Incident · 31 March 1993 · RAF Cosford and RAF Shawbury, Shropshire, and across Devon, Cornwall, South Wales and the Midlands
Cosford incident: police and RAF sightings across western England and Wales
Also known as Cosford incident, Cosford UFO, RAF Cosford 1993, RAF Shawbury UFO, 31 March 1993 UFO, Cosford black triangle, Cosford triangle
In the early hours of 31 March 1993 police officers, RAF Police patrols, soldiers on guard and members of the public across Cornwall, Devon, South Wales, Shropshire and Staffordshire reported bright lights, or a large object, moving at speed or hovering; at least seventy people saw something. At RAF Cosford two RAF Police officers watched two lights cross the airfield at about 1,000 feet, and a Met Office observer at RAF Shawbury described a huge craft, between a C-130 and a Boeing 747 in size, moving slowly, humming and shining a beam at the ground. The witnesses' descriptions in the file range from pairs of lights to a 150–200-metre object; the black triangle of later accounts comes from witnesses interviewed on television and from Nick Pope, who handled the case at the MoD. No military aircraft were flying.
The MoD's UFO desk checked radar and air traffic records and found nothing it judged significant; its head told the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff there seemed to be evidence of an object “of unknown origin”, a rare admission in the files. The re-entry of the Russian rocket that launched the Cosmos 2238 satellite later accounted for many of the high-level sightings around 1.10 am, but, as the MoD itself noted, not for the low-level ones.
Sources: MoD file DEFE 24/2086, The National Archives (opened August 2009) · Darren Perks, HuffPost UK, 3 July 2012
Facts and claims
- documented An RAF Police patrol at RAF Cosford reported that at 0115 on 31 March they saw two bright lights “flying at great velocity in a South Easterly direction at an altitude of approximately 1000 feet”, with no engine noise, crossing the airfield towards Wolverhampton; RAF Shawbury, Lyneham and Brize Norton told them no aircraft were flying. Source: defe-24-2086.pdf
- documented Staffordshire Police forwarded further reports gathered by an RAF Police corporal at Cosford, including guards at Ternhill barracks and RAF Stafford, and noted that “there was no activity in the area at all by any military or civil aéroplanes”. Source: defe-24-2086.pdf
- documented The Meteorological Office observer at RAF Shawbury reported the object projecting a narrow beam of light at the ground and estimated its size at between a C-130 and a Boeing 747 as it passed over him at about 4,000 feet. Source: defe-24-2086.pdf
- documented Radar replays showed some slow-moving primary contacts over Devon and Cornwall at about 1.10 and 1.20 am, but controllers at RAF West Drayton did not think them significant, as the Burrington radar head “is apparently prone to clutter”; the Clee Hill radar was not working on primary radar that night. Source: defe-24-2086.pdf
- documented RAF Fylingdales confirmed the decay of the Russian rocket that had launched Cosmos 2238 that night, but the UFO desk wrote that while it “might explain some of the high altitude sightings, it does not explain the low level sightings”. Source: defe-24-2086.pdf
- documented The head of the MoD's UFO secretariat told the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff in April 1993 that “there would seem to be some evidence on this occasion that an unidentified object (or objects) of unknown origin was operating over the UK.” Source: defe-24-2086.pdf
- documented The RAF Police log records that the Met Officer at RAF Shawbury saw two lights travel towards him over the airfield “moving erratically at hundreds of miles per hour unlike any aircraft”, “appearing to be searching for something”, heard a low humming noise and watched for five minutes; he had been a Met Officer for eight years “and had never seen anything like it before”. Source: defe-24-2086.pdf
- documented Descriptions of the shape in the MoD file vary: two bright circular lights (RAF Police at Cosford), a cream-lit object of an estimated 200 metres with a humming noise (a witness at Rugeley, who believed it had landed but found nothing), an oval about 150 metres long (a Staffordshire Police report), a “Large Catamaran” (witnesses quoted by a civilian research group), and triangular formations of three lights (members of the public). Source: defe-24-2086.pdf
- claimed In a later television interview Darren Perks described the object as “black, solid triangular”, blocking out the stars, and Nick Pope said multiple witnesses near RAF Shawbury reported “a clearly structured black triangular craft”, the description by which the case is now best known. Source: Ross Coulthart investigates the UK's UFO files: Nick Pope on the Cosford incident (7NEWS Australia) at 4:18
- claimed Darren Perks, then a 16-year-old air cadet and a frequent visitor to RAF Shawbury, wrote in 2012 that at about 11 pm on 30 March 1993 in north Shrewsbury he watched a slow-moving object about 300 ft up: “It was a black triangle shape, structured, approx 200ft in length”, which “blocked out the stars”, with a faint red or orange glow at the two rear points and a brilliant white light at the front moving back and forth “as if was looking for something”. Source: huffingtonpost.co.uk (archived)
- claimed He wrote that it moved at about walking speed with “a very low humming sound” for some two minutes, then “shot off to the north at incredible speed making no sounds at all”; he did not report it to the authorities, and linked it to the Cosford incident only in 2007. Source: huffingtonpost.co.uk (archived)
- documented The Devon UFO Research Organisation's interim report, sent to the MoD and filed in DEFE 24/2086, records a police sergeant at Ilfracombe who said that at about 1.10 am, driving down into Lynton with another officer, they saw two very large bright white lights approaching from the north across the Bristol Channel, at an estimated 2,000 feet; as the lights passed overhead “both officers discerned a structure between the lights” and estimated that an object some 500 feet wide had passed over them at low altitude (DEFE 24/2086, pp. 79–80). Source: defe-24-2086.pdf
- documented In its final report (DEFE 24/2086, pp. 12–13), the organisation attributed most of the 1.10 am police reports to the re-entry of the rocket that launched Cosmos 2238, but not the Lynton officers' sighting: they saw a third, smaller light between the two, “two white vapour like trails” behind them, and objects at an elevation of 40 degrees between 1,000 and 2,000 feet away; the author wrote that he hardly thought the officers “could be mistaken in their judgements”. Source: defe-24-2086.pdf
- claimed Sgt. Barry Mitchell and Officer Gus Cottey of Barnstaple Police later told the Lynton sighting on camera: Mitchell took the three lights to be fixed to one object that, had it been a conventional aircraft of that size, would have been deafening; Cottey said they kept quiet until another officer in Cornwall reported the same over the radio. — Barry Mitchell Source: Sightings: the 1993 UK triangle wave that changed Nick Pope's mind, with the Devon police witnesses at 3:09
Connected files
Documents
People
- Barry Mitchell (witnesses) — On patrol near Lynton, North Devon, with Officer Gus Cottey, he saw lights come in over the Bristol Channel at about 1.10 am on 31 March 1993
- Gus Cottey (witnesses) — On patrol near Lynton, North Devon, with Sgt. Barry Mitchell, he saw lights come in over the Bristol Channel at about 1.10 am on 31 March 1993
Videos
- Citizen Hearing 2013: Associated Phenomena (discussed in)
- Ross Coulthart investigates the UK's UFO files: Nick Pope on the Cosford incident (7NEWS Australia) (subject of)
- Sightings: the 1993 UK triangle wave that changed Nick Pope's mind, with the Devon police witnesses (subject of)
Mentioned in this file
- Boeing (Organization)
- Nick Pope (Person)
- Ministry of Defence (UK) (Organization)
- National Archives and Records Administration (Organization)
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