by Timothy Good
Animals displayed irrational behavior
Object disappeared suddenly
“There were no aircraft in the sighting area reported either by commercial air sources, the Federal Aviation Administration, or the USAF,” concluded Dr. Greco. “The witnesses were ordinary people going about their daily lives [who] were considered reliable, honest, and sincere [and] did not want their names released to the public.”11
Dr. Greco’s diagrams of the various shapes of craft—seen in one day alone—appear below:
Cyprus
During the night of 11/12 September 1992, according to a witness who contacted me the following month, aerial objects, including an enormous structured craft, appeared above Le Meridien Hotel, located some fifteen kilometers east of Limassol, southern Cyprus. I shall refer to the witness (an accountant) as “Andy,” as he insisted on anonymity.
“At approximately 10:50 p.m.,” he reported, “I went out on the balcony of my room to listen to the music being played by a hotel group on the ground floor. From the balcony there is a panoramic view of the hills to the north—about three miles away—but the sea is obscured by the east wing of the hotel. It was a completely clear night with an almost full moon. As I sat at the table facing north, I saw a white light approaching from the northwest. I assumed it was an aircraft heading for Larnaca, but it suddenly stopped. I then thought it must be a helicopter, because it rose vertically and stopped again. I then realized that there was no sound coming from the ‘craft’ and also that there were no lights….
“I kept watching the object for about twenty minutes, during which time it was stationary. Then it started to move away to the hills directly opposite and stopped above them. Almost immediately it rose vertically, in stages, to a much higher point and stopped again…. After an hour or so it then began to move again and cruised (which is the only way to describe the way it traveled) back to approximately where it started, though a bit nearer to the hotel. The UFO remained in this position for some time, but was not always stationary—it would move very slowly at times, so slowly that if you did not concentrate you would hardly notice any movement at all.
“At about 2 a.m., several other pale yellow lights approached slowly from the northeast—I counted eighteen in all—and [the nearest five] came to halt on a line from the sea past the hotel and inland for about a mile. The remainder were in a [square] formation stretching from the coastline to the hills and back to the end of the hotel…. At this point, the larger white object then moved back over to the hills and stopped. It then rose vertically—again in stages—until it was maybe a couple of thousand feet above the most distant light….
“At 4 a.m., all the UFOs began to move extremely slowly, at the same speed, toward the sea [and] as I glanced over the top of the hotel, a huge object appeared out and over the sea, climbing very slowly. It is difficult to describe the shape of this object because of the light, but the moonlight illuminated the right-hand side and part of the side facing me. Also, there was a narrow band of light across the middle of the object, and as it got higher two other bands of light appeared to be switched on above and below the first one.
“I must emphasise that the speed at which this thing was moving was very slow, as though it was in trouble or very heavy. It appeared to be wider at the base [see witness sketch below]. I would say it was much bigger than the hotel. Meanwhile, all the other UFOs were patiently following at some distance…. It climbed really slowly and was upright, travelling vertically but at an angle above the sea.”
“There was no noise. Then the most extraordinary thing happened….
“When the huge object was just gaining height, a missile appeared to be fired at one of the yellow UFOs which were still over the hills opposite me. It came from behind one of the hills and went sharply up, trailing a yellow flame. As it approached the UFO I prepared for an explosion, but the yellow light of the UFO went out for a split second, there was a white spark, and the missile seemed to be deflected toward the hotel, to the left of where I was standing on the balcony. I watched the missile, which was glowing or burning red, go past and just over the hotel, heading out to sea. It was about the length and half the height of a single-decker bus, and horizontal in flight.
“When the missile was fired, all the UFOs, including the massive one, stopped moving for fifteen minutes. The latter just remained suspended in the sky. Then they all began moving again, upwards and outwards over the sea, still at the same slow pace. This went on until 4:40 a.m., when a vivid green and blue semi-circular object appeared over the sea above the wing of the hotel, below the huge UFO and between it and the hotel. It was much lower and was flashing blue and green intermittently; at times the colors intermingled …
“At 4:45 a.m. another missile was launched at the last yellow UFO (the nearest one to the hills) and the same thing happened as before, except that when the deflected missile came past the hotel, it was not glowing red like the first one, only yellow at the rear end. At 4:50 a.m. all the UFOs were getting higher in the sky, but it was noticeable that the huge one was not getting appreciably smaller the higher it got.
“[The huge object] seemed to me to look like some kind of transporter, because of its lighting, color, and shape: it was dull and workmanlike with only three strips of light—at least that I could see. By about 5:00 a.m. the UFOs had almost gone.
“It is only conjecture on my part,” Andy concluded, “but I think the huge UFO had landed by the Limassol power station just along the coast or beyond it, and stayed there for about three hours. The smaller yellow ones were a protective force, and the larger white ones were the reconnaissance craft. What the object of the exercise was is purely a matter for speculation, but maybe the power station had something to do with it…. The only other thing I can think of is that the huge object was perhaps being repaired, because the difficulty it seemed to have climbing could suggest some sort of malfunction.”12
My first line of inquiry was Headquarters, British Forces Cyprus at the Akrotiri Sovereign Base Area, which occupies a large area mostly contained on a peninsula some 25 kilometers to the south and west of Le Meridien Hotel. “I can assure you that the sitings [sic] were not as a result of any British Forces Cyprus exercise,” stated Squadron Leader J. A. Bartram RAF, Office of the Commander. “It would appear that other people did sight unusual aerial phenomena on the night in question [and] this was reported in the Cypriot papers….”13
In late November/early December 1992, I spent a week in Cyprus and interviewed people in the area, including an assistant manager at Le Meridien. A local researcher had not heard anything about the event, and my appeals for witnesses—on CyBC radio and television and in The Cyprus Weekly—drew a blank. I was unable to get an appointment at the Limassol power station, but the following year my friend Graham Sheppard, a former British Airways senior captain, visited the station and was told that nothing unusual had been reported on the night in question. Although there were reports of UFOs around that time, neither of us could find anyone who could corroborate the main event. One possible explanation may owe to the closely knit Greek-Cypriot community who, I gathered, are “quite sensitive about things of this nature.”
I should mention that earlier in the year, on the night of January 24/25, 1992, many residents of Larnaca, Limassol, and Palechori observed a brightly lit craft, estimated at about fifty meters in length. Some said it was soundless, while others thought they detected a low hum. Beginning at 23:00, the sightings lasted for two and a half hours.14
I met Andy in my apartment in December 1992. He appeared nervous. As he had explained earlier: “I am very concerned about the consequences arising from publication, particularly the security implications, not only for me, but also for Cyprus … especially as missiles are involved.”15
I wrote again to British Forces Cyprus in 2003, asking if any further information had come to light, querying the possibility that the event might hav
e been related to an air-defense exercise. “Your request has been exhaustively investigated by RAF Akrotiri,” came the reply, “but, regrettably, unit records are unable to throw any further light on the events [and] hold no information on live weapon training for the night in question.”16
If a hoax, one would have to question the motive. A desire for money and notoriety, at least, can be ruled out. Having met the witness and corresponded with him over a period of time, I retain the impression that he was describing a real event, one that—as in so many other cases—left him profoundly disturbed. Furthermore, reports of this type of craft were very rare in 1992. But as we shall see, sightings of similar types increased in ensuing years.
Shropshire, U.K.
In Need to Know, I cite the penetration in the small hours of March 31, 1993, of two Royal Air Force bases—Cosford and Shawbury—by a large triangular craft, and (in the second edition of that book) reproduced a minute from the Ministry of Defence’s [MoD] Head of Secretariat (Air Staff) to the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (ACAS). “Some of the reports state that the object was moving at a very high speed, while some say that it was hovering or moving very slowly,” the minute concludes.
“Many of the reports refer to the object being very large, flying low, and making a low humming sound. My staff have spoken to a number of the military and police witnesses, many of whom commented that the object was unlike anything they had ever seen before; a Met Officer at RAF Shawbury reported seeing the object projecting a narrow beam of light at the ground at a height of four to five hundred feet and estimated its size at somewhere between a C130 [Hercules] and B747 [jumbo]…. If there has been some activity of U.S. origins which is known to a limited circle in MoD [Ministry of Defence] and is not being acknowledged, it is difficult to investigate further….”17
On the night of March 30, sixteen-year-old Darren Perks had an encounter with what was either the same or a similar craft. “At the time of the incident,” he told me in 2005, “I was preparing to enter the Army Air Corps. Since the age of twelve I had been a member of the Royal Air Force’s Combined Cadet Force (CCF), in which I had already made the rank of flight sergeant. Being in the CCF, I had flying experience and extensive knowledge of all military aircraft of the current time and post cold-war era. I also had good knowledge of civilian and/or non-fixed-wing aircraft [and] I was a frequent visitor to RAF Shawbury airbase….
“At approximately 11:00 p.m., I was walking home from my part-time job at the Shrewsbury Superbowl, in the northern outskirts of Shrewsbury. At the time, my parents owned a local pub called the Harry Hotspur, and it was only six hundred meters from my work along Harlescott Lane. As I got to within a hundred meters of my home, my eyes caught a slow-moving structured object, about three hundred feet up, moving from left to right—south to north. At the time, the weather was clear and there was no wind and also no traffic passing me on the road, so my surroundings were very quiet.
“It was a black triangle shape, approximately 200 feet in length and 150 to 200 feet in diameter. It was [clearly] defined, and [it] blocked out the stars. As I continued to watch this strange craft, a brilliant white beam of light appeared from it and started to sweep the ground from left to right as if it were looking for something in the fields. On the two rear points of the triangle, I noticed a faint red or orange-colored glow. At one point, the craft stopped moving and just hung in the sky, still not making any sound at all.
“The triangle was moving very slowly—I would say about walking speed—and I could hear nothing but a very low humming sound that was irritating to hear. I also felt warm, and the sense of being watched, or at least that whoever or whatever was controlling the triangle knew I was watching it.
“Opposite my house at the time was rough ground and fields, and the triangle continued to move north over them with the white light flicking back and forth randomly. At this point, I estimated that I had been watching this craft for about two minutes when all of a sudden it shot off to the north at incredible speed, making no sound at all.
“I knew that this was not a military or civilian aircraft, and I rushed into my house and woke up my parents to tell them what I had just witnessed. All of us then went outside to see if we could see the craft, but there was nothing.
“I never told the authorities because I didn’t know what to do, and during my time in the military I never spoke of the incident as I didn’t want to be ridiculed. However, it’s only been in the last two years that I found out about the RAF Cosford [Staffordshire] and Shawbury [Shropshire] incidents, and that what I saw was linked to [other] sightings over the U.K. that night.
“Ever since the incident, I have had a feeling of knowing that the craft will come back. It makes me feel uneasy, but at the same time I want to know where it was from and why it was here. I can’t explain it, but I have it in my head that in 2012 something is going to happen and that it’s linked to what I witnessed. It’s a feeling that never goes away, and when I go back to the spot where I witnessed the incident I get an overwhelming sense of uneasiness to this day. I think the military in the U.K. and the United States know of these craft but are keeping it under wraps away from the public so as not to alarm people….”18
Roger Wise and his partner were traveling along the Telford Road, Bridgnorth, on September 16, 1996, at about 23:00, when an extraordinary craft, similar in some respects to the one in Cyprus, appeared. “The object was an incredible size, flying slowly from the east,” Roger recounted for me. “It was low in the sky, rectangular in shape, rather like a skateboard moving sideways, with window lights/portholes all around it, with more than one tier. This, with several levels and the size, looked like the equivalent of a battleship.
“It then appeared to slow and from the mid-front released a fully lit spinning circle which spun off at top speed—like a flying saucer—toward the west and Clee Hill in a matter of seconds. The main UFO then turned around and went off back toward the east.”19
Yukon Territory
In some previous books I have referenced the encounter with three UFOs reported by the crew of a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 cargo flight over Alaska, en route to Anchorage, on November 17, 1986. During the encounter—which was tracked on radar—Captain Kenju Terauchi caught a brief glimpse of the main object’s walnut-shaped silhouette, judging it to be twice the size of an aircraft carrier.
On the evening of December 11, 1996, a huge craft, estimated by witnesses at the time to be “larger than a football stadium” (see photo section), was seen in three main areas along the 134-mile stretch of the Klondike Highway in Canada’s Yukon Territory. The majority of the twenty-two witnesses elected to remain anonymous.
“There was no sound at all coming from the object,” reported the principal investigator, Martin Jasek of UFO*BC, and the craft had a “huge, and long, row of lights around it. When a witness happened to point his flashlight at the craft, it started speeding toward him.
“A beam of light emanating from the bottom of the UFO swept the ground once directly underneath the object. Was it a search beam? Looking for him? The UFO then drifted slowly to the right. There were other beams emanating from the craft as well: a greenish phosphorescent color beam shone horizontally out the front (right); two beams at the back (left) rotated slowly to a horizontal position. All the beams could be seen clearly, as there were ice crystals in the air.”
The only witness to give his name was Don Trudeau, a trapper, who had a very close encounter with the craft near the village of Pelly Crossing. In company with many other witnesses, he was unable to determine its precise configuration, but based on the width of the rows of lights, he came up with a length of three quarters of a mile. Estimates of the craft’s actual size were determined by triangulation. “This method was employed six times to obtain six estimates for the size of the UFO,” explained Martin. “All revealed staggering results: the UFO ranged anywhere from 0.55 miles to 1.3 miles in length!”20<
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Arizona Air Display
One of the most widely observed incidents relating to enormous craft, of varying shapes, occurred on the evening of March 13, 1997, when thousands of eyewitnesses across Arizona—mostly in the Phoenix area—reported having seen a mile-long, V-shaped formation of lights, seemingly connected and flying relatively close to the ground. In addition to members of the public, witnesses included F-16 pilots from Luke Air Force Base and a retired pilot in Scottsdale who held ratings in Boeing 747 and DC-10 airliners. Together with others, the former airline pilot observed a huge formation of orange lights, attached to what looked like a structured object “at least a mile in area.”
A chevron-shaped craft, like “a carpenter’s square set at 60 degrees” and estimated to be at least two city blocks in length, was observed by Tim Ley who, together with members of his family, watched as it passed over their home. As it did so, the family felt a sensation “almost like stage fright.”21
Ten years later, Fife Symington III, former governor of Arizona, admitted to having seen an enormous triangular craft during the extraordinary air display that night. A cousin of the late Senator Stuart Symington, former Secretary of the Air Force, the governor had hitherto publicly ridiculed the incident at a press conference. “Unless the Defense Department proves us otherwise,” he stated during a CNN interview, “it was probably some form of alien spacecraft.”22 This is how he described what he saw to journalist Leslie Kean, author of a New York Times bestseller on UFOs:
“Between 8:00 and 8:30 on the evening of March 13, 1997, during my second term as governor of Arizona, I witnessed something that defied logic and challenged my reality: a massive, delta-shaped craft silently navigating over the Squaw Peak in the Phoenix Mountain preserve. A solid structure rather than an apparition, it was dramatically large, with a distinctive leading edge embedded with lights as it traveled the Arizona skies. I still don’t know what it was. As a pilot and a former Air Force officer, I can say with certainty that this craft did not resemble any man-made object I had ever seen.”23