The Great UFO Cover Up? : Berwyn Mountains, Wales, Jan 1974

reply to post by mirageman


I did see your question about this, I can't say why he didn't reply but maybe the answer was something he couldn't say. He can't really believe there was nothing to this, can he ?

FireMoon asked a question about the spacemen figures, that's something I'm very interested in. He did answer that question but didn't have any information about it.

I saw something about lights seen around Puffin Island, and abductees saying humanoids had told them they had a base under the Island. I can't find where I saw that now, but I think it was Shropshire UFO people. The lights were seen in January 1974.

Originally posted by LEL01
reply to post by mirageman

 

I did see your question about this, I can't say why he didn't reply but maybe the answer was something he couldn't say. He can't really believe there was nothing to this, can he ?

FireMoon asked a question about the spacemen figures, that's something I'm very interested in. He did answer that question but didn't have any information about it.

I saw something about lights seen around Puffin Island, and abductees saying humanoids had told them they had a base under the Island. I can't find where I saw that now, but I think it was Shropshire UFO people. The lights were seen in January 1974.

My suspicion is that I overloaded the question with detail.
Having dismissed this in the past Nick decided to dismiss my question as a potential can of worms. However had I asked "What is your opinion on the Berwyn UFO, Nick?" then I suspect his answer would be the same as it was years ago - ie a tremor.

I guess his knowledge of this case amounts to less than the information we have collectively gathered in this thread.

reply to post by mirageman


It wouldn't matter much what he said, because we all have our own opinions and we know he can't tell us anything we don't already know. I think something did happen that night and as you said in the days or weeks before, we just have to work out which stories are true.

reply to post by LEL01


Sorry I think you may have misunderstood my post this account was not one of my relatives merely one I found digging around the internet

Some information on RAF photoflash operations you may find interesting


www.airfieldinformationexchange.org...

reply to post by mirageman


I don`t know why Nick Pope bothered to post here he hasn`t done anything but give out a few glib comments and soundbites. I can`t see that he has answered any specific questions.

dashdespatch
reply to post by LEL01

 

Sorry I think you may have misunderstood my post this account was not one of my relatives merely one I found digging around the internet

I did misunderstand your post, sorry about that. It's still a good story, I just wonder if there was a tremor before the explosion that was only felt by those on the road. I already made up a story to fit with that if it was the case, it feels like a true story told by the grandparents but they might have got some of the facts wrong.

We have Tom Carey next Monday, I'm looking forward to that. He interviewed a lot of the Roswell witnesses.

dashdespatch
reply to post by mirageman

 

I don`t know why Nick Pope bothered to post here he hasn`t done anything but give out a few glib comments and soundbites. I can`t see that he has answered any specific questions.

Thanks for the photoflash details. If such an operation did take place then it is feasible that a search operation was put in place over the Irish Sea to find something below the water. I will be looking at some other odd occurrences in the Irish Sea when I have a few hours spare.

As for Nick Pope. Firstly I think it was good of him to be the guinea pig for the AMA session and give up his time. He was hit by a deluge of often irrelevant and "here's my story of a UFO sighting" type posts which are difficult to give any perspective on in a few minutes. Perhaps a lot of people expected Nick to be some kind of whistle-blower and lift the lid on the MoD and UFOs as well without really doing their research on what areas Nick "specializes" and asking questions that he could really only answer in general terms. This is why I decided to ask 2 questions directly related to the MoD UFO files. Much to my frustration he didn't even give a cursory answer to either.

Having heard and seen a lot of Nick Pope on TV and radio in the last couple of years I think the guy is genuinely interested in the UFO topic and has contributed to the very gradual softening of attitudes in the media towards a subject often ridiculed. However he doesn't have a lot to say beyond his favourite talking points (Rendlesham, Cosford, The Calvine photo which went missing and a few others) and I am unsure if he ever did much real research.

I've done a bit of digging and the MoD UFO desk job was graded as an Executive Officer (far from high ranking, and more like a minor supervisory role). It seems the general duties were sifting through reports, answering media and public enquiries and passing anything "interesting" higher up to be investigated. This is the stuff that has now been released by the National Archives. The higher investigations may well have been beyond his need to know.

My guess is that Nick Pope landed in this job just as X-Files and Santili's Alien Autopsy were getting global exposure. He saw a gap in the expanding media markets for a "spokesperson from the government" on UFOs, fancying himself as a Fox Mulder type guy (another of his favourite talking points) and convinced a lot of people that he held a job a lot more influential than it really was. However his actual expertise on UFOs amounts to more than your average guy in the street but much less than he likes to promote. He knows a fair bit about his favourites (he probably spells that 'favorites' these days . But he will always sit on the fence (he probably spells that fense as well ) when pressed and often hide behind the agreements he undertook with the MoD.

Nick has sold out to become the auto queue reading guy on the TV documentaries way down the channel guide. He advertises computer games and movies. He's the guy on "Coast to Coast" telling you about the radiation and radar readings at Rendlesham, of the mysterious black triangular UFO photo in his office 20 years ago that vanished and no one else ever bothered to comment on over and over again. He is a media soundbite guy now. His title "Former Head of the UK MoD UFO Desk" will continue to get him on TV and radio. But after the AMA session I can't say I learned anything new from him.

We'll still see and hear from him over the coming months as his book on Rendlesham is due in the New Year. Will he give us anything new there?

reply to post by LEL01


Yep looking forward to that too LEL01.

Are you going to ask him a question?

reply to post by mirageman


There is only one question and I don't expect he will know the answer, maybe I should message it to you in case something goes wrong and I can't get on to ask it. It will be interesting if he has information that's different to what we already know.Have you a question of your own ?

I had to laugh at one of Nick Popes replies, he said they had access to advanced tech or something to help them analyse photos and videos that the public haven't got. He clearly hasn't seen the way members here rip these things apart. It's hard to tell if Nick not answering your question was because he really didn't know, or he knows but couldn't say.

reply to post by LEL01


I may ask a question but will check up on Mr Carey's work first. Message me if you want.

I don't want to derail my own thread so let's leave at that


As for Nick Pope I did find it interesting that he failed to respond to two posts of mine from the MoD Files. One being the Berwyn case in this thread,

He did answer the question about the floods in Lynmouth in 1956 being part of an RAF cloud seeding experiment though. Which I found rather peculiar.

BACK ON TOPIC

When I did the original write up about a year ago I had no idea I'd still be plugging away at this case today. No idea where it's going but another story, a little piece of the jigsaw,or an interesting theory keeps appearing in relation to it. So thanks to everyone who has been contributing to it.

reply to post by mirageman


I googled Reginald DePinter, the name from Dashdespatch's post and found the story in the comments at this link. Reginald DePinter told that story knowing the tremor was after the explosion, he has a link to an article he wrote 1974 - Wales UFO Crash.

It said "For several days, all roads leading to the crash area were closed to everyone but authorized personnel" and some men staying at the hotel were involved in the search but wouldn't say what they saw or found.
Reginald DePinter Link

ETA. It wasn't Reginald who wrote that article , it was Billy Booth.

reply to post by LEL01


Whilst the witness story may well be totally true as they perceived it and can't realistically be linked without dates and places, the Billy Booth piece gives very little information about the photoflash operation and says.

Allegedly, this was to evaluate what could be seen on the ground with these powerful light sources. Personally, I don't see what effect this has on eyewitness accounts of a craft on the ground, but check it out at Berwyn Mountains "UFO" Mystery Deepens and see what you think.

So I did and I didn't need to dig too much deeper.

Look at this page on the same website about Berwyn

It is full of interesting comments below. Scott L. Felton's are most interesting and his comments about Tom Slemen are spot on in my opinion. He (Slemen) has authored many books, very entertaining ones to be honest, but they are fictional or tales based on small snippets of fact that have been greatly embellished. But then another poster (Barry Evans) attacks Felton's comments saying he interviewed locals and his dad was in the army at the time of the crash.

Who is this Barry Evans seems like a pseudonym? It's almost as generic a Welsh name as Thomas Jones ( well it's not unusual )

reply to post by mirageman


I clicked on that link but I didn't find what you linked, I got the Daily Post.
I see what you mean about Barry Evans, he just attacked Felton but didn't say why. He didn't say anything about the information he got from his father or the witnesses, I couldn't even tell if he's saying there was a UFO or not. This case probably could have been solved years ago if these guys would just stop putting each other down and bring all the information together.

I don't agree with everything Felton is saying, I think the tremor could have been caused by the explosion. I don't think the lights were local hunters after rabbits, I thought it was him who proved it couldn't have been. Maybe he changed his mind since 2008.

I think the reason Pat Evans went to live abroad could be because she was paid to change her story. I got that the from the Conwy groups site, that's how she got the money to move abroad.

The Reginald story was in the right month and year, I'm guessing he would know if his uncle lived in Wales, but not everyone knows where all of their relatives live. Even if the two men were mistaken about what they saw, it might explain what the military were looking for in the forest for several days. Like you said though , times, dates and places would help a lot.

reply to post by LEL01


I don't think Felton has changed his mind. When referring to the lights seen by Pat Evans (these were on Cader Berwyn) after the poachers had packed in for the night. What he was saying there is that the residents of Llandrillo saw the poacher lights on Cader Bronwen just after the explosion around 8:30pm.

Looking into strange events in the Irish Sea has not turned up anything that could be directly related to this incident however there have been some very strange incidents involving submarines.

Back to the Berwyn Incident I have found another small piece of the story to add.

I've condensed it to get to the points.

A local farmer Mike Saville and his wife who owned a holding on Garth Goch, with a clear view of the Berwyn Mountains. Mike Saville says he and his wife were at home that night reading when they heard a loud tremor, causing their house to shake and went outside to see what had happened. Looking towards the Berwyn Mountains he could see a light on the mountain. He and his wife saw a bright orange glowing object resting on the mountain.They went over to a neighbour about 400 yards away to find that it had caused panic in nearby Llandrillo. The object was still on the mountain but had appeared to move lower and out of their sight. Other witnesses said the UFO moved along the top of Cader Berwyn and another said she saw the UFO about 10:20pm heading towards the English border.A Leon Pritchard returned from Bala at 9:30pm saying army trucks and military personnel were heading towards Llandrillo. It initimates that the lights on Cader Berwyn (seen by Pat Evans) were actually the military

Sourced from a Book : David L.Richards "UFO Wales"




Which all hints that something more than an earth tremor happened.

As you say this perhaps could have been solved years ago. But it seems there are various factions choosing to ignore and discredit others' evidence.

reply to post by mirageman


Thanks, I think I got it, I was on the wrong mountain with the wrong lights. It was Pats lights later that he proved couldn't have been the poachers lights, they were the military trucks.

This new information from the book has a UFO heading towards England at 10:20pm. Remember Ken Haughton saw a luminous sphere without a tail, about 300 to 400 feet across around 10pm, he thinks it would have come down in the sea. His sphere could have turned around or there was more than one UFO, it's a shame we don't have an idea of the size from the other witnesses.

Maybe Kens UFO went into the water and the Navy were waiting to flush it out with the photoflash operation or they tried to shoot it down before it got in the water. I think photoflash and other military operations were planned for whenever the UFO(s) turned up. There definitely was more going on than an earth tremor that night.

I just wanted to add a personal note about that night. As I've mentioned before, I saw the "meteor" that night as it passed over the Midlands. The weather was pretty cloudy so I didn't see the actual "meteor" rather, how it lit the whole cloud cover up. However, I have to say, to this day, I have never seen another meteor quite like it. Now given astronomy has been a passion of mine since I was a small kid and I am regular sky watcher it's not as if I haven't down the years, seen a rather large number of meteors. The part that I haven't as yet seen replicated was that, even though the sky was cloudy, the surrounding area at ground level, was lit up as if by the largest flash gun you have ever seen. I mean that, for 2-3 seconds, you could clearly see as if it were daylight.

I've since seen meteors that light the whole sky up for a brief moment however, that does tend to suggest the following . That the meteor that night was travelling relatively slowly, probably due to being lower in the atmosphere and having hit the atmosphere at a pretty shallow angle. The thickness of the air it was travelling through considerably slowing it, as it headed towards the ground.

It has struck me that, because of the cloud cover, many amateur astronomers who might also have witnessed it had taken a look at the sky and gone back to the warmth of the house thinking they would, most likely, see nothing that night. The fact that, some almost forty years later I can, in my mind's eye stlil recount vividly that brief experience, shows how "unusual" it was.

The part of this that makes me wonder is this. Given the speed of the object I witnessed and its' incredible brightness I am somewhat at a loss to explain why, no-one in the area it came down seems to claim that, their living room, was briefly lit up by the meteor. Given the speed it crossed the sky where I was, it was travelling at a velocity of at least 3000 miles per hour. that means given my location that, the meteor hit the ground, or passed overhead the Bala area, less than a minute after I saw it, Id be a tad surprised if it had dimmed that much in that period of time.

The part I would love to know is this. Did he meteor hitting the ground cause the earth tremor or, was there both an earth tremor and a very bright meteor? Then again, was it some kind of bow wave from the meteor that caused the tremor and the object just passed very low overhead and then ended up crashing into the Irish Sea?

reply to post by FireMoon


Thanks, that helps a lot. I can't tell you what you saw because I didn't see it but you might have seen a UFO. Ken Haughton saw a luminous sphere without a tail, about 300 to 400 feet across around 10pm. This might have been the same thing you saw, I'm back to thinking the explosion was in the air and I do think it caused the "tremor"

Last year, I saw a huge bright light travelling just above the rooftops of the houses across the road from me. There was a higher than average chance it could have been a weather balloon but there was nothing about it to suggest it was a balloon, I can't have been the only person to see it but there was no reports about it at all. So how sure are you that that what you saw was a meteor and not a UFO ?

Ken thought what he saw would have come down in the sea but another witness said she saw a UFO heading towards the English boarder, it's all very confusing.

reply to post by FireMoon


The Geological Survey report (link click here) seems to conclude that it was an earthquake with it's maximum intensity felt at five places: Bala, Carrog, Corwen,
Llandrillo and Maentwrog coinciding with a meteor shower. It's a really dull read and the scientific data seems somewhat inconclusive reading between the lines of the report.

Although there seems to have been over an hour and a half where lights were being seen in the skies.

reply to post by LEL01


Yes it's a very confusing story. (Although you should try Rendlesham) and we have to remember that some of the witnesses may well be confused, elaborating or simply mistaken. Even some of the paper trail may not be reliable. But that goes for some of the "official" reports on the case as well.

I am not sure there is much else to add at the moment other than to say that there is much more to this case than you can pick up from reading one of two pieces about it in a book, magazine or on the web,