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As Above So Below
The Strange Mystery of the Cosford UFO Incident
Among UFO sightings some of the more spectacular are those of mass sightings, in which many people, sometimes dozens or hundreds, witness the same strange things going on in the skies. Although rarer than most accounts, such mass sightings typically provide a rich variety of witnesses, many of them often very trusted people in social high standing, or professionals, trained personnel, and experts. They often serve to be harder to explain away than typical sightings, and usually earn there place among the more bizarre UFO accounts. One such incident occurred in England back in the 1990s, and remains one of the most amazing and famous mass UFO sightings there is.
The beginning of what as gone on to be one of the most talked about mass UFO sighting incidents in recent memory was March 30, 1993, in the country of England. On this evening there suddenly began a deluge of reports coming in from the across a swath of southwest England, particularly in the vicinity of Shropshire, of something decidedly weird in the sky, from witnesses of all walks of life and many of them traditionally. One of the first reports came from a policeman who claimed to have seen a massive object resembling “two Concordes flying side by side and joined together,” and there were other reports that put the object’s size at a massive 200 meters long. Other reports claimed that the object had been observed sometimes flying very low to the ground, and there was even a panicked resident who claimed that it had landed in a field. Dozens of reports like this came in, and curiously people were giving different descriptions, including a cylindrical object, a triangular-shaped craft with three lights, and a pair of lights seeming to emit a tail-like plume, suggesting there was more than one aerial disturbance at work. Yet this was only the beginning.
The south England countryside
Continuing into March 31st, 1993, the reports kept coming in, and it seemed as if the phenomena had gotten even more active. The evening of the 31st would also mark a series of high level sightings from police and military personnel, who had been on alert due to the sheer number of anomalous reports the night before. There would be several sightings made from RAF bases in the region, including sightings of a fast moving red light by personnel at RAF Cosford and another incident at RAF Shawbury. One meteorologist at RAF Shawbury by the name of Wayne Elliot would claim that a triangular shaped craft measuring around 200 feet across had slowly approached his base slowly while emitting a low humming noise and, then shot a bright beam of light towards the ground before shooting off at amazing speed while leaving a luminous vapor trail in its wake. At no point were any of these objects picked up on radar at the bases. Some of the reports were scattered over a wide area, as another military encounter with one of the objects allegedly happened to an Irish military helicopter en route to Ireland over the coast of southwest Wales. The crew would report seeing “two white lights at a fixed distance apart in the horizontal plane” with trails visible through night vision equipment, that appeared to close the distance and pace them for a time.
The sightings were investigated by Nick Pope, who ran the UFO project run by the British Ministry of Defense (MoD), and he collected a steady stream of the reports, which he described as “coming in thick and fast,” in particular from the areas of Devon, Cornwall and Wales. Pope would claim to gather several hundred eyewitness reports of the bizarre unidentified aerial phenomena from March 30 and 31, and he also asserted that it was such a major incident that it even captured the attention of military officials at the Pentagon, who he believed included it in their 490-page secret report under the part of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. Pope has said of this:
Despite how amazing this may all seem, we are still left to wonder about just what exactly was seen by all of these witnesses, and there has been much debate on the matter. One very prevalent theory is that the aerial phenomena were caused by some kind of falling space debris, notably the re-entry of a Russian satellite called the Cosmos 2238, which it turns out was scheduled to renter the atmosphere on the evening of March 31. This would not be out of the question, as falling space debris has caused UFO flaps before, and incidentally, a similar Cosmos satellite that had gone down in the winter of 1978 also coincided with a wave of UFO sightings. A reentering satellite might explain some of the sightings, but it would not really explain the fact that many of the reports describe distinctly triangular objects that were allegedly seen flying in a seemingly intelligently controlled manner, including changing speed, hovering, or flying low to the ground, even in one case landing and taking off, which doesn’t really fit in with the space debris theory. The Russian satellite angle also would not explain the sightings going on during the evening of March 30, nor the insistence of some very trained witnesses that these were not space debris. So what are some of the other other possibilities? Other ideas are that this was some sort of top secret experimental aircraft being tested, a military black op, or some strange atmospheric phenomena. There is also the possibility that this was just misidentified normal aircraft such as airplanes or helicopters. One local police investigator has said of this likelihood:
One of the problems with trying to get to the bottom of the Cosford Incident is that Nick Pope has been accused by skeptics and even others within the UFO field of being a bit over zealous in his approach, and too willing to try and fit everything into his own preconceived theories. He has been accused of cherry picking, twisting and misrepresenting data to fit his needs, leading witnesses in interviews into the outcomes he wants, and generally exaggerating certain elements of the cases, giving misleading statements, or leaving out certain information to misrepresent the facts. For instance, although Pope has admitted that some of the sightings could have been space debris, he rarely mentions this, instead focusing on the more bizarre and mysterious sightings and elements. UFO researcher Gary Anthony has criticized Pope’s approach in relation to his participation in a documentary of the incident called The British UFO Mystery – Stranger Than Fiction, saying of it:
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Among UFO sightings some of the more spectacular are those of mass sightings, in which many people, sometimes dozens or hundreds, witness the same strange things going on in the skies. Although rarer than most accounts, such mass sightings typically provide a rich variety of witnesses, many of them often very trusted people in social high standing, or professionals, trained personnel, and experts. They often serve to be harder to explain away than typical sightings, and usually earn there place among the more bizarre UFO accounts. One such incident occurred in England back in the 1990s, and remains one of the most amazing and famous mass UFO sightings there is.
The beginning of what as gone on to be one of the most talked about mass UFO sighting incidents in recent memory was March 30, 1993, in the country of England. On this evening there suddenly began a deluge of reports coming in from the across a swath of southwest England, particularly in the vicinity of Shropshire, of something decidedly weird in the sky, from witnesses of all walks of life and many of them traditionally. One of the first reports came from a policeman who claimed to have seen a massive object resembling “two Concordes flying side by side and joined together,” and there were other reports that put the object’s size at a massive 200 meters long. Other reports claimed that the object had been observed sometimes flying very low to the ground, and there was even a panicked resident who claimed that it had landed in a field. Dozens of reports like this came in, and curiously people were giving different descriptions, including a cylindrical object, a triangular-shaped craft with three lights, and a pair of lights seeming to emit a tail-like plume, suggesting there was more than one aerial disturbance at work. Yet this was only the beginning.
The south England countryside
Continuing into March 31st, 1993, the reports kept coming in, and it seemed as if the phenomena had gotten even more active. The evening of the 31st would also mark a series of high level sightings from police and military personnel, who had been on alert due to the sheer number of anomalous reports the night before. There would be several sightings made from RAF bases in the region, including sightings of a fast moving red light by personnel at RAF Cosford and another incident at RAF Shawbury. One meteorologist at RAF Shawbury by the name of Wayne Elliot would claim that a triangular shaped craft measuring around 200 feet across had slowly approached his base slowly while emitting a low humming noise and, then shot a bright beam of light towards the ground before shooting off at amazing speed while leaving a luminous vapor trail in its wake. At no point were any of these objects picked up on radar at the bases. Some of the reports were scattered over a wide area, as another military encounter with one of the objects allegedly happened to an Irish military helicopter en route to Ireland over the coast of southwest Wales. The crew would report seeing “two white lights at a fixed distance apart in the horizontal plane” with trails visible through night vision equipment, that appeared to close the distance and pace them for a time.
The sightings were investigated by Nick Pope, who ran the UFO project run by the British Ministry of Defense (MoD), and he collected a steady stream of the reports, which he described as “coming in thick and fast,” in particular from the areas of Devon, Cornwall and Wales. Pope would claim to gather several hundred eyewitness reports of the bizarre unidentified aerial phenomena from March 30 and 31, and he also asserted that it was such a major incident that it even captured the attention of military officials at the Pentagon, who he believed included it in their 490-page secret report under the part of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. Pope has said of this:
Despite how amazing this may all seem, we are still left to wonder about just what exactly was seen by all of these witnesses, and there has been much debate on the matter. One very prevalent theory is that the aerial phenomena were caused by some kind of falling space debris, notably the re-entry of a Russian satellite called the Cosmos 2238, which it turns out was scheduled to renter the atmosphere on the evening of March 31. This would not be out of the question, as falling space debris has caused UFO flaps before, and incidentally, a similar Cosmos satellite that had gone down in the winter of 1978 also coincided with a wave of UFO sightings. A reentering satellite might explain some of the sightings, but it would not really explain the fact that many of the reports describe distinctly triangular objects that were allegedly seen flying in a seemingly intelligently controlled manner, including changing speed, hovering, or flying low to the ground, even in one case landing and taking off, which doesn’t really fit in with the space debris theory. The Russian satellite angle also would not explain the sightings going on during the evening of March 30, nor the insistence of some very trained witnesses that these were not space debris. So what are some of the other other possibilities? Other ideas are that this was some sort of top secret experimental aircraft being tested, a military black op, or some strange atmospheric phenomena. There is also the possibility that this was just misidentified normal aircraft such as airplanes or helicopters. One local police investigator has said of this likelihood:
One argument against this is that many of the observers were reliable, trained witnesses such as FAF personnel, police officers, and the meteorologist, so how could they all misidentify a helicopter or plane? UFO investigator Chris Fowler has addressed this by explaining the problems with leaning too heavily on supposed expert witnesses, pointing out that even trained and seasoned individuals can be fooled by innate problems with our senses of perception. Fowler says of this:
One of the problems with trying to get to the bottom of the Cosford Incident is that Nick Pope has been accused by skeptics and even others within the UFO field of being a bit over zealous in his approach, and too willing to try and fit everything into his own preconceived theories. He has been accused of cherry picking, twisting and misrepresenting data to fit his needs, leading witnesses in interviews into the outcomes he wants, and generally exaggerating certain elements of the cases, giving misleading statements, or leaving out certain information to misrepresent the facts. For instance, although Pope has admitted that some of the sightings could have been space debris, he rarely mentions this, instead focusing on the more bizarre and mysterious sightings and elements. UFO researcher Gary Anthony has criticized Pope’s approach in relation to his participation in a documentary of the incident called The British UFO Mystery – Stranger Than Fiction, saying of it:
In the end, the whole incident has sort of quietly been brushed away, and is rarely talked about outside of UFO circles, despite how many witnesses there apparently were. What was going on here? Was this merely space debris? Was it experimental aircraft, aliens, atmospheric phenomena, or all of the above? How reliable is Pope’s documentation of the supposed events and is there anything we are missing? There is no way to really know the answers to such questions and others like them, and we are left to wonder just what went on over the English countryside in March of 1993.
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