Sightings: the 1993 UK triangle wave that changed Nick Pope's mind, with the Devon police witnesses

0:00 welcome to sightings I'm Tim White on a past edition of sightings we introduced you to Nick Pope the British defense ministry's former Point man for UFO investigations when I first interviewed Pope last year he told me that he was a non-believer until one extraordinary UFO report changed his mind completely it's a case little known outside of England but one that has the power to turn Skeptics into True Believers Nick Pope has been transferred away from the UFO desk at the ministry of Defense but his book open Skies closed minds has him once again at the center of Britain's UFO debate it's an unlikely position for a man who started out as had died in the wool skeptic when I started the UFO job at the ministry of Defense I really didn't know what I was letting myself in for I came in as a skeptic and with very little knowledge of what it was all about then one startling report and Nick Pope

1:02 was never the same again I'd been doing the UFO job for a year or so when a case came along which really changed my perception on the whole UFO mystery it occurred on the 30th and the 31st of March 1993 and it was without doubt one of the most major waves of sightings that Britain had ever seen at 105 a.m March 31st 1993 the report began radar did not detect a massive UFO in British airspace there were military and police eyewitnesses and impeccable documentation there were dozens of dozens of witnesses all over the country at many of them because this was late at night were police officers on night Patrol and military personnel on guard UFO investigator Doug Cooper was awakened at 2 20 that morning by a shaken Cornwall police Sergeant who described what he and others had just seen the object was black and it

2:05 appeared to be shaped either something like a wedge shape or a delta wing shape or indeed like a catamaran a twin holes craft there were lights on this on this craft which they appeared to be on either end of it which they described as about 500 feet apart at the ministry of Defense Nick Pope was being inundated with questions about the UFO's Origins I launched a full inquiry into this I made a series of very detailed checks to try and find a prosaic explanation for this I checked aircraft movements uh satellite tracks um airships weather balloons but after an extremely detailed inquiry that took me several weeks I drew a complete plank this was a genuine Pope and Cooper persevered in large part because of the sheer number of reliable eyewitnesses hope poured over the reports of Devon Patrol officers Barry

3:07 Mitchell and Gus cutting observed the UFO near the Bristol Channel Gus and I both sort of looked at each and got to stop the car and we got out I've never seen anything like that before certainly three lights that we saw I certainly from the opinion that they were fixed to the same object or I couldn't see any object traveling at the same speed and had it been a conventional sized aircraft it would have been a deafening it was probably an overview for about 30 it was really really strange yeah those are the three lights in the position and that's our vehicle you just don't know what to say the first time you come across something like that they're not in drawings only came out after they discovered they were not alone it's very difficult to come

4:07 out of the closet so to speak and talk about these things openly so Barry and I decided not to say anything initially but then another officer in Cornwall came up over the radio and said that he'd seen this one so once it had broken the ice we just then said oh yeah we've seen them as well and then other offices came across the radio as well to say that they'd seen the lights as well in fact police all over Southern England were calling dispatch with UFO sightings of Their Own the other officers who saw these lights albeit some of those offices were in excess of 60 or 70 miles away from where we were the timing of their sighting was exactly the same as the timing of our sighting putting the whole thing together makes it even further a bigger mystery police officers are reliable and they're not given to flight to fancy as well as we're concerned they're reporting something which they've seen which they don't understand this is basically what

5:07 we're talking about it's an object which they can't identify with and I suppose to some extent I mean rather alarm them at mod pop Red secret Air Force documents and discovered that the RAF was just as baffled as he he realized that something had happened and he seems to have gone out of his way to be as helpful as he possibly could by sending me a letter with with the map on it of course we've never had this before from anybody in that position not only did Pope send a map showing when and how the UFO had traveled he also included where a complete list of sightings locations including several military installations something only the defense Ministry knew pope did it because he felt the UFO posed a serious threat something had flown into England and Military radar didn't catch it I ordered the radar tapes to be impounded and sent to me in my office I then sat down viewed them

6:08 and then brought in an air defense expert to have another look we were clear that there was nothing on the tape this was very worrying we'd got to reports from military personnel of a sizable craft operating very low over two of our military bases and there was nothing on radar so we never had any warning and we never even got our area defense aircraft into the into the air the mod are faced with the situation where they have an object line across our counties and they have no way of detecting it whether they're alien alien craft of otherwise is another matter but the fact is that an unknown craft crossed right across these candies and the RAF do not appear it's up on their radar if a structured craft of Unknown Origin has evaded detection by the Royal Air Force the implications are Global if the world's air defense systems cannot respond what will that's got to be extremely worrying and that's got to

7:09 mean that this whole UFO sighting is a matter of extreme defense significance the party line the ministry of Defense standard view is that UFOs are of no defense significance after this incident I didn't have much time for that standard line I felt it simply didn't stand up to the facts and it was from this point that my views on the whole UFO phenomenon began to change and I began to realize that it wasn't just lights in the sky it couldn't be explained and there may well be some extraterrestrial explanation to a hardcore of these UFO sightings we ask the ministry of defense for comment on this report the mod's official response states that while they remain open-minded about the possible existence of flying saucers they quote remain unaware of any evidence which proves that these phenomena exist