Beyond Area 51

by Mack Maloney

  Without missing a beat, Doyle replied, “Yes.”

  PART TWO

  Other Secrets Around the World

  10

  Looking for Britain’s Area 51

  This Strange Island

  At a British air force base called RAF Montrose, there’s an old radio from the 1940s that still plays speeches by Winston Churchill and the music of Glenn Miller, broadcasts from more than seventy years ago.

  Dozens of people have witnessed this over the years. The broadcasts come on at random times and last for thirty minutes or more. Technicians who disassembled the radio and found nothing unusual about its construction are baffled at how it can still pick up live shows from the dark days of World War II. Even more remarkable, the old radio does this without being plugged into any power source.

  But haunted radios are just the beginning when discussing what a strange place Great Britain is.

  The British Isles are studded with puzzling circles of standing stones. Stonehenge is the most well known of these structures, but there are hundreds of others just as mystifying scattered throughout the UK. Britain also boasts more than ten thousand round barrows, which are another kind of ancient “rock art.” No one knows for certain who built them or why, only that most of them date back more than five thousand years.

  Great Britain is also crisscrossed with “ley lines,” alignments that some believe run straight through many of the ancient monuments, megaliths and other mysterious sites. In other words, all of those henges and round barrows, as well as places disguised to look like natural ridgelines or river crossings, are not there randomly; rather, they were purposely lined up and connected by ley lines, as if built under one vast ancient design. What’s more, many believe that ley lines themselves are magical and contain special psychic energy.

  Then there are the crop circles. Between 1970 and 2000, two dozen countries reported crop circles suddenly appearing in their midst—ten thousand circles in all. Of these, 90 percent were found just in southern England alone, and many of these materialized near ancient monuments such as Stonehenge.

  Other weirdness in Britain includes: Huge black cats frequently spotted roaming the countryside. Large black dogs, also known as Hell Hounds, that sometimes take on the shape of humans. Creatures called Mud Maids that lurk in the reeds along riverbanks, trying to lure victims to join them. And the Fear Liath Mòr (“big gray man”), a huge, hairy humanoid that is basically Britain’s Bigfoot.

  There are ghosts aplenty, too. One city, Chester, located in northwest England, has been seriously haunted ever since it was built in AD 70—that’s nearly two thousand years of ghosts, witches, devils and imps running amok. Nearby is Armboth Fell, the location of Thirlmere Lake, where the echo of ghostly bells is frequently heard coming from beneath the water. At Chillingham Castle in Northumberland the cries of a young boy buried alive in one of its walls can still be heard at night. And in Sudbury where once stood Borley Rectory, the site of a fatal love affair between a monk and a nun, ghost sightings are still so frequent that the grounds are considered the most haunted place in England.

  Then, of course, there’s the Loch Ness Monster.

  UFOs Over the UK

  It’s no surprise, then, that UFOs are fairly common in the United Kingdom as well. Tens of thousands of reports of unidentified flying objects have been made over the years, surprisingly large numbers for a nation that’s relatively small.

  But like staging a Shakespeare play or interpreting a poem by Blake, UFO episodes in the UK are rarely simple affairs. The string of strange events that took place around Dyfed, Wales, in 1977 is a case in point. It had a little bit of everything: multiple UFO sightings, glowing balls of light chasing cars and alien beings walking around the countryside—and even some peeping in people’s windows. Other weird goings-on included: one particular UFO that liked to hover over a schoolhouse; TVs, radios and cars that stopped working for no reason; and the teleportation of a large number of cattle from one place to another.

  The village of Warminster, near Stonehenge, provides another example. In the 1960s after strange, unexplained sounds began to be heard near the town, UFOs arrived in the area—and never left. By one estimate, more than five thousand unidentified flying objects have been spotted near Warminster over the ensuing decades.

  There’s also an interesting place in Scotland called Bonnybridge—but more on that later.

  But Where to Look?

  These days, Great Britain’s military is world class, perhaps second in some respects only to the United States. Like the States, the UK is regularly designing and developing new, highly classified weapons of its own. And it stands to reason that in doing so, the British would need a place to test and in many cases fly these new weapons, while at the same time keeping them absolutely top secret.

  And, because these things seem to go hand in hand, if, as some UFO researchers claim, the British have crashed UFOs in their possession, or pieces of them, they would need a supersecret place to hide and examine these things as well.

  In other words, they would need a place like America’s Area 51.

  But do the British even have one?

  Such a place is rarely, if ever, mentioned in the British media. There are no websites devoted to a British version of Groom Lake. We could find no books that expound on the topic.

  So, it’s a bit of a challenge. Groom Lake, Tonopah, Homestead, AUTEC—we know where these places are. What we don’t know is what exactly is done behind their heavily guarded gates or what if any is their true connection to UFOs But in Britain, the challenge is finding the “candidate” top-secret base in the first place. That one signature secret location that is entwined with the UFO mystery.

  So, we put the question to Nick Pope, the well-known author, journalist and TV personality who, among other things, once investigated UFOs for Britain’s Ministry of Defence.

  Because he is still bound by the Official Secrets Act, Pope had to be careful not to divulge any classified or sensitive information. But he did educate us a bit via an interview for this book.

  “As to whether the UK has its very own ‘Area 51,’” he said, “the answer is—as you’d expect from a former civil servant—yes and no. Clearly there are different ranges and danger areas where training is carried out and where various aircraft, UAVs and weapons systems are trialed. But obviously there’s nothing on the scale of the real Area 51. Flying at supersonic speed, an aircraft can cross the UK from west coast to east in a few minutes. Contrast that with the size of the continental U.S., where vast areas are uninhabited or very sparsely populated. Simply put, there’s not much room in the UK for a British Area 51. That said, though, rumors persist about a couple of sites.”

  Actually more than a couple. Ask around further and you’ll get a number of different candidates and, no surprise, all of them have typical British names: High Wycombe, Fylingdales, Aldermaston, Boscombe Down, Rudloe Manor, Menwith Hill, Hack Green, Warton Aerodrome, Porton Down. There’s even a phantom English town named Argleton that seems highly suspicious. And interestingly enough, almost all of these places have some kind of UFO connection.

  But which place is the most likely candidate for a British Groom Lake?

  Though searching them all would be an exercise not unlike chasing Alice through Wonderland, here are the top ten places Britain’s Area 51 might be found:

  10. RAF HIGH WYCOMBE

  Located near the village of Walters Ash in Buckinghamshire, RAF High Wycombe provides support for the Royal Air Force’s Air Command. However, in 2009 the British Ministry of Defence transferred all of its civilian UFO researchers here from their former offices in London. RAF High Wycombe is where all UFO sightings in the UK are now “officially” investigated.

  At the time, Nick Pope hailed this change of location, optimistic it would mean not only more investigations but more thoroughness in those investigations. He especially hoped the RAF would pay particular attention to sightings from pilots and cases where UF
Os are tracked on radar.

  But a spokesman for the Ministry of Defence spoiled all the fun by telling the media, “The MOD examines UFO reports solely to establish whether UK airspace may have been compromised by hostile or unauthorized military activity, [and] unless there is evidence of a potential threat, there is no attempt to identify the nature of each sighting reported.”

  Still, hats off to the British for at least acknowledging they have an official body looking into UFO sightings.

  But apparently that’s all they do regarding UFOs at RAF High Wycombe. It’s unlikely this is Britain’s Area 51.

  9. RAF FYLINGDALES

  At least on the face of it, Fylingdales is a simple radar base located in Yorkshire. But though maintained by the RAF, the installation is actually part of the United States’ Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, one of three secret facilities the United States and the UK share. (The other two are in Greenland and Alaska.)

  Nick Pope told us, “RAF Fylingdales is an early warning station and has a secondary space surveillance role, detecting, tracking and reporting satellite launches and orbits. Its powerful space-tracking radar systems also monitor space debris and the reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere of rockets. Because satellites and rocket reentries are sometimes mistaken for UFOs and because the space-tracking radar system would detect anything unusual at great distance, the base had a role in MOD’s UFO project.”

  Fylingdales is located relatively close to a place called RAF Menwith Hill, and the two bases have similar functions. Both have also been the sites of protests by people who believe the facilities encourage the militarization of outer space. Perhaps this is another reason why Fylingdales is frequently suspected of being more than just a radar station on steroids and somehow has links to UFOs.

  However, there has never been a huge amount of UFO activity reported in the Fylingdales area over the years, nor have there been any rumors of crashed UFOs hidden within. As these things seem necessary to be crowned UK’s Area 51, RAF Fylingdales is probably not the place we’re looking for.

  8. RAF MENWITH HILL

  The Menwith Hill RAF installation, also located in Yorkshire, has an even closer working relationship with the United States. Simply put, Menwith Hill has been called the world’s largest spy base. It is also considered the most secretive facility in Britain. Actually run by the NSA, America’s principal intelligence agency, the base is so secret that few people knew it even existed until a few years ago.

  Menwith Hill is surrounded by a high fence, barbed wire, dozens of cameras and a small army of security guards. And apparently the number of igloo-shaped radomes on the site keeps increasing, meaning the base, and whatever it is doing, keeps getting bigger and bigger.

  Rumors say these newer radomes are linked directly to America’s spy satellites, orbiting spacecraft that can also pick up UFOs.

  But Nick Pope said of the base, “To the best of my knowledge, RAF Menwith Hill has no role in UFO research or investigation. I only visited the base once in my twenty-one-year MOD career, not during my time on the UFO project, but during a subsequent posting to the Directorate of Defense Security. Despite the extreme secrecy and sensitivities, I wouldn’t describe RAF Menwith Hill as ‘Britain’s Area 51’ any more than I would label RAF Fylingdales in this way.”

  7. ALDERMASTON

  Aldermaston is the only place in Great Britain where nuclear weapons are manufactured. Located in Berkshire, in the southern part of England, it’s the headquarters of Britain’s so-called Atomic Weapons Establishment, known by the great acronym AWE.

  Aldermaston is responsible for the design and manufacture of the Trident submarine intercontinental ballistic missile system, as well as the dismantling and decommissioning of Britain’s obsolete nuclear weapons.

  (Scientists at Aldermaston also have an unusual side job: They monitor earth movements all over the world to detect any secret underground nuclear explosions. This is part of the effort to regulate nuclear testing as spelled out in the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.)

  It’s been well established by serious UFO researchers that UFO activity picks up around facilities built for the purposes of using nuclear power, be they electrical generating stations, weapons factories or weapons sites themselves. And there is a strange UFO incident linked to Aldermaston.

  According to a file released by Britain’s National Archives, one morning in 1967, residents of southern England awoke to find “six small beeping UFOs lying in a perfect line from the Isle of Sheppey to the Bristol Channel.”

  While a bomb disposal unit blew up one of these UFOs, another was airlifted to Aldermaston, where both army and MOD’s intelligence units were being mobilized for what was considered at the time to be a real alien invasion.

  It was later discovered, though, that engineering students at Farnborough College of Technology had constructed and positioned the UFOs in a bid to raise money for charity.

  Other than that fire drill, Aldermaston seems to be relatively UFO-free, inside and out.

  6. RAF HACK GREEN

  RAF Hack Green has a sterling record for defending Great Britain during World War II. Equipped with radar, searchlights and fighter plane control, the Hack Green base was assigned to defend all the airspace between Birmingham and Liverpool from German attack before, during and after the Blitz.

  Later on, during the Cold War, a top-secret defense weapon known as the WE-I7 was placed at Hack Green. Used to detect a nuclear missile heading toward the UK, it would automatically fire a retaliation missile in such an attack, a missile that itself was nuclear armed. Luckily, the WE-I7 missile never had to be used.

  Sometime in the 1960s, a bunker at Hack Green was rebuilt and designated as a Regional Government Headquarters, one of many similar sites around the UK where government officials could seek shelter in the event of a nuclear attack and continue operating in its aftermath.

  Numerous UFO sightings were reported in the vicinity of Hack Green during the 1980s. One incident involved something landing in a nearby pasture and killing three cows, immediately attracting the interest of Britain’s intelligence agencies. And though the base officially closed in 1992, there were whispers about a vast underground bunker still operating on the site, a place connected to a conspiracy involving the British military and UFOs.

  This mysteriously inaccessible area at Hack Green was called “Underground Level 1,” and it contributed greatly to talk of an ET connection. However, a para-science research group investigated the site and found that any closed-off areas were actually being used for such mundane things as storage bins. Nor were any vast tunnels or chambers found as the conspiracy theorists had speculated.

  This led the research group to conclude that the British government was no longer involved there.

  So, cross Hack Green off the list.

  5. RAF BOSCOMBE DOWN

  RAF Boscombe Down is located in Wiltshire, not far from Stonehenge.

  It is an interesting entry on the countdown list for several reasons. Just as Area 51 boasts one of the longest military runways in the United States, Boscombe Down maintains the longest military runway in the UK.

  And just like Groom Lake, Boscombe Down’s primary role is to support flight trials of new aircraft, airborne equipment and weapons. Plus it’s home to a fleet of classified test aircraft, just as Area 51 is known to be.

  Best of all, there was a strange incident at the base in September 1994 that links it directly to Area 51.

  One night a mysterious aircraft was taking off from Boscombe Down when something went wrong. Either the aircraft crashed shortly after takeoff or it never made it off the ground at all. Witnesses later saw the wreckage at the end of the runway, covered in tarpaulins and surrounded by security personnel. For the next twenty-four hours activity at the base was intense. This included not only the arrival of a huge U.S. Air Force C-5 cargo plane but also the sighting of an airplane extremely similar to a “Janet Airlines” aircraft, which was seen landing
at the base. Janet Airlines is the nickname for the air service that transports employees of Area 51 from Las Vegas to Groom Lake. It is widely believed to be owned and operated by the CIA. If a plane like that landed at Boscombe Down, something very odd must have been going on.

  Adding to the mystery, on February 7, 1995, there was a report of a UFO surrounded by flashing lights landing in a field close to Boscombe Down.

  But unfortunately that’s the extent of UFO activity reported in or around the base.

  Still, it’s an interesting candidate.

  4. ENGLAND’S PHANTOM TOWN

  Until fairly recently, the village of Argleton, located in West Lancashire, England, had everything expected of a small British town.

  Located off the A59, it had its own postal code—L39. The town was right there on Google Maps. It had want ads for new jobs, an extensive real estate listing, its own weather report and even a local dating service.

  Trouble was, Argleton didn’t exist. In fact, it never existed. Anyone who went to the land coordinates given on Google would have found an empty field.

  How did this happen? Why did it happen?

  One British newspaper said, “Google and the company that supplies its mapping data are unable to explain the presence of the phantom town.”

  Then—just as mysteriously as it materialized, the town disappeared.

  As of January 30, 2010, Argleton had been wiped from all Google maps.

  What does all this mean? There’s no way of telling. There were no UFOs reported near the place, nor were there any signs of military activity in the area.

  However, as our Spook friend told us, “What better place for a government to hide secrets than in a town that never existed?”

  3. WARTON AERODROME

  Of the place called Warton Aerodrome, Nick Pope said, “It’s a real potential candidate for Britain’s Area 51.”

  Located in the northwest part of England a few miles north of Preston, Warton Aerodrome (as it’s listed on maps) in reality is the place where global defense giant BAE Systems is rumored to be working on the next generation of top-secret stealth aircraft, stealth drones and God knows what else.