Incident · 16 April 1978 · Southern England and South Wales (Bristol, Cardiff, Burton upon Trent, Somerset)
Wave of police and public sightings across southern Britain traced to space debris
Also known as 16 April 1978 UFO, 1978 re-entry sightings
Explained. The RAF linked the time-coincident reports to decaying space hardware re-entering the atmosphere, after RAF Fylingdales found that three catalogued objects had come down.
In the early hours of 16 April 1978 police forces across southern England and South Wales relayed reports of bright objects with glowing trails crossing the sky. The RAF plotted the reports, found they described something moving from south-west to north-east, and RAF Fylingdales, the ballistic-missile early-warning station, confirmed that three pieces of space hardware had decayed from orbit at the time.
The RAF cited the case in its briefing for the House of Lords debate on UFOs in January 1979 as an example of how such reports were investigated and explained. Re-entering space debris recurs as an explanation in the MoD files, as in the Cosford sightings of 1993.
Source: MoD file DEFE 24/2048 (pp. 108–138), The National Archives (opened March 2011)
Facts and claims
- documented A signal from the London Air Traffic Control Centre passed on a sighting of a bright white and orange exhaust trail reported through Bristol police, and noted similar reports in the early hours of 16 April from Cardiff Central Police, Burton-on-Trent police and the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. Source: defe-24-2048-1-1.pdf
- documented The RAF's investigation found that the phenomena were seen travelling from south-west to north-east across the southern half of the UK; after discussion with RAF Fylingdales, which reported that 3 items of space hardware had been deleted from the space catalogue, “it could be reasonably assumed that the witnesses had observed decaying items of hardware re-entering the earths atmosphere”. Source: defe-24-2048-1-1.pdf
- documented Briefing for the House of Lords UFO debate in 1978, the RAF used the case as its example of an investigation and wrote that “none of the unusual phenomena reports have ever been confirmed as having an unknown origin by our ground radar sites”. Source: defe-24-2048-1-1.pdf
Connected files
Documents
- Ministry of Defence UFO files: release of 3 March 2011 (35 files) (subject of) — DEFE 24/2048, pp. 108–138
Mentioned in this file
- The National Archives: guides to the Ministry of Defence UFO files (2008–2013) (Document)
- National Archives and Records Administration (Organization)
- Ministry of Defence (UK) (Organization)
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- Cosford incident: police and RAF sightings across western England and Wales
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