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I'm a brit!


Stafford wrote in message <7o7350$2rb0$1@newssvr03-int.news.prodigy.com>...
>
><patanie@my-deja.com> wrote in message news:7o6uu3$i5p$1@nnrp1.deja.com...
>> An Early
>>                                  British
>>                                  Naval
>>                                  Sighting.
>>
>>                                  � By Gordon
>>                                  Creighton.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> At the time when FSR was being launched, in the
>> spring of 1955, I was working - after a diplomatic
>> career on four continents - in an Intelligence
>> post somewhere in the governmental and
>> administrative heart of London known as Whitehall.
>> The name of the organisation where I was employed
>> and the nature of my duties there are not matters
>> that need to be chronicled here, and it will
>> perhaps suffice if I say that, being in central
>> London, I was well placed to make social contacts
>> with people of various services, including
>> officers of the CIA and of the American Air Force
>> Intelligence.
>>
>> Having once seen something extraordinary in the
>> sky (in the far west of China, no less than
>> fourteen years before FSR began) my mind was
>> already much taken up with the problems of the
>> "flying saucers." And, among these officers and
>> officials whom I was meeting outside of as well as
>> inside office hours I found that there were some
>> who were evidently pretty knowledgeable and who
>> took more than just a superficial or passing
>> interest in the "saucers" and were even very
>> willing to discuss them seriously, although I
>> noticed that, naturally enough, they seemed far
>> more keen on 'pumping' other folk than on
>> releasing much information on the subject
>> themselves. In other words, they were already
>> "cagey". (I emphasise again that these officials
>> were invariably encountered on purely social
>> occasions, for my own work was in no way connected
>> with them, secret though it was, and none of them
>> were ever met in the course of my duties.)
>>
>> It must of course be borne in mind that those were
>> still very early days in the UFO business. The
>> meetings of the famous"Robertson Panel" of
>> scientists in the USA only took place in 1953.
>> Things were fluid still, "the lid was by no means
>> fully screwed down yet", and lots of stories and
>> reports were getting into the newspapers which
>> would assuredly never get into them now, and
>> people in uniform were correspondingly more
>> relaxed still and not yet quite as much on their
>> guard as they would be in later years.
>>
>> In the summer of 1958, on a social occasion, while
>> taking my vacation in a country not far from
>> Britain,, I met another American officer - a
>> captain in the U.S. Air Force Intelligence, with
>> whom I had a very interesting chat for an hour or
>> so on UFOs. He told me that he had had a personal
>> encounter with a "foo fighter" when about to land
>> his plane on an airfield near Tokyo in 1946, very
>> shortly after the defeat of Japan. He told me
>> that, at a certain moment, the "foo fighter"
>> exploded right in front of his aircraft. He said
>> the whole area beneath and round about was combed
>> exhaustively by American troops and Japanese
>> police, but not a scrap of the enigmatic intruder
>> was ever found. In the famous Brazilian case at
>> Ubatuba, (1) in September 1957, on the other hand,
>> it will be recalled that the "foo fighter" fell
>> right on the shore-line, between sea and land, and
>> a good proportion of it was recovered and, as we
>> were subsequently informed by APRO, was being
>> analysed in a Brazilian laboratory. (Further
>> reports were promised, but I never saw any, and
>> this did not surprise me!) We gathered however
>> that the main constituent of the object was the
>> easily combustible element magnesium.
>>
>> I then told the American Air Force Intelligence
>> officer about the strange sight that I (along with
>> two other Europeans) had seen in the sky over a
>> city in the remote interior of China at about noon
>> one day in the summer of 1941, (2) and he listened
>> with evident interest and asked many questions,
>> but refused to speculate. I was left with the
>> impression that he already "knew a lot".
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>        ADMIRAL LORD LOUIS MOUNTBATTEN.
>>
>> One of the earliest "big names" that we heard
>> mentioned in connection with the "flying saucers"
>> was that of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten. He too
>> - so it was said - "knew a lot about flying
>> saucers", because the British Navy possessed
>> photographs of them in flight over the sea, and
>> also sometimes at rest on the surface of the
>> water.
>>
>> My own (unpublicised) association with FSR had
>> started with the very establishment of the journal
>> in 1955. I had filled in a subscription form and
>> sent off my cheque, and in due course, as a
>> subscriber, I began to receive from their first
>> secretary Brinsley le Poer Trench (later Lord
>> Clancarty) my FSRs, from No. 1 onwards. My first
>> contributed item appeared in issue No.2 (Vol.1
>> No.2) but it was to be a good many years before my
>> name was given in the journal - not, in fact,
>> until I had ceased to be a civil servant.
>>
>> As for Lord Mountbatten's great personal interest
>> in our subject - we knew with certainty that this
>> was true, for he had asked to receive FSR, and a
>> copy of every issue was accordingly sent to him
>> right from the beginning. (Nor was he the only
>> person in those very highest levels among our
>> national leaders who had expressed such an
>> interest, and who consequently also received every
>> issue of FSR right from the commencement.)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>                   A STRANGE STORY.
>>
>> Adistant relative of mine (now dead) had served
>> in the Royal Navy in World War II. Not long ago,
>> just before his death, he told me a strange story
>> which I think should now be placed on record, as
>> it agrees so closely with some of those tales and
>> rumours that were heard in Whitehall during the
>> 1950s. He said, simply, that he knew a colleague,
>> another British naval officer, who had worked in
>> the early post-war years in the main building of
>> the Admiralty - which, as I should perhaps explain
>> for the benefit of foreign and overseas readers -
>> was in those days the administrative headquarters
>> for the Royal Navy and is in Whitehall. This
>> officer told my relative that, on a certain
>> occasion, in the Admiralty, he happened to visit
>> the room of a very senior officer in the Royal
>> Navy, and there, right on the great man's desk, he
>> saw what he ought not to have seen - files on the
>> subject of UFOs, and photographs of strange
>> disc-shaped objects on the surface of the sea.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>   THE ALLEGED LANDING ON THE MOUNTBATTEN
>>                         ESTATE.
>>
>> After the murder of Lord Mountbatten by the IRA
>> terrorists in 1979, FSR published an article by
>> Desmond Leslie, (3) giving the details of an
>> extraordinary affair regarding which we had
>> already heard vague rumours over a good many years
>> past. A UFO, or UFOs, it seems, had landed briefly
>> in the grounds of the Mountbatten estate, at
>> Broadlands, in Hampshire, Southern England, one
>> snowy day during the 1950s, and an occupant of the
>> craft had spoken to an Army NCO, Sergeant Briggs,
>> a member of the Admiral's outdoor staff. According
>> to Desmond Leslie, when Lord Mountbatten heard of
>> the encounter, he at once sent for Sergeant Briggs
>> and got him to make a full statement, of which
>> seven copies were prepared. Briggs signed all
>> seven copies, and was permitted to keep one, while
>> Lord Mountbatten placed the other six copies in a
>> drawer of his desk.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>     CONFIRMATION BY CHARLES GIBBS-SMITH.
>>
>> When the Directors of FSR held their next board
>> meeting, they were able to hear direct
>> confirmation of this affair. For our colleague and
>> fellow director Charles Gibbs-Smith reported that
>> he had traced Sergeant Briggs and discussed the
>> matter with him, and had seen his signed copy of
>> the Report which Lord Mountbatten had drawn up.
>> Several of us urged Charles Gibbs-Smith to put
>> this important piece of corroborative evidence
>> down in writing at once, so that it might go on
>> record in our journal, and it is a matter for very
>> great regret that our much-loved colleague,
>> already a sick man, was apparently unable to
>> attend to this before he died. This brief note
>> must serve therefore for the record.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  EVIDENCE OF THE ROYAL NAVY'S INTEREST IN
>>                           UFOs.
>>
>> Traditionally the Royal Navy has been known as
>> the "Silent Service." Although we have all heard
>> so much evidence to indicate the great interest
>> taken by all Air Forces, and for many years past,
>> in anything of a 'ufological' nature, only rarely
>> have we heard of Navies taking an interest in such
>> matters. Although a cursory glance through the
>> history of our subject will show that at various
>> times there have been reports of investigations by
>> the naval authorities in the USA, Canada, Brazil,
>> Argentina, and Chile, to name just a few, never,
>> it seems, has there been mention of the British
>> Navy.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>               THE ARTICLE IN URANUS
>>
>> Recently, when leafing through the pages of
>> Uranus (the early mimeographed UFO magazine, long
>> since defunct, which was edited in the mid-1950s
>> first by Eric Biddle and later by David Wightman)
>> (4), I came across the interesting little story
>> which I reproduce below. As will be noted, it is
>> said to have come from a German press source but
>> most unfortunately, though the name of the German
>> newspaper is given, there is no reference to the
>> date of either the paper or the alleged report.
>> However, many readers may feel inclined to think,
>> as I do, that the story sounds genuine. We must
>> bear in mind that those were still the very early
>> years of the UFO Phenomenon. The official clamps
>> of secrecy only began to be effective around
>> 1956-57, and in the seven years that had elapsed
>> since Kenneth Arnold's famous sighting in July
>> 1947 many extraordinary reports had got out that
>> certainly would not stand the slightest chance of
>> doing so today.
>>
>> I have no idea what the circulation of Uranus was,
>> but it was certainly very small. It was a simple
>> little mimeographed magazine on very poor paper,
>> and it is likely that few copies will have
>> survived. If we do not give this report wider
>> circulation by reprinting it now, it will probably
>> be lost and forgotten altogether. If we print it
>> now, there is always the possibility that one of
>> our German readers may be able to trace the
>> original item in the Speyerer Tagespost, and if we
>> take it from there we may be able to find out more
>> about the story and learn from where they got it.
>>
>> Who knows? The possibility is not excluded that
>> this story in a German newspaper concerns the very
>> same UFO sighting and the same photographs about
>> which the British naval officer from the Admiralty
>> spoke to a member of my family a quarter of a
>> century ago.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  A BRITISH NAVAL SIGHTING COMES TO LIGHT.
>>
>>      (This report first appeared in the
>>                Speyerer Tagespost.)
>>
>> Three British submarines returned to Plymouth
>> after manoeuvres held off the Bristol Channel. The
>> Commander, Captain Chelwan. (5) reported to his
>> Admiral that he had seen "Flying Saucers" floating
>> on the sea approximately eleven nautical miles
>> south of Lundy Island. He was able to take two
>> photographs showing the objects.
>>
>> The research organisation on UFOs, formed about a
>> year ago in London and attached to the Admiralty,
>> confiscated the film at the Admiral's request, and
>> decided that the photos would be studied,
>> evaluated, and released for publication (6) at a
>> later date. In the meantime Captain Chelwan was
>> ordered to treat his encounter with the UFOs as a
>> military secret and to instruct his officers and
>> men accordingly.
>>
>> Before the order was imposed, however, a newspaper
>> man obtained a five-minute interview with Captain
>> Chelwan, and here is the Captain's story:-
>>
>> "We surfaced near Lundy Island, and, on opening
>> the hatch, my Engineer and I noticed, about a mile
>> to the S.W., two silvery discs floating on the
>> sea. As the sun was shining on the ripples, I
>> thought at first that it was a light reflection,
>> but presently we both heard a buzzing sound. We
>> quickly grabbed our binoculars and examined the
>> objects. They were shaped like a disc slightly
>> elevated in the middle, and had no windows,
>> portholes, or other apertures. The elevated middle
>> portion was stationary, but the flat outside
>> portion, surrounding the middle part like a
>> collar, rotated slowly on the water.
>>
>> "We thought the objects measured approximately 100
>> ft. across, the middle portion appearing to be not
>> bigger than one tenth of the whole disc. The outer
>> portion surrounding the centre piece appeared not
>> to be attached to it, as there was a gap between
>> them measuring abut two feet.
>>
>> "I must say we were very much surprised at the
>> sight of those objects, and officers and men
>> crowded (7) the deck staring as if they were
>> hypnotised. As the whole "show" took only 80
>> seconds, it was impossible to form a sober
>> judgement. Their origin seems to be a puzzle;
>> technically they seemed far above anything we
>> knew. We all though immediately that they were
>> Flying Saucers. I intended to give an order to go
>> at them full ahead and, if possible, get alongside
>> them, but the buzzing sound became higher and more
>> urgent, until the pitch was so high that it could
>> not be heard any longer. The two discs mounted
>> horizontally, turned sideways at about 300 ft, and
>> disappeared in twenty seconds at a speed which I
>> estimate to be at about 2,000 mph. At the same
>> time a reddish glow surrounded the objects. (8)
>> The Admiralty declared that the sighting was to be
>> treated seriously and the evaluation of it would
>> take some time."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>                NOTES AND REFERENCES
>>
>> 1. See FSR, Vol. 6, No.4 (July/August 1960), page 21.
>>
>> 2. A brief account of this sighting has been given by Robert
>> Chapman, Science Correspondent of the London Sunday Express, in his
>> book Unidentified Flying Objects (pub. Arthur Barker, London, 1969)
>> and later as a Mayflower paperback under the title UFO: Flying
>> Saucers over Britain? (also 1969).
>>
>> 3. See Desmond Leslie: Did Flying Saucers Land at
>>
>> Broadlands?: Alleged Encounters on the Estate of Earl Mountbatten
>> of Burma. In FSR Vol 26, No. 5 (January 1981).
>>
>> 4. See URANUS, Vol.3 No.3 (December 1956). Editor David Wightman. A
>> mimeographed twenty-page bulletin issued six times yearly by
>> Markham House Press Ltd., 31 King's Road, London SE3.
>>
>> 5. This name Chelwan should be an important clue. I asked the
>> department of the Ministry of Defence who deal with these matters
>> whether they could assist me by tracing an officer of this name,
>> and I received an extraordinarily prompt reply that they had no
>> record of any officer of such a name having served in the Royal
>> Navy. It is very much to be hoped that one of our readers who has
>> more leisure than we at FSR do (our number is very small), and who
>> has access to old issues of the Navy List, might be able to effect
>> a more convincing search for us, and tell us whether they have any
>> success.
>>
>> 6....."released for publication...."OH YEAH We seem to have heard
>> of such assurances on plenty of other occasions!
>>
>> 7. Remember that this UFO report dates from the early or mid-1950s,
>> that is to say, from a time when very little had yet been published
>> about the details of UFO appearance or UFO behaviour. Read this
>> alleged naval officer's account carefully, and note how numerous
>> are the features that today strike us as familiar, because we have
>> seen them in so many other reports. It it be claimed that someone
>> in Britain or Germany faked this story, then one can only say that
>> he must have already been remarkably well informed on various
>> aspects that can have been known only to a very few folk indeed at
>> so early a date.
>>
>> 8. How often since then have we seen mention of this change of
>> colour towards red as UFOs accelerate!
>>
>>
>> �Flying Saucer Review Library of Congress
>> copyright FSR Publications, Ltd. 1981.
>> Contributions appearing in this magazine do not
>> necessarily reflect its policy and are published
>> without prejudice.
>>
>>
>> Gordon Creighton (Editor FSR)
>
>Very interesting  thnks
>
>maybe some brits  on acadia can tell you wht they think any brits here? : )
>--
>Peace,
>
>David.
>I updated my home page ! Yea !!!
>Albert Einstein: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and
>human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
>http://members.delphi.com/bosco6/index.html
>Remove xxx to reply  via email
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