RAF Lightning UFO Mystery 1970 - (hoaxed pilot transcript).

As the Ministry have lied for so many years about this, was the transcript hoaxed by the Ministry of Defence? What reason do we have to believe them now other than a desire to debunk?

Originally posted by Pimander
As the Ministry have lied for so many years about this, was the transcript hoaxed by the Ministry of Defence? What reason do we have to believe them now other than a desire to debunk?

edit on 3/2/11 by Pimander because: (no reason given)

None specifically, but then the same argument can be used in reverse regarding the "other" transcript.

As in the majority of cases there is no definitive answer, but based on what is known surely it appears highly likely that there is a mundane explanation for what was a tragic incident.

MOD (mundane explanation) v unnamed source to local paper (extraordinary explanation) - ultimately you take your pick, I do know the MOD doesn't have to make a profit selling it's reports.

I also know, having worked for the MOD on USAF bases, how the relationship works and why there may have been a tendency for the MOD to avoid media exposure. However my opinion doesn't have to have made it happen that way.

Originally posted by chunder

Originally posted by Pimander
As the Ministry have lied for so many years about this, was the transcript hoaxed by the Ministry of Defence? What reason do we have to believe them now other than a desire to debunk?

edit on 3/2/11 by Pimander because: (no reason given)

MOD (mundane explanation) v unnamed source to local paper (extraordinary explanation) - ultimately you take your pick, I do know the MOD doesn't have to make a profit selling it's reports.

Although I also do lean slightly in favour of the MOD explanation, the only one of the two sources we know for sure have lied is the MOD. What I am hinting at is that the change in title to the thread makes this case appear conclusively proven to be a hoax.

Perhaps the words MOD claim pilot transcript was hoaxed would be more appropriate?

reply to post by Pimander


I guess that's really just a matter of semantics. Personally I prefer for something to be labelled a hoax if that is more than likely and until it is proven otherwise but again, just my opinion.

Maybe "probable hoaxed pilot transcript ?" or as you suggest but that's up to the op, who has authored many excellent threads and I think with this one it is for the best that it at least has the word hoax somewhere in the title

Originally posted by chunder
Maybe "probable hoaxed pilot transcript ?" or as you suggest but that's up to the op, who has authored many excellent threads and I think with this one it is for the best that it at least has the word hoax somewhere in the title

I agree that the word hoax should appear in the title. One or all of the transcripts must be faked.

I don`t know about the transcripts of the pilot/controller. However when HMS Kedleston recovered the wreckage it was NOT taken directly to RAF Binbrook (I don`t know where that is). It was actually taken to HMS Lochinvar in South Queensferry, Scotland, where the Kedleston and her sister-ships were based. I was there the night the wreckage was brought in as I was the Duty SA that night in Lochinvar and I had issued the necessary extra ropes/strops/cabling required to bring the aircraft to the surface. Some 3-4 RAF trucks backed down along the jetty and removed the wreckage. There were also a couple of Staff-cars as I remember it. Of course it was long ago and my memory is probably not 100%. But it was darn cold that night I DO remember. From what I remember the wreck was found by a minehunter (possibly HMS Iveston?) after a slick of oil on the surface was spotted. I was up most of the night and they took virtually all the ropes that I had in stock. From which I gathered that the wreck was deep down. I can say with certainty that there was no smell of decay from the wreckage.

reply to post by exroyalnavy


Thanks for adding to the stock of knowledge regarding the incident and for stating facts as you know it without embellishment.

reply to post by karl 12
Great post karl 12. Always good to read over the Foxtrot 94 incident, either a mystery or mishap.
I grabbed the UFO Mod released .PDF's from the British Nation Archives online when they were released. There's a lot of info on Foxtrot 94 in it. I'm thinking the Foxtrot 94 was in the August 2009 release I'll have to sort through disc's I'm on a fresh install. I still have some interesting clips and pages on site, cool archives.
A few things I can think off, karl 12

1. This incident was "causing alarm to NATO commanders"
   
2. Captain W Schaffner was The Top-Gun Pilot, the orders were for CAPT Schaffner Only to sight and intercept. He stopped the refueling and and went Sonic for the Object
   
3. CAPT Schaffner actually used up too much fuel knowingly chasing this object, I add.
   
4. CAPT Schaffner did a controlled sea ditch of his aircraft
   

2. 'I tracked down the original Board of Inquiry papers relating to the crash and made a thorough study of the whole incident.' ..........
3. I have not found any published statement on the crash........

Cat and Mouse:


A Witness:



Zelong.

reply to post by exroyalnavy


I believe that this could be totally new information if it is true . Thank you very much for that. There are several people still interested in collating information on this incident if they don;t already have this info they really should.

Interesting read about it here and an interview about it

Lightning XS894

Interesting at the end about the scrapping of the craft. Also it has been claimed that the canopy could have shut under it's own volition as a result of fluids left in the hydraulic system, before the aircraft sank. That said, there is a dispute over whether the seat that was claimed to be found in the wreck was actually the right one. What is does show is that, contrary to the MOD's statements on the matter the case is anything but *solved* and the attempt to bring Schaffner's family into it seems to be nothing more than crude emotional blackmail.

Nick Pope said: "I was the person who investigated the allegations of a UFO connection when they first surfaced. I obtained the original report and satisfied myself that such allegations were false.

Nick Pope was about 5 years old when the story of the UFO was first talked about. So that is utter bunk. By the time Pope saw anything the whole story had been changed and the *training flight* invented.

Originally posted by chunder
reply to post by Pimander

 

I guess that's really just a matter of semantics. Personally I prefer for something to be labelled a hoax if that is more than likely and until it is proven otherwise but again, just my opinion.

Maybe "probable hoaxed pilot transcript ?" or as you suggest but that's up to the op, who has authored many excellent threads and I think with this one it is for the best that it at least has the word hoax somewhere in the title

This seems typical of many similar incidents in that the document trail is rather uncertain. Is there any actual indication of where the transcript originates at all?

I certainly take the RAF denial of any UFO involvement as being no indication what so ever that there was or was not UFO involvement. It is quite normal to deny UFO involvement when anything goes wrong, especially when a pilot dies or disappears.

With regards to the Kinross Incident, the USAF made all sorts of false claims in the official accident report and in their correspondence with the public.

As an example, they falsely claimed that the unidentified bogie was an RCAF C-47, which had been flying 30 miles off course. The pilot of the RCAF C-47 stated the aircraft was never offf course and claimed his flight path over Lake Superior was a straight line from Lakehead to Sault Ste. Marie (a long ways south of the location where the F-89 merged with the bogie and then disappeared).

The USAF also falsely claimed that the pilot of the F-89 identified the C-47 after merging (in correspondence with the public). However, in the USAF report, the GCI lost all radio contact with the pilot 5 minutes before the merger and they never re-established radio contact after the radar return and IFF signal were lost.

The pilot and RO of an F-89 sent on the search mission did hear the a brief radio transmission from the pilot of the missing plane about 40 minutes after the plane was lost on radar (this is unexplained). There were several radar stations monitoring the intercept that night. I did hear second hand info that at least one Canadian radar station on the Pine Tree Line monitored the incident (there were at least a couple in range which were jointly operated by RCAF and USAF personnel).

It is my opinion that the C-47 was never anywhere near the F-89 but it was flying over the lake while the intercept occurred and was therefore worked into the official explanation for the bogie because they couldn't very well state they didn't ever figure out what the unknown was because that would be like admitting it was technically a UFO.

One has to congratulate the MOD on managing to screw this case up almost to the point of making it useless to try and wade through the data.

I'd like to dispel some myths to begin with and then work from there.

It wasn't reported until the 1980s as a UFO incident

Rubbish..it was the talk of RAF mess's almost from the moment it happened and the talk was. Schaffner had been scrambled to intercept a UFO over the North Sea and had vanished along with the plane he was flying.

The scuttlebutt soon moved onto that he had forced ditched in the North Sea after contact with a UFO and both he and his plane were still missing

After two months XS894 is found sitting on the floor of the North Sea canopy closed. Some talk says Schaffner is stills trapped in his seat but *gone* when the wreck is raised others say Schaffner is nowhere to be seen.

At this point no-one in the RAF mess's are talking about any training mission as they know damn well there wasn't one and that this was a scramble and intercept. What is more it was considered so urgent Schaffner took off after ignoring standard procedures. XS894 had been vectored to take off powered up then powered down and it was usual for the Lightning to be thoroughly checked out and refuelled before another full power up. He certainly wouldn't have been allowed to take off , in the condition the plane was in, for a routine training mission, let alone one that was designed to test a pilot with 6000 hours+ on mach breaking jets to the limit.

The rumours of something not being quite right about the whole incident are fanned when air crash investigators find they are denied the usual time and the air-frame is delivered to a non standard airfield for investigation. There are tales of missing instruments and Americans in civilian clothes surrounding XS894 and denying the proper authorities the right to carry out a thorough investigation.

Now, for a moment consider this. The RAF is not your most, shall we say, revolutionary organisation. it's a wing of the British and NATO armed forces. Yes, rumours abound no-one would deny that. However, rumours which verge on insubordination and rumours that could be considered as propaganda, should they leak to the wrong people, are severely frowned upon and would be nipped in the bud. in this case the opposite is the case. At every turn the talk inside the RAF is of something very strange and getting stranger by the week.

Newspapers at the time had picked up on the crash, which is itself interesting as. from memory the RAF lost 2 other Lightnings in 1970, including one in the sea off the coast of Britain a couple of moinths prior to XS894's demise and yet nothing was ever thought to be untoward about those incidents outside of the known issues with the Lightning. The MOD simply says nothing, standard procedure for the time and just plays it down as an unfortunate accident.

However, at least one person and i believe now a total of 3 have come forward to say quite categorically that. They saw a stationary light over the North Sea and either 1 or 2 Lightning aircraft seemingly going after it. I think one was a couple out walking their dog the other a lone witness the one referred to in the newspaper clipping earlier in this thread.

Well my aircraft knowledge might not be up to Jane's standards however, as slow as the dear old Shackleton was, being a direct descendant of the Lancaster and Manchester series of bombers, they can't hover . Ergo the eye witness accounts are completely at odds with the 2003 press release and MOD documents.

The rumour mill in the RAF, rather than being quietened over time actually becomes even more feverish when it is whispered that a British Air frame XS894 has been shipped back to the USA by the Americans for unknown purposes where, to this day it still sits in some warehouse.

By this point, the RAF is leaking like a sieve and Ufologists are being told , pretty much, the story that came out later, with b very little differences in details. That is interesting in itself as typically, rumours with no foundation become Chinese whispers where a ends up becoming z and the initial story is lost altogether. Here, after 3-4 years the basic story and details therein, told by various RAF people, are the same whoever hears the tale.

In the ensuing years some pretty much "heavyweights* in both the UFO field and the Aerospace journalistic field, become involved in trying to t piece together what is fact and what is fiction about the crash. The MOD are asked, n several occasions to divvy up the crash report to put this one to bed and are simply not forthcoming. In fact, at one point, the supposed documents have a 30 year extension added to them, denying them to the public until well into the 21st century.

The truth is, the waters become ever more murky when an aerospace journalist with pretty high security clearance is told by his contacts. The crash report has been deliberately shredded, you will never see it and the air frame itself has been buried in a warehouse in the USA. Believe me, these sort of journalists don't get where they are by following UFO stories, as that would be seen as *unsafe hands*. If the guy is to be believed, then something damned weird went on with XS894 and it wasn't some training exercise foul up.

By the early 90s the clamour to have this explained properly has reached point where Nick Pope becomes first involved, some 23 years after the incident and probably, completely unaware of it as he didn't have an interest in UFOs til he joined that particular part of the ministry.

Neither is Pope aware that the source of the story and its' main proponent is not some Ufologist, rather and ex RAF Military Policeman who knows the RAF inside out and was responsible for the security of nuclear weapons sites. Pope and his merry crew are shown a report by the MOD which satisfies him it was an accident during a training exercise although, if memory serves me rightly it is at this point another 30 years is added to the length it is to be kept secret.

Unfortunately for the MOD, it is around this point that the so called hoax tape appears. Under normal circumstances it wouldn't really be problem as, the UFO field is relatively small and the press, and TV, by and large avoid the subject aside from its' chuckle value. Only, these are the days of the nascent world wide web and the tape, finds millions of listeners world wide web, not just a few and the questions keep coming.

The presence of the tape changes the game in that. This is not just verbal sparring between the Ufologists and the MOD but a supposed, *factual* piece of evidence that seems to show the MOD was actually lying through their teeth about XS894's fate. Quite obviously something has to be done so in 2003 the MOD relents and proffers up it's explanation for the events of that night in 1970 and new tape that is the "real tape" of Schaffner talking to ground control. They announce the tape doing the rounds world wide is fake and that seems to be that, case solved. I freely admit here, I at the time said, fair dos, this does seem to be the truth and I left my work on the crash and put the script for a documentary about it on the back burner.

Only it isn't quite that simple. See, what the newspapers and the likes of Nick Pope and David Clarke neglect to mention is the following. The RAF press officer doesn't just say the tape is a hoax they qualify it by admitting a hoax perpetrated by RAF personnel from within the RAF. I am told although I cannot confirm this that, the reason for this addition to the press release was because the original tape leaked wasn't on cassette tape but on a reel to reel tape and was clearly marked and found to check out as genuine RAF tape of the period in question. Of course, no-one has seen the actual supposed real tape, and i wouldn't hold out for ever doing so. I strongly suspect the answer will be. "oh it was digitised and the original tape destroyed as we don't have the storage space" . All of which is damnably convenient for the RAF.

Now call me picky however, if i had personnel who were faking such important tapes using RAF material and then distributing through RAF channels to the public. I'd be a tad miffed and I'd be after someone's butt for this. Only they weren't and haven't, even though they must know there can only be say, 100 or so maximum, people who could have made this fake. The if one can fake a tape so well, who can honestly say the tape the RAF finally released is the real one and not a fake cobbled together to support the cover story?

So who do you believe.? An ex RAF military Policeman who knows the story directly from people he served with and knows about the operational procedures of the RAF and how they were broken that night. An aerospace journalist who, has decades of experience who says , the original report was shredded and was never ever going to be released to the public. The independent eye witnesses whose testimony backs up the UFO story not the training exercise? The one of two service personnel who spoke off record confirming the UFO story, 2 of which i spoke to when working on my script myself. Or.......

Do you believe the MOD and Nick Pope, who was 5 years old when it happened and some RAF press officer who was probably about 5 himself in 1970 and hasn't the first clue about what really went on?

In other words, the only people to say it wasn't something strange are those who weren't there or were way too young to be in the RAF at the time.

reply to post by FireMoon

wow, heck of a good post FireMoon. Thanks for catching me up so quickly on some things. Now I can go back and read through, and follow all the links, for at least an hour of good reading...

Thanx again Karl for another excellent and well prepared thread. It always surprise me at the lack of traffic your great threads get. Maybe because you stick to the truly unexplained episodes and there's nothing left for anyone to fight and bicker over...

Originally posted by FireMoon
So who do you believe.? An ex RAF military Policeman who knows the story directly from people he served with and knows about the operational procedures of the RAF and how they were broken that night. An aerospace journalist who, has decades of experience who says , the original report was shredded and was never ever going to be released to the public. The independent eye witnesses whose testimony backs up the UFO story not the training exercise? The one of two service personnel who spoke off record confirming the UFO story, 2 of which i spoke to when working on my script myself. Or.......

Do you believe the MOD and Nick Pope, who was 5 years old when it happened and some RAF press officer who was probably about 5 himself in 1970 and hasn't the first clue about what really went on?

Firemoon, Finally someone actually begins to see what I mean about this (and other) cases. The only thing we know with absolute CERTAINTY is that the MOD have lied about the incident.

It never ceases to amaze me that even when we know the military have changed their story repeatedly (e.g. Rendlesham, Roswell) "researchers" still pin their stripes to an explanation that comes from military sources. For me, if the military change their story it is because they have lied and are being exposed. If they lied it is to cover something up... It's that simple! Is it really so hard to grasp that simple fact????