‘I thought it was great,’ I replied, continuing: ‘Do you think it could
really happen?’
My father looked at me out of the corner of his eye; and a knowing smile
crossed his face: ‘Maybe it already has,’ he replied, his voice dropping ever
so slightly.
The subject of this cryptic conversation: Steven Spielberg’s classic
film, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind,
which told the story of humankind’s first face-to-face meeting with an alien
species, and that we had just seen at Walsall’s ABC cinema. We climbed the stairs of the car park and headed for my
father’s Ford Capri car, and my
thirteen-year-old mind mused upon his comment.
‘What did you mean by that?’ I asked in reference to his curious words.
‘Hang on,’ he replied. ‘Let’s get out of the car park and I’ll tell
you,’ he said. And as we drove home on that late autumn evening, the startling
facts surrounding my father’s involvement in the UFO subject came tumbling out.
Like the majority of young men in Britain in the 1950s, my father was
required to serve a three-year-term in the military under British National
Service regulations. Because of his keen interest in aviation, he chose the
Royal Air Force. During his service with the RAF, he served at various RAF
stations, but by far the most memorable experience of his career occurred near
the East Coast of England at a place called RAF Neatishead, Norfolk.
It was September 1952 and my father was working as a radar mechanic.
‘So what happened?’ I asked, as we drove home.
‘Well,’ he began, ‘I remember that we were taking part in an exercise –
Mainbrace, it was called – and I was on duty. It was early in the morning –
four or five o’clock – maybe a bit later. Things were pretty normal until the
radar picked up something on the scopes.’
‘What was it?’ I asked eagerly.
‘At first,’ he explained, ‘we thought it might have been an aircraft,
but we knew soon enough that it was something else. We had this object, this
UFO, whatever you want to call it, on the scopes at fifty thousand feet, and
flying over the North Sea and parallel to the English coast. The speed of it
meant there was no way this was a plane.’
He continued: ‘The report went up the chain, and aircraft were scrambled
from Coltishall – which was a base nearby. Coltishall sent up Venom and Meteor
aircraft to try and get a look at the object. We were watching all this on the
screens thinking that it would turn out to be something ordinary. But when the
planes closed in, the UFO suddenly streaked away and headed towards Norway. The
pilots didn’t have a chance.
‘The next day,’ he added, ‘something strange happened. A bunch of people
came – a photographic team from Coltishall – and they had some really good gear
which they set up to record the radar’s Plan Position Indicator tube in case
the UFO came back. Well, the day following this, it did come back. We tracked
it; the planes went up, but this time we had it all on film.’
‘What happened then?’ I wondered.
My father replied: ‘We never knew. The guys from Coltishall removed
everything: the radar tapes, the records, all of it. Everyone was told not to
discuss it outside of the base. They never told us what the result was, and the
UFO never came back, but I won’t forget it.’
I sat back in the car-seat, amazed at what I had just heard. UFOs – so
often the subject of ridicule – really existed. And, more significantly,
Britain’s military knew it, too. The remainder of the journey was made in
silence; me trying to take in these remarkable facts and my father recalling
his long-gone days with the Royal Air Force.
Today, my father still vividly recalls the
events of September 1952 and is convinced that something truly strange did
indeed occur to both him and his colleagues on those fateful nights. I agree. And,
were it not for my father, I would not have set out on the journey that has
ultimately led me here. Thanks, Dad.
