The 72ft severed blade was found on the ground beneath the turbine, she said, adding that the company could not speculate on the cause of the damage.

Long time Lurker, first time poster... Be gentle with me!

I have a bit of additional first hand info about this Conisholme business as my mother lives about five miles from the village and her best friends actually live in the village itself, about a quarter of a mile from the turbines. I have also visited the site myself a number of times. Additionally, my brother-in-law is an engineer at a nearby airbase.

The circumstances....

1. Confirmed directly by my mum and her friend, the weather on the night in question was sub-zero, relatively windless and reasonably clear.

2. Conisholme is a small village in rural Lincs, there aren't many streetlights and very little light pollution. The milky way can be seen quite clearly on very clear nights.

3. Lincolnshire is extremely flat in terrain, making it ideal for wind farms. I have visited the actual wind farm in question and can confirm that the structures are enormous, you would not be able to reach the blades without a crane. There would be no possibility of climbing them manually.

4. Conisholme is less than 10 minutes flight-time from the nearest air base which is used for training and well as quick-response defense manoeuvres.

The incident...

1. My mother's friends, both husband and wife, were woken by a loud humming noise seemingly overhead which was subsequently followed by an almighty thud that sounded like an impact rather than an explosion. They did not hear any aircraft noise or see any lights.

2. In the village itself, literally dozens of people claim to have seen orange lights with 'tentacles' having been woken by the humming and unusual level of light for night time.

3. My mother's friend reported that there was a distinct smell of sulphur immediately following the impact that remained for several minutes.

The aftermath...

1. The missing blade has now been recovered, the result of an arial search. Unconfirmed reports suggest it was recovered from a field about half a mile away.

2. There has been a lot of activity (as you can imagine) around the village but a lot of people are speculating that this has included Air Force Staff with Geiger Meters.

3. Speaking to my BIL this morning, he was unaware of any scheduled flight missions from the base (he is an engineer) and confirmed that there had certainly not been any impact damage sustained to any aircraft at his base. He described flying at the height of the wind farm structures to be 'suicidally dangerous' anyhow.

Conclusions...

1. Having seen the structures myself, I am virtually certain that it would be impossible for the turbine to have been sabotaged by any individual.

2. Although it was below freezing which may have formed ice on the turbines, there was insufficient wind that night for the turbines to spin. It does need to be really quite windy to make them spin fast. I really do doubt the damage could have been mechanical failure.

3. I am certain that my BIL would have been involved in assessing the damage to an aircraft if one had been involved in a collision. Hitting a blade might not necessarily down a fighter craft but it would have to be temporarily decommisioned upon return to assess it's safety at the very least.

4. It seems to me that something struck the wind turbine at Conisholme at a very high speed. I am confident in my information which discounts some of the other possible causes.

I'm not certain that a 'UFO' was involved, despite the witness testimonies, but I think it likely that something unconventional happened. I personally lean towards the likelihood of a meteor crashing to earth (which will almost certainly be found eventually) but either way, it's an interesting case.

Apologies for length, hope this helps clear a few things up!

i believe so! i live in the west of hull and my eldest daughter has seen wot she describes as an orange glow with legs we dont live that far from the wind turbines in lincolnshire.

Well listening to that interview with "Dale Vince of Ecotricity" , it would seem the engineers dont really know what happened. So its a bit silly to be saying things like " Oh the gears jammed " or whatever - im sure their engineers would have worked that one out when they got a look at it.

The structural properties of the blades are similar in design to an large aircrafts wing, it is perfectly designed to be aerodynamic and reduce unwanted drag upon rotation however the object that hit the blade would not need to be that substatial in size nor weight if the blade was in rotation. An object hitting the tip of the blade during rotation might be enough to unbalance it, imagine the pivotal weight of a 65ft blade during rotation.
There is a counter argument that if the blade become unbalanced in rotation there are safety systems that would activate the braking sytem but still does not shed any light on why the blade was not found near the site if this report is true.
All speculation the only people that will know are the engineers that have the parts.
:-)

I am from N E Lincs very near grimsby and on the night of new years eve my husband came to fetch me to look in the sky to see what he said was something strange....it was a cloudy night there for not one star could be seen it was around 10 or 11 pm and we both saw an orange/redish ball high in the sky moving very very slow....there was no sound what so ever, now we do get police helicopter and the rig helicopter coming over very often and there is always sound....there is also sound with aeroplanes...so we quickly established that neither of us thought it was any of these, we watched it for a time move exeptionaly slowly then it blinked out then seconds later a second one appeared further away and started to fly in the same direction as the first....we watched for about 30 seconds then this one too blinked out and disspeared....at this point we were cold and went in and so if any more appeared we would not know, we have mentioned to each other since abotu how strange it was....then today we saw the news of orange balls colliding with wind farm turbines...makes us wonder...!!!