Newly unclassified Ministry of Defence files in the UK have revealed the allegation that Winston Churchill ordered records of a close encounter with a British World War Two pilot to be hidden away for fifty years.
The British Wartime Prime Minister, on discussing the incident with US Wartime General alledgedly claimed:
“This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic among the general population and destroy one’s belief in the Church.”
It’s possible that many are reading too much into this incident. The purported documents are of a report submitted by a British man in 1999 claiming to be the grandson of one of Churchill’s bodyguards, who overheard the discussion.
The released records are not an official account of the alleged incident.
The alleged incident involved a returning recon plane over the East coast of the UK. A metallic object apparently hovered nearby the plane matching its course and speed for a time before changing course and accelerating away.
However, the release of official MOD documents does show evidence that hundreds of planes were scrambled over UK skies in reaction to UFO sightings during the cold war era. This may reflect more as a sign of the times than any concrete case for the existence of little green men.
Nick Pope, who worked for the MOD on their mysterious X-files explained: “Most sightings turned out to be misidentifications of things like aircraft lights or meteors, but a small proportion could not be explained.”
The released files can be viewed for free in PDF format for a month here: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos
