Television is only interested in UFOs when they remain ‘unexplained’ or mysterious; Identified Flying Objects don’t generally make for good entertainment. Even when a UFO has been fully identified, producers find it easier to gloss over inconvenient evidence, especially if they can call upon a former MoD desk jockey who believes that ET was involved. Channel Five’s ‘documentary’ The British UFO Mystery stood out as one of the most misleading and inaccurate TV programmes about UFOs in recent years. The programme claimed that a wave of UFO sightings on 31 March 1993 “defied all reasonable explanation” – because Nick Pope said so.

Pope, as we all know, once worked for the MoD’s UFO desk, his task to find a rational explanation for the sightings of lights and triangular UFOs reported by scores of people across the British Isles. In this case, he says, he was unable to find one. Some of the witnesses were police officers and military personnel who, the show suggested, could be relied upon to accurately estimate the height, speed and distance of the lights in the night sky. Viewers were assured that credible witnesses could not possibly make a mistake. But seasoned investigators will know that ‘credible witnesses’, even pilots, are often no more expert at identifying UFOs than the proverbial ‘man in the street’. Indeed the ‘Cosford incident’ (as this case has become known) was fully explained by ufologists in 1993 (see ‘The Secret Files’ FT194:23, 199:30–31). Jenny Randles, then director of investigations for BUFORA, found that a Russian rocket used to launch a satellite – Cosmos 2238 – had burned up on re-entry over the British Isles at the precise time a large cluster of the sightings were made. More recently, amateur astronomer Gary Anthony, working with experts from NASA, produced a computer simulation of the rocket’s trajectory which clearly illustrates the true source of the UFO flap. The simulation can be seen on Gary’s webpage dedicated to the case: www.mithrand.karoo.net/index.htm/cosford.htm.

If civilian investigators were able to solve this flap so quickly, how could the MoD, with all its resources, still be in the dark after 13 years? The only real mysteries that remain are how Nick Pope can turn a burning rocket into “vast triangular shaped craft, capable of accelerating to speeds of around Mach 2” and why Channel 5 insisted on turning a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Was it because, as TV reviewer Iain Heggie, noted, Pope gave them what they wanted: “an unexplained mystery”. Or as Pope put it: “Type of craft – unknown; Origin of craft – unknown. Motive of occupants – unknown.”

Stranger than Fiction: The British UFO Mystery, C5, 1 Nov; The Scotsman, 2 Nov; UFO Updates 1, 7 Nov 2006.