 --> 00:06:24,760 Then he got out of binoculars and stared out through the windscreen at that. 57 00:06:24,760 --> 00:06:26,760 It never happened before. 58 00:06:29,760 --> 00:06:31,760 I didn't want them to get scared or frightened. 59 00:06:31,760 --> 00:06:33,760 You know, it's run a professional outfit. 60 00:06:33,760 --> 00:06:36,760 You don't want them to be worried about anything really. 61 00:06:36,760 --> 00:06:39,760 However, I didn't want to turn back. 62 00:06:41,760 --> 00:06:46,760 Ray Bowie's immediate thought was to radio air traffic control in Jersey. 63 00:06:52,760 --> 00:06:55,760 The controller guiding the plane into Alderney was Paul Kelly. 64 00:06:55,760 --> 00:06:59,760 On that flight there's very little to communicate to Ray. 65 00:06:59,760 --> 00:07:04,760 It's not normal for someone to suddenly start up a conversation on the RT. 66 00:07:05,760 --> 00:07:09,760 This is the actual air traffic control recording of the flight. 67 00:07:10,760 --> 00:07:13,760 Roger, I've got a very bright object. 68 00:07:13,760 --> 00:07:16,760 Can you see how far it's really bright? 69 00:07:16,760 --> 00:07:24,760 Do you have any traffic, obviously, how far, at my 12 o'clock level? 70 00:07:24,760 --> 00:07:26,760 He was reasonably calm. 71 00:07:26,760 --> 00:07:32,760 Albeit I could detect he was a bit uncertain about something. 72 00:07:32,760 --> 00:07:36,760 I've no known traffic at all in your 12 o'clock. 73 00:07:37,760 --> 00:07:40,760 Whilst air traffic control were trying to locate the sighting, 74 00:07:40,760 --> 00:07:44,760 Ray Bowie was more concerned with avoiding a potential collision. 75 00:07:44,760 --> 00:07:48,760 By now he'd been heading towards what he believed was a solid object for almost four minutes. 76 00:07:48,760 --> 00:07:53,760 My emotions at that time was simply, what is it? 77 00:07:53,760 --> 00:07:57,760 Is it coming towards me or us in the airplane? 78 00:07:57,760 --> 00:07:59,760 What's it up to? 79 00:08:07,760 --> 00:08:12,760 In April 2007, Captain Ray Bowie was 4,000 feet above the English Channel, 80 00:08:12,760 --> 00:08:15,760 flying towards the island of Alderney, 81 00:08:15,760 --> 00:08:19,760 when he spotted a strange light in the sky directly ahead of him. 82 00:08:22,760 --> 00:08:25,760 I thought, well, was it coming towards us? 83 00:08:25,760 --> 00:08:27,760 What speeds it doing? 84 00:08:27,760 --> 00:08:30,760 Is it going to be in our way in a few moments? 85 00:08:30,760 --> 00:08:33,760 He immediately spoke to air traffic controller Paul Kelly. 86 00:08:33,760 --> 00:08:36,760 I've got a very bright object. 87 00:08:36,760 --> 00:08:40,760 Well, so it doesn't say how far, it's really bright. 88 00:08:40,760 --> 00:08:45,760 Looking, well, like a cigar. 89 00:08:45,760 --> 00:08:49,760 It's a classic cliche, a cigar shaped object in the sky. 90 00:08:49,760 --> 00:08:52,760 It's what you hear about in reports over the years. 91 00:08:52,760 --> 00:08:54,760 So, it immediately was very out of the ordinary. 92 00:08:54,760 --> 00:08:56,760 He seemed very sure. 93 00:08:57,760 --> 00:09:02,760 I was looking for something on my radar that fitted the bill. 94 00:09:02,760 --> 00:09:05,760 That may or may not be an object. 95 00:09:05,760 --> 00:09:10,760 It was now 10 minutes since Ray Bowie had first noticed the object. 96 00:09:10,760 --> 00:09:15,760 Neither he nor air traffic control had any idea what it could be. 97 00:09:15,760 --> 00:09:20,760 I think I was more concerned initially about any conflict. 98 00:09:20,760 --> 00:09:22,760 Was it an airplane? 99 00:09:22,760 --> 00:09:25,760 Even with 20 years of flying experience to his name, 100 00:09:25,760 --> 00:09:29,760 Ray Bowie wasn't sure he could believe what he was seeing. 101 00:09:29,760 --> 00:09:33,760 For a second opinion, he turned to the passenger sitting behind him. 102 00:09:33,760 --> 00:09:36,760 I suggested to him, would you like to have a look and see what you can see? 103 00:09:36,760 --> 00:09:38,760 And straight away he said, yeah, I can see this. 104 00:09:38,760 --> 00:09:42,760 And about that time he said, there's another one. 105 00:09:43,760 --> 00:09:50,760 Sure enough, almost directly beyond that one was a very similar looking object. 106 00:09:51,760 --> 00:10:00,760 People are further down the fuselage were looking out to see what we were looking at. 107 00:10:01,760 --> 00:10:06,760 I sort of went forward to look around at the people in front 108 00:10:06,760 --> 00:10:10,760 and saw an orange, lozenge shaped light. 109 00:10:11,760 --> 00:10:15,760 It was at that point when he had tipped the nose of the plane down 110 00:10:15,760 --> 00:10:18,760 that I noticed two very, very bright lights. 111 00:10:18,760 --> 00:10:24,760 I didn't see any outline to the shape because the light was so bright. 112 00:10:24,760 --> 00:10:28,760 You know, if you look at a headlight at night, you don't see the edges of the light. 113 00:10:28,760 --> 00:10:33,760 You just see the center of the light and then a diffused glow. 114 00:10:33,760 --> 00:10:36,760 The second one appears to be beyond the first from where I am. 115 00:10:36,760 --> 00:10:38,760 It's exactly the same. It's got a gap. 116 00:10:38,760 --> 00:10:44,760 It's a cylindrical object, very bright yellow, and there's a gap in the light. 117 00:10:44,760 --> 00:10:46,760 About two thirds of the way along it. 118 00:10:47,760 --> 00:10:52,760 I gave the air traffic controller that it was probably the size of a Boeing 737 119 00:10:52,760 --> 00:10:55,760 thinking that it was about five or ten miles away. 120 00:10:55,760 --> 00:11:00,760 But it would have appeared that from first sighting it was about 55 miles away. 121 00:11:00,760 --> 00:11:04,760 So that must have given it a massive size, really. 122 00:11:04,760 --> 00:11:06,760 Very, very large indeed. 123 00:11:06,760 --> 00:11:12,760 And with that possibility of it being up to perhaps a mile across 124 00:11:12,760 --> 00:11:18,760 you've got to worry for the safety of an airplane, which is the size of a posture stamp in comparison. 125 00:11:23,760 --> 00:11:27,760 Despite what Ray Beaure and his passengers said they were seeing, 126 00:11:27,760 --> 00:11:32,760 air traffic controller Paul Kelly could see no evidence of anything in the air. 127 00:11:32,760 --> 00:11:40,760 8544 negative, nothing at all in your travel clock for the next 40 miles or so. 128 00:11:40,760 --> 00:11:44,760 There was nothing I could determine on the radar that was unusual. 129 00:11:46,760 --> 00:11:51,760 Air traffic initially were fairly dismissive, but of course my sightings were dead ahead. 130 00:11:51,760 --> 00:11:53,760 There's definitely something there. 131 00:11:54,760 --> 00:11:58,760 The objects he was describing were very bright, quite large. 132 00:11:58,760 --> 00:12:05,760 You'd think very obvious, so you would think that other pilots, perhaps in the area, would be able to see the objects. 133 00:12:05,760 --> 00:12:12,760 Although Paul Kelly could see nothing on his radar, Ray Beaure was still convinced that what he was seeing was a solid object. 134 00:12:23,760 --> 00:12:29,760 Kelly radioed the other aircraft under his control, asking if anyone could see the unidentified object. 135 00:12:36,760 --> 00:12:44,760 The moment when another pilot said he could see something in the vicinity of Alderney, it really did make it much more interesting. 136 00:12:46,760 --> 00:12:49,760 A call came in from a pilot corroborating the sighting. 137 00:12:49,760 --> 00:12:53,760 The objects had now been in sight for nearly 12 minutes. 138 00:12:53,760 --> 00:12:57,760 Ray Beaure was concerned about getting his passengers onto the ground safely. 139 00:12:59,760 --> 00:13:02,760 Align 544, would you like to send? 140 00:13:02,760 --> 00:13:04,760 Please, I better go down on him. 141 00:13:05,760 --> 00:13:10,760 It was getting to that point where I was pleased to descend and get on the ground. 142 00:13:12,760 --> 00:13:19,760 Despite the mysterious encounter, flight GR554 landed on time and on schedule at Alderney Airport. 143 00:13:22,760 --> 00:13:32,760 When we landed, Ray turned around and said that he had seen something extraordinary, something he hadn't seen in his 20 years or so of flying. 144 00:13:32,760 --> 00:13:37,760 And he was quite obviously disturbed by the experience. 145 00:13:38,760 --> 00:13:45,760 The girl there who works as a crewing, Lucia, she said, you look like you've seen a ghost, you look pale. 146 00:13:45,760 --> 00:13:48,760 I said, well, I'm not sure if it's a ghost or not, but it was certainly something old. 147 00:13:55,760 --> 00:14:00,760 At Jersey Air Traffic Control, Paul Kelly followed the standard procedures for reporting the incident. 148 00:14:01,760 --> 00:14:08,760 I had taken down notes as I was going along and a sketch drawing as Ray had described it. 149 00:14:08,760 --> 00:14:13,760 And I asked him to fax me his sheet from his flight. 150 00:14:14,760 --> 00:14:22,760 In the back of the manual air traffic services, there's a section tucked away on reporting unidentified flying objects. 151 00:14:23,760 --> 00:14:29,760 It's all quite strange. You phone up the phone number, which is the MOD, and you get an answer machine. 152 00:14:38,760 --> 00:14:43,760 Paul Kelly faxed his report to the MOD and awaited developments. 153 00:14:44,760 --> 00:14:50,760 In the days following the incident, word spread quickly through the Channel Islands. 154 00:14:51,760 --> 00:14:56,760 Local Guernsey journalist Joel DeWolfsen first heard the story from a contact in Alderney. 155 00:14:56,760 --> 00:14:59,760 He followed his lead and got in touch with Ray Bowyer. 156 00:14:59,760 --> 00:15:06,760 I got the feeling that Ray was worried initially about it being, you know, all we need pilots, 157 00:15:07,760 --> 00:15:12,760 his little green aliens are coming to visit Guernsey and damage his reputation because of it. 158 00:15:13,760 --> 00:15:16,760 But the headlines took both Ray Bowyer and the sightings seriously. 159 00:15:17,760 --> 00:15:20,760 Ray is a very honest, straight down the line kind of guy. 160 00:15:21,760 --> 00:15:26,760 The MOD were investigating it, so it added weight to the story straight away. 161 00:15:27,760 --> 00:15:30,760 The story was soon taken up by the national media. 162 00:15:37,760 --> 00:15:44,760 If you had to take an instinctive guess, would you say that it was something of this planet or something from outer space? 163 00:15:45,760 --> 00:15:50,760 I have been asked a question by the press and my simple answer was I don't think it's from around here. 164 00:15:51,760 --> 00:15:56,760 This looks like a CD-Disc on edge, if you like, but very sharp and extremely well defined. 165 00:15:57,760 --> 00:15:59,760 Thank you very much for coming and describing it to us. That's fascinating. Thank you. 166 00:16:00,760 --> 00:16:06,760 The circumstances surrounding the case caught the attention of UFO investigator Dr David Clark. 167 00:16:08,760 --> 00:16:13,760 In the last 20 years he's studied over 500 UFO cases from the British Isles. 168 00:16:15,760 --> 00:16:21,760 It stood out from the usual reports that are received on a weekly basis of people seeing lights in the sky. 169 00:16:22,760 --> 00:16:28,760 It's not very often that UFOs make the news, but in this particular case, you know, the news media realised that there was something unusual about this. 170 00:16:29,760 --> 00:16:32,760 David Clark was keen to investigate the incident. 171 00:16:33,760 --> 00:16:38,760 There was hundreds of invites to say, can we investigate your case and we'd like to have a look at this, can we? 172 00:16:39,760 --> 00:16:48,760 And I waited and waited and until the right team came along really, and I didn't really want a team of believers because they are only trying to prove the point. 173 00:16:49,760 --> 00:16:50,760 I wanted a team of skeptics. 174 00:16:51,760 --> 00:16:55,760 He's a good witness, he's probably the best witness that I've interviewed in 30 years. 175 00:16:55,760 --> 00:17:04,760 There's very little speculation, he's never added further details to his description, he's been very, very consistent in what is described. 176 00:17:05,760 --> 00:17:11,760 Putting UFOs aside, David Clark and his team considered a number of other possible explanations for the sighting. 177 00:17:12,760 --> 00:17:19,760 The UFO phenomena includes lots and lots of different unconnected things, you know, natural phenomena, inexplicable phenomena. 178 00:17:19,760 --> 00:17:24,760 There's no definitive connection between any of them other than the fact that they're all things that are seen in the sky. 179 00:17:25,760 --> 00:17:29,760 So there is no one UFO phenomenon, there are lots of UFO phenomena. 180 00:17:30,760 --> 00:17:38,760 One of the more straightforward explanations for supposed UFO sightings is the weather and the effect of unusual atmospheric conditions. 181 00:17:40,760 --> 00:17:45,760 One of the leading experts in the field is Dr. Grant Allen of Manchester University. 182 00:17:45,760 --> 00:17:50,760 The atmosphere can play all sorts of tricks with light, especially light from the sun. 183 00:17:51,760 --> 00:17:58,760 Anybody that's ever come into land over an airport might have noticed below them rainbows, dances of light on the tops of the clouds, shadows. 184 00:17:59,760 --> 00:18:06,760 I think because they were described as sunlight yellow, that gives the game away, that it's some sort of reflection of sunlight. 185 00:18:07,760 --> 00:18:12,760 Dr. Allen created a computer model of the prevailing weather conditions over the Channel Islands at the time of the incident. 186 00:18:16,760 --> 00:18:29,760 His model indicated an unusual meteorological anomaly, a temperature inversion, where bands of hot and cold air switch places to create an effect which causes the sun to appear as a narrow band of light. 187 00:18:31,760 --> 00:18:42,760 Even for Captain Boeho who might have had years of experience and many flight hours, the range of atmospheric conditions could be such that he just wouldn't have recognized this optical phenomena in this case. 188 00:18:43,760 --> 00:18:56,760 I'm sure some other sightings are likely meteorological phenomena, but as I was actually seeing something which was tangible and physical, and not a reflected light, not some sort of atmospheric effect. 189 00:18:57,760 --> 00:19:03,760 If what Ray Boeho saw over the English Channel wasn't a natural phenomenon, then what was it? 190 00:19:12,760 --> 00:19:22,760 Pilot Troy Querypell knows the skies over the Channel Islands well. With 15 years experience of flying in the region, he has his own theory as to the cause of the mysterious lights. 191 00:19:23,760 --> 00:19:29,760 After overhearing the conversations with air traffic control, he met Ray Boeho when he returned to Southampton. 192 00:19:30,760 --> 00:19:41,760 Ray convinced me that what he'd seen was real. It was hardware, it wasn't weather phenomenon. He'd never seen anything like it before. 193 00:19:43,760 --> 00:19:55,760 My theory was that it could be military activity. About 15 miles to the west of Guernsey, there's military controlled danger zones. 194 00:19:56,760 --> 00:20:02,760 These zones are restricted airspace and can only be entered with the express permission of the Ministry of Defence. 195 00:20:06,760 --> 00:20:10,760 Nick Pope worked on the MOD's UFO desk for three years. 196 00:20:11,760 --> 00:20:25,760 The UK Air Defence region, which goes out in some cases for hundreds of miles into the seas surrounding Britain, contains a number of areas where military exercises take place. 197 00:20:27,760 --> 00:20:37,760 You'll also, in some of these areas, see more exotic things going on in terms of the testing of prototype aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles. 198 00:20:37,760 --> 00:20:46,760 There are things flying around, maybe not operational, but certainly in prototype stage that you won't see for 10 or even 15 years. 199 00:20:47,760 --> 00:20:59,760 A very good example is the stealth fighter. This was publicly declared in 1988 during the Panama campaign to House General Noriega. 200 00:20:59,760 --> 00:21:12,760 Now it's a matter of record now that of course the stealth fighter had been operational and before that had been flying in prototype since for many, many years, probably even back in the 70s. 201 00:21:16,760 --> 00:21:20,760 Could a military test aircraft have been responsible for Ray Boeier's sighting? 202 00:21:21,760 --> 00:21:28,760 As part of his investigation, David Clark followed up all the leads that might explain the ordinary sighting. 203 00:21:29,760 --> 00:21:33,760 He contacted the Ministry of Defence and obtained a copy of their report on the case. 204 00:21:39,760 --> 00:21:43,760 In this particular case we were able to eliminate military activity pretty early on. 205 00:21:44,760 --> 00:21:48,760 The Ministry of Defence said on the record that there were no military exercises taking place. 206 00:21:48,760 --> 00:21:53,760 For Ray Boeier it confirmed his own theory as to what he'd seen. 207 00:22:18,760 --> 00:22:20,760 It was an omission of light. 208 00:22:25,760 --> 00:22:29,760 As it transpired the sighting of Alderney was not an isolated incident. 209 00:22:32,760 --> 00:22:37,760 Builder Paul Godian claimed to have witnessed a similar phenomenon on the island seven weeks earlier. 210 00:22:39,760 --> 00:22:47,760 I thought, wow, this is within a fairly short space of time. Somebody else has actually seen something up there. 211 00:22:49,760 --> 00:22:53,760 It just seemed all too real. Very real. 212 00:22:58,760 --> 00:23:02,760 Paul Godian was alone on the northern tip of the island just before dawn. 213 00:23:05,760 --> 00:23:10,760 I like the walk in the morning. It's a nice part of the island and I do that every day. 214 00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:16,760 I saw two lights start to appear under the cloud base just directly ahead of me. 215 00:23:17,760 --> 00:23:22,760 I presumed they were coming towards me. They were sort of bobbing in and out of the cloud base at what I'd presumed to be about three or four hundred feet. 216 00:23:24,760 --> 00:23:29,760 This seems strange as the only aircraft at about half six in the morning would be the paper plane. 217 00:23:30,760 --> 00:23:34,760 I thought, well, I'm going to have to go to the airport and get my plane. 218 00:23:34,760 --> 00:23:41,760 This seems strange as the only aircraft at about half six in the morning would be the paper plane going over to Guernsey. 219 00:23:42,760 --> 00:23:47,760 And at that height in misty weather it just didn't seem as if it would be feasible for it to do so. 220 00:23:48,760 --> 00:23:51,760 But the set of lights did something completely unexpected. 221 00:23:52,760 --> 00:23:57,760 The one on the left darted at a really high speed towards the left, the west. 222 00:23:57,760 --> 00:24:06,760 I panned around to follow the line of sight and all of a sudden between myself and the two forts appeared, 223 00:24:07,760 --> 00:24:12,760 twenty, twenty-five maybe, lights of the same size, bright white lights. 224 00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:24,760 In a sort of broken arrowhead shape, broken dart shape, they were moving horizontally along the skyline below the cloud base south towards Guernsey. 225 00:24:25,760 --> 00:24:30,760 And there was no noise, absolutely no noise from any of it at all. 226 00:24:31,760 --> 00:24:34,760 I didn't know what to think, I really didn't know what to think. 227 00:24:35,760 --> 00:24:38,760 I just thought that is really strange. 228 00:24:39,760 --> 00:24:43,760 After two seemingly inexplicable sightings in less than two months, 229 00:24:44,760 --> 00:24:47,760 was there something about the island of Alderney itself that could provide the answer? 230 00:24:55,760 --> 00:25:06,760 On April the 23rd 2007, two bright lights were reported in the sky above the Channel Island of Alderney. 231 00:25:07,760 --> 00:25:11,760 They were witnessed by airline pilot Ray Boeyer and his passengers. 232 00:25:14,760 --> 00:25:21,760 I thought, what is it? Is it coming towards me or us on the airplane? What's it up to? 233 00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:28,760 Just seven weeks earlier, Paul Godion also claimed to have seen strange lights floating above the island. 234 00:25:29,760 --> 00:25:33,760 It just seemed all too real, very real. 235 00:25:35,760 --> 00:25:40,760 If these sightings did have a rational explanation, one theory was that they were earth lights. 236 00:25:41,760 --> 00:25:48,760 A natural phenomenon caused by movement of the earth's tectonic plates, earth lights are often seen in the sky before an earthquake. 237 00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:52,760 Geologists Professor Peter Salmond has studied them in detail. 238 00:25:53,760 --> 00:26:02,760 Earth lights can have many forms and certainly seeing a pair of lights looking like a low-lying aircraft who easily have been earth lights. 239 00:26:03,760 --> 00:26:08,760 They hover close to the ground and bathe the air in this sort of mysterious sort of glow. 240 00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:16,760 The island of Alderney does lie on the geological fault line known as the Alderney-Ushand Fault. 241 00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:20,760 Could this have been the cause of the mysterious lights in the sky? 242 00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:29,760 Four days after Ray Boeyer's sighting, seemingly compelling evidence for this theory presented itself. 243 00:26:36,760 --> 00:26:41,760 The Kent coastline suffered the largest earthquake in the region for 50 years. 244 00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:51,760 During the build-up to the earthquake, the tremors would have been large enough to reach the Alderney fault lines, 245 00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:55,760 with a force sufficient to create the lights in the sky. 246 00:27:00,760 --> 00:27:05,760 But one thing makes the theory unlikely to explain the events of April the 23rd. 247 00:27:06,760 --> 00:27:11,760 We wouldn't expect to see earth lights with a large body of water present. 248 00:27:12,760 --> 00:27:19,760 Our understanding is you need to have a discharge from the earth through an earthquake fault into the atmosphere. 249 00:27:25,760 --> 00:27:31,760 Whatever the explanation, Ray Boeyer isn't the only airline pilot to have witnessed strange lights in the sky. 250 00:27:33,760 --> 00:27:38,760 Since World War II, there have been thousands of sightings of unidentified flying objects recorded by pilots. 251 00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:46,760 Some of the crew and passengers of a BOAC Stratocruiser reported seeing mysterious objects in the sky over the Atlantic. 252 00:27:47,760 --> 00:27:54,760 In 1954, Captain James Howard, on a flight from New York to London, claimed to have seen something resembling a flying saucer. 253 00:28:09,760 --> 00:28:11,760 These shapes appear like this. 254 00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:19,760 And I think there's no question that it was no illusion and that it was being intelligently handled. 255 00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:28,760 UFO historian Tim Goode has compiled hundreds of declassified eyewitness accounts from pilots. 256 00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:36,760 In the United Kingdom, sightings tended to increase from about 1950 onwards, I would say. 257 00:28:37,760 --> 00:28:41,760 And there were many reports from pilots beginning around that period. 258 00:28:42,760 --> 00:28:45,760 I would say it peaked in 1952. 259 00:28:46,760 --> 00:28:53,760 And Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Britain at the time, demanded of his air staff what the hell was going on. 260 00:28:53,760 --> 00:28:57,760 He said, what's all this stuff about flying saucer's amount? What's the truth? 261 00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:03,760 And in a few weeks, they came back to him and said, Prime Minister, don't worry, it's all been dealt with. 262 00:29:04,760 --> 00:29:07,760 We've been in touch with our American counterparts in intelligence. 263 00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:12,760 And all the unexplained sightings have been explained and there's nothing to it at all. 264 00:29:13,760 --> 00:29:18,760 The response of Churchill's air staff was designed to end investigations into UFOs. 265 00:29:19,760 --> 00:29:24,760 But despite official denial that such objects existed, sightings by pilots continued. 266 00:29:25,760 --> 00:29:32,760 In October 1954, Flight Lieutenant James Salondin was flying a Gloucester meteor out of RAF Northwild in Essex. 267 00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:42,760 I was flying at about 16,000 feet at the time. 268 00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:46,760 And suddenly I saw three, what I thought were aeroplanes, come down. 269 00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:53,760 And when they were, it must have been about 800 to 900 yards away, the first two peeled off to the left. 270 00:29:57,760 --> 00:30:03,760 A gold spherical object and a silver one with buns on top and bun below. 271 00:30:04,760 --> 00:30:06,760 No flames, no portals, no nothing. 272 00:30:06,760 --> 00:30:12,760 I have never seen any aircraft produced by anybody in the world that looked anything like these things. 273 00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:18,760 Whatever Salondin saw, the objects then moved closer. 274 00:30:19,760 --> 00:30:22,760 And then the third one was coming straight towards me. 275 00:30:23,760 --> 00:30:28,760 I suppose he'd probably be about 300 to 400 yards away, so it's quite a clear picture. 276 00:30:29,760 --> 00:30:30,760 Couldn't have been anything else. 277 00:30:30,760 --> 00:30:35,760 And when he got to that distance, he went off to follow his two buddies. 278 00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:41,760 I tried to follow after the third one, but it was impossible. 279 00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:48,760 The thing was so quick, the closing speed between us was about 900 to 1000 miles an hour. 280 00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:52,760 I shall remember it to my dying day. 281 00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:57,760 What they were, I don't know, where they came from, I don't know. 282 00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:01,760 But I definitely saw them. I was at an experienced pilot at the time. 283 00:31:03,760 --> 00:31:08,760 Experienced pilots have been seeing objects in the sky for over 50 years. 284 00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:13,760 But could the explanation for their sightings be more psychological than physical? 285 00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:17,760 Professor Richard Wiseman has studied the phenomenon. 286 00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:23,760 If you are up there in the sky and you're travelling very very far, 287 00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:27,760 and you see something in the distance, well you have to make a snap decision about it. 288 00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:34,760 You've got to size it, its size, the direction it's travelling, exactly what it is and so on. 289 00:31:35,760 --> 00:31:37,760 And that has to be done in the blink of an eye. 290 00:31:39,760 --> 00:31:43,760 If they do see something anomalous, they've got no kind of category to put that into. 291 00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:46,760 They're trying to work out what it is they're actually perceiving there. 292 00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:49,760 I think they're sincere in their testimony. 293 00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:53,760 I think they're trying to tell us best they can what they think they saw. 294 00:31:53,760 --> 00:31:55,760 The question is one of accuracy, not of honesty. 295 00:31:57,760 --> 00:32:01,760 But what have Ray Beaure's experience above Alderney in April 2007? 296 00:32:05,760 --> 00:32:08,760 The lights he saw in front of his plane for a period of time, 297 00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:11,760 and the light he saw in front of his plane for a period of time, 298 00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:16,760 the lights he saw in front of his plane for a period of some 12 minutes 299 00:32:16,760 --> 00:32:19,760 were also witnessed by several of his passengers. 300 00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:23,760 He probably saw it for something like quarter an hour. 301 00:32:23,760 --> 00:32:25,760 We probably saw it for a matter of minutes. 302 00:32:25,760 --> 00:32:27,760 The size was almost impossible to say. 303 00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:29,760 It wasn't a clearly defined edge to it. 304 00:32:29,760 --> 00:32:33,760 So you have no real idea as to where the centre core is and how much you're actually seeing. 305 00:32:35,760 --> 00:32:40,760 When UFO investigator David Clark examined air traffic control recordings of the flight, 306 00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:44,760 he found a reference to an object which could be seen clearly on the radar. 307 00:32:56,760 --> 00:32:59,760 Could this object have been what was seen from the cockpit of the plane? 308 00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:03,760 You can hear the inflections in Ray's voice when he's speaking to the controller 309 00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:06,760 that he's seen something really, really unusual. 310 00:33:06,760 --> 00:33:08,760 You know, there's no hoax here. 311 00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:12,760 Possibly over maybe to the west of Alderney. 312 00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:13,760 Roger. 313 00:33:13,760 --> 00:33:19,760 I do have a primary contact, just one blob if you like, 314 00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:23,760 eight miles or so to the west of Alderney. 315 00:33:23,760 --> 00:33:27,760 We were initially intrigued about this suggestion that something had been seen on radar 316 00:33:27,760 --> 00:33:34,760 because in the initial conversation between Paul Kelly, the air traffic controller and Ray, 317 00:33:34,760 --> 00:33:37,760 he does mention at one point that he could see something on radar, 318 00:33:37,760 --> 00:33:39,760 but he thought it was an anaprop. 319 00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:43,760 Anaprop is something normally ignored by air traffic controllers. 320 00:33:43,760 --> 00:33:49,760 It's caused by radar signals bouncing off solid objects such as flocks of birds or even large waves. 321 00:33:53,760 --> 00:33:58,760 David Clark was convinced that there might be something in the fleeting anaprop image 322 00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:00,760 if only it could be seen clearly. 323 00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:06,760 The radar information he had to examine was filled with the traces of the 600 flights a day 324 00:34:06,760 --> 00:34:08,760 that travel in and out of the Channel Islands. 325 00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:15,760 If you look at the raw radar data, what you see is a screen that's absolutely filled 326 00:34:15,760 --> 00:34:18,760 with moving dots and colours and shapes. 327 00:34:18,760 --> 00:34:22,760 And you know, you really have to know what you're looking at in order to be able to determine 328 00:34:22,760 --> 00:34:24,760 whether there is something on there of significance. 329 00:34:26,760 --> 00:34:31,760 Jersey Air Traffic Control Engineering Department began the job of examining the radar recordings 330 00:34:31,760 --> 00:34:35,760 to see if they could find any clues to what lay underneath. 331 00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:42,760 For once, it seemed here was the opportunity that we may be able to get something definitively solid 332 00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:46,760 in terms of a radar trace of something that had been reported visually. 333 00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:52,760 And that really, science would have to sit up and take notice if we had some kind of evidence of that kind. 334 00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:57,760 David Clark now had concrete radar evidence with which to analyse whether the alternate incident 335 00:34:57,760 --> 00:35:00,760 was really as mysterious as it appeared. 336 00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:07,760 But not all sightings of UFOs are as well documented. 337 00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:10,760 Some cases are still shrouded in official secrecy. 338 00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:21,760 On April the 21st, 1971, Wing Commander Alan Turner was supervising air traffic controller 339 00:35:21,760 --> 00:35:23,760 at RAF Sockley in Hampshire. 340 00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:28,760 He's never spoken publicly about his experience before. 341 00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:36,760 I was sitting at the desk just tulling the thumbs. 342 00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:40,760 All of a sudden the coordinator said, what is that? 343 00:35:40,760 --> 00:35:47,760 To the east of Sockley Plain were, at that point, two radar returns were called blips. 344 00:35:48,760 --> 00:35:51,760 They were travelling in a south-easterly direction. 345 00:35:51,760 --> 00:35:58,760 And a third appeared, a fourth appeared, a fifth, the sixth appeared, all from the same spot. 346 00:35:58,760 --> 00:36:04,760 Very, very unusual indeed. What is this? It doesn't obey any of the known rules. 347 00:36:05,760 --> 00:36:10,760 Turner examined the blips on his screen and concluded that the only thing that could have been moving at that speed 348 00:36:10,760 --> 00:36:14,760 was the most advanced fighter of the day, the lightning. 349 00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:18,760 But the sheer number of aircraft indicated was simply unbelievable. 350 00:36:18,760 --> 00:36:23,760 It was so unusual, people just looked at it and said, what is going on? 351 00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:25,760 We're talking 35 aircraft. 352 00:36:25,760 --> 00:36:31,760 No air defence commander of his right mind would get the entire lightning force at one location. 353 00:36:31,760 --> 00:36:36,760 He'd have absolutely nothing left with which to defend the United Kingdom air defence region. 354 00:36:36,760 --> 00:36:38,760 You could cut the air with a knife. 355 00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:45,760 It became electric rapidly. People were more than surprised. 356 00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:50,760 Alan Turner decided to dispatch an RAF bomber to investigate. 357 00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:53,760 I kept asking the pilot, are you visual? 358 00:36:56,760 --> 00:36:59,760 And then he said, the voice sounded quite jittery. 359 00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:01,760 I don't know what that was. 360 00:37:01,760 --> 00:37:04,760 It was a quarter of a mile away, climbing like the clappers. 361 00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:07,760 And I saw it, we saw it on radar. 362 00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:09,760 We did not see it visually. 363 00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:14,760 And the radar within the plane was not the only one that picked up this event. 364 00:37:14,760 --> 00:37:20,760 There were seven technically different radars, all seeing exactly the same thing. 365 00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:26,760 Two radars at Southern radar, two radars at Heathrow, two at the fighter control establishment 366 00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:29,760 and the airborne one with the counter bomber. 367 00:37:30,760 --> 00:37:35,760 Alan Turner gathered together all the physical evidence that was being recorded during the incident. 368 00:37:37,760 --> 00:37:43,760 There are two types of tape. One is the videotape taken from the radar and the other is the voice tape. 369 00:37:44,760 --> 00:37:46,760 And that is air to ground, ground to air. 370 00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:53,760 That is all landlines and all the conversations between the controllers at each other. 371 00:37:53,760 --> 00:37:56,760 I have absolutely no idea where it is or even if it still exists. 372 00:37:56,760 --> 00:37:58,760 All I do know is that it did exist. 373 00:37:59,760 --> 00:38:05,760 I am absolutely certain that there was some very strange phenomenon on radar 374 00:38:05,760 --> 00:38:08,760 which no one has yet come up with any rational explanation for. 375 00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:24,760 Over 30 years later, the evidence of Alan Turner's encounter has still to be released into the public domain. 376 00:38:26,760 --> 00:38:31,760 I think the policy behind this was they were baffled, they didn't know what these UFOs were 377 00:38:31,760 --> 00:38:36,760 and they didn't want that fact emerging in public that they couldn't explain what was going on. 378 00:38:39,760 --> 00:38:44,760 Whilst evidence of military UFO encounters is rarely available for public scrutiny, 379 00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:47,760 Ray Boeier's sighting over Alderney was different. 380 00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:53,760 Engineers at Jersey Air Traffic Control had access to their original radar records. 381 00:38:54,760 --> 00:39:00,760 They isolated the 12 minute period in which Ray Boeier claimed to have seen objects in the sky in front of him. 382 00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:04,760 Then stripped away the tracks produced by identifiable aircraft. 383 00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:07,760 Two distinct traces emerged from the data. 384 00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:14,760 What they revealed were the tracks of two unidentified objects, one heading north and one south. 385 00:39:15,760 --> 00:39:21,760 It looks to me like very likely that the positions of the objects that I saw 386 00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:25,760 were in the right place for the radar returns that I have received. 387 00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:32,760 Were these traces really proof that two UFOs had been witnessed flying in the skies over Alderney? 388 00:39:43,760 --> 00:39:49,760 In April 2007, Pilot Ray Boeier witnessed two unidentified objects over the Channel Islands. 389 00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:58,760 It was a definite shape pointed at each end, about 15 to 1 ratio. 390 00:39:58,760 --> 00:40:04,760 Brilliant yellow and a dark band about two thirds away along from left to right. 391 00:40:10,760 --> 00:40:14,760 UFO investigator David Clark studied the available documentary Evans. 392 00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:21,760 Paying particular attention to the data provided by Air Traffic Control. 393 00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:29,760 You really have to know what you're looking at in order to be able to determine whether there is something on there of significance. 394 00:40:29,760 --> 00:40:35,760 And a lot of the returns on that screen can be eliminated. 395 00:40:36,760 --> 00:40:42,760 When engineers stripped away identifiable air traffic, radar revealed two slow-moving objects 396 00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:47,760 which seemed to fit the piles of the mysterious lights seen by Ray Boeier. 397 00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:56,760 Now Ray, when he saw those returns, initially made a connection that possibly that was the UFO he'd seen. 398 00:40:56,760 --> 00:40:59,760 They would appear to be in exactly the right position at the right time. 399 00:41:00,760 --> 00:41:06,760 They both appeared for about 55 minutes at one point, travelled in different directions away from each other 400 00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:11,760 and then both appeared to disappear after 55 minutes. 401 00:41:12,760 --> 00:41:15,760 But David Clark was not convinced. 402 00:41:15,760 --> 00:41:20,760 He felt the traces could have been caused by radar bouncing off objects on the sea below. 403 00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:24,760 So he studied the schedules for the passenger ferries that moved between the islands. 404 00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:30,760 We know from reconstructing the route taken by the ferry that it would have been in that general area 405 00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:33,760 at precisely that time or certainly around that time. 406 00:41:33,760 --> 00:41:38,760 So I think it's far more likely that one of those prominent tracks is a ferry. 407 00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:46,760 With a seemingly rational explanation for at least one of the radar images, this line of inquiry was closed. 408 00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:55,760 There was now no physical evidence to back up the sightings of Ray Boeier and his passengers in April 2007. 409 00:41:56,760 --> 00:42:03,760 The final report by Dr David Clark and his investigation team could reach no definitive conclusion 410 00:42:03,760 --> 00:42:07,760 as to the real explanation for what appeared in the sky over Alderney. 411 00:42:08,760 --> 00:42:15,760 I think it's much more accurate to describe what he saw as a UAP, an unidentified aerial phenomena. 412 00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:21,760 Some kind of natural phenomena that's yet to be identified and categorized by scientists. 413 00:42:23,760 --> 00:42:31,760 Whatever caused the lights over Alderney, Ray Boeier and his passengers still stand by what they saw on April 23rd 2007. 414 00:42:36,760 --> 00:42:40,760 I was a bit disappointed that they hadn't found a solution 415 00:42:40,760 --> 00:42:44,760 because it now hangs in the air with all the other hundreds of cases. 416 00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:50,760 It isn't until later on that you realize that somebody like Ray is regarding something quite out of the ordinary 417 00:42:50,760 --> 00:42:53,760 that we've been to wish that you pay more attention. 418 00:42:56,760 --> 00:42:58,760 I hope we live long enough to know the explanation. 419 00:42:59,760 --> 00:43:05,760 I have to confess now, every time we get in a plane, I keep wondering, you know, are we going to see the lights? 420 00:43:05,760 --> 00:43:11,760 As for Captain Ray Boeier, he wasn't the first pilot to spot something unexplained in British airspace 421 00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:13,760 and it's unlikely he'll be the last. 422 00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:17,760 I kept asking the pilot, are you visual? He sounded shaken. 423 00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:23,760 There was clearly something which he did not understand and couldn't explain any more than we could. 424 00:43:24,760 --> 00:43:29,760 The description I've given you was quite true, I shall remember it to my dying day. 425 00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:37,760 If it was designed by an engineer, that man, I'd like to shake him by the hand because it was a fantastic piece of equipment. 426 00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:39,760 That's what it was. 427 00:43:42,760 --> 00:43:48,760 I can't really go much further than to say what I've said all along is that this thing's not from around here.