The famous Channel Islands UFO!

[Rocky_53 1,566]

Hey fellas, believe me, as someone who has encountered something which was clearly unexplainable, I find this sighting really interesting. Here's my encounter, from more than 40 years ago...

 

Edited May 25, 2023 by Rockliffe

[jon b 2,041]

Yes.

Stop and look long enough, you’ll be amazed at what you might see.

[jon b 2,041]

Regarding the Channel Islands UFO , there’s a copy of the  primary RADAR tape knocking about, one of the Jersey zone controllers had it in his shed. It’s played on a documentary I’ve watched , can’t remember which one though.

[martin-w 3,234]

3 hours ago, Rockliffe said:

Hey fellas, believe me, as someone who has encountered something which was clearly unexplainable, I find this sighting really interesting. Here's my encounter, from more than 40 years ago

 

What a fascinating encounter. Thanks for sharing that with us. I've no idea what that could be.

[martin-w 3,234]

1 hour ago, jon b said:

Regarding the Channel Islands UFO , there’s a copy of the  primary RADAR tape knocking about, one of the Jersey zone controllers had it in his shed. It’s played on a documentary I’ve watched , can’t remember which one though.

 

Thanks Jon. I'd like to see that. I've not seen it in any of the videos I've seen. 

[birdguy 3,943]

It could be that Earth isthe galactic insane asylum and UFOs are just dropping off more inmates.

Noel

[FBW737 511]

17 hours ago, martin-w said:

A superior mirage doesn't appear at such a high altitude though does it? It was at 2000 feet

"A Fata Morgana may be observed from any altitude within the Earth's atmosphere, from sea level up to mountaintops, and even including the view from aircraft"

The big give away is the fact the image seen was symmetrical along its horizontal axis. In other words a mirror image. To me that's a dead giveaway.

Also without doing any research I'll speculate that the atmospheric temperature gradient that caused the mirage to begin with could show up on radar?

Edited May 26, 2023 by FBW737

[Rocky_53 1,566]

10 hours ago, birdguy said:

It could be that Earth isthe galactic insane asylum and UFOs are just dropping off more inmates.

Noel

Ha ha, or for just 'having a laugh!" 

[martin-w 3,234]

8 hours ago, FBW737 said:

"A Fata Morgana may be observed from any altitude within the Earth's atmosphere, from sea level up to mountaintops, and even including the view from aircraft"

The big give away is the fact the image seen was symmetrical along its horizontal axis. In other words a mirror image. To me that's a dead giveaway.

Also without doing any research I'll speculate that the atmospheric temperature gradient that caused the mirage to begin with could show up on radar?

 

Hmm.... you may be correct! Still not completely convinced though.

That's observed FROM any altitude. But they still appear at lower altitudes I understood. And I understood that they change as you approach, which Bowyer's didn't. And how much of a coincidence would it be for TWO to appear in two different locations, one over Alderley and one over Sark? That's 33 kilometers apart?

And what of the grey block in the middle that Bowyer saw through his binoculars that had lights at each end? 

[dmwalker 601]

Wouldn't you think that a genuine UFO, one mile long and bright yellow and at only 2000ft would have been spotted from the ground or from some ship or ferry in the Channel?

Also, if it was a mirage of a ship, wouldn't it still look like a ship?

[martin-w 3,234]

10 minutes ago, dmwalker said:

Wouldn't you think that a genuine UFO, one mile long and bright yellow and at only 2000ft would have been spotted from the ground or from some ship or ferry in the Channel?

Also, if it was a mirage of a ship, wouldn't it still look like a ship?

 

Some good points. 

Regarding ships or ground sightings, there was an overcast layer. When Bowyer descended to land, he lost site of it as he entered the overcast. So that explains why nobody we know of saw it from land or ship. 

As per below... do mirages fly in formation with each other? 🤔 And does a mirage have a couple of black bands that are shimmering? 

 

Quote

and that it had been "a very sharply defined, solid, bright yellow-gold object with a couple of black bands on the side that were kind of shimmering"

Bowyer said that he approached the light and looked at it through his binoculars, and later remarked that he had been "able to look at this fantastic light without discomfort".^[7] He reported seeing a second object shortly after the first, which he said had moved in formation with the first set of lights.^[7] The Evening Standard, a British newspaper, quoted Bowyer as describing this object as "exactly the same … [but] further away", being closer to the island of Guernsey. He stated that it was "clearly visual" for approximately nine minutes.^[3]

 

 

[dmwalker 601]

22 minutes ago, martin-w said:

there was an overcast layer. When Bowyer descended to land, he lost site of it as he entered the overcast

Are you sure it was overcast? Although Bowyer says "there was cloud above it and all the way down to Guernsey", he did wonder at one point whether what he saw was sunlight reflecting off greenhouses and he did say he lost sight of it when he descended through a haze.

[martin-w 3,234]

2 hours ago, dmwalker said:

Are you sure it was overcast? Although Bowyer says "there was cloud above it and all the way down to Guernsey", he did wonder at one point whether what he saw was sunlight reflecting off greenhouses and he did say he lost sight of it when he descended through a haze.

 

Hmm.... I guess it was haze over Alderley then. He said he first saw it/them from 40 to 50 miles away from the object, so pretty clear at that point. 

Edited May 26, 2023 by martin-w

[dmwalker 601]

I'm sorry, I got a bit carried away but here are excerpts from David Clarke's book “The UFO Files”:

I obtained a tape recording of Bowyer's conversation with air traffic controller Paul Kelly. On the recording, three minutes after his initial sighting, Bowyer asks:

“Do you have any traffic, can't really say how far, about my 12 o'clock, level?”
Kelly replied: “No, no known traffic at all in your 12 o'clock.”
Bowyer responded: “I've got a very bright object....extremely bright yellow, orange object, straight ahead....Looking at it through binoculars as we speak”
At this point, Kelly says he can see 'a very faint primary contact' on his radar, four miles from the aircraft, but he dismissed this as a weather anomaly.

With the objects still visible, Paul Kelly put out a call to the crews of other aircraft overflying the English Channel. On radio he asked if they could see anything unusual. Immediately, the captain of a Jetstream aircraft en route to Jersey from the Isle of Man, reported he could 'see something fitting the description, yellow/beige in colour, in my eight o'clock position, slightly to the north-west of Alderney at what I estimated to be 2,000 feet below.' Visibility was fairly poor but the object was in sight for about one minute. Captain Patrick Patterson later told me he believed this was some kind of 'atmospheric phenomenon'.

Meanwhile, Captain Bowyer was preparing his aircraft for landing. As he descended, he saw the two UFOs change their positions so they appeared to line up, one directly above the other. When he reached a layer of haze at 2,000 ft, they had vanished. In total they were visible for 12 minutes during which his sighting had been corroborated by his passengers and the captain of the Jetstream aircraft.

Despite good evidence that something unusual had been seen, the file on the case reveals the MoD decided that, because the sighting occurred in French airspace, the phenomena posed no threat to the UK.

After a year's work, we were able to eliminate many of the usual explanations for UFO sightings, such as sundogs, mirages, reflections and other unusual natural phenomena.

With no obvious rational explanation available, we concluded this was a genuine example of an 'unidentified aerial phenomena' (UAP) and one that deserved further scientific study. But it was clear this type of study was of no interest to the Ministry of Defence or any other government body.

[FBW737 511]

15 hours ago, martin-w said:

Still not completely convinced though

Martin, when is the last time you were ever completely convinced of anything?🤣

Edited May 27, 2023 by FBW737