UFOs the Untold Stories: New TV series on Nat Geo UK

natgeotv.com...

Just watching the first episode. If you missed it you can catch it at 9pm (on Nat Geo +1)

Repeats across the week on the above link.

Just seen a rather tame telling of the Rendlesham case. Although Nick Pope has gone a little hairier in his old age.

Anyway a heads up for anyone interested in the UK and Ireland.

Followed by Chasing UFOs which got panned by most people in the States.

It got panned over here in the states for several reasons. One of them was that the stuff they were doing wasn't yielding any results. I only hope Ghost Hunters goes the same route. They make a mockery of the search for answers if ya ask me. Secondly, the cast felt the same, so some left, and with no replacements, they had to cancel the show.

TheBorg - :-)

Are there really any "Untold Stories" ?

Recorded it and watching now. The Kerr testimony about the definite Radar contact is interesting. David Clarke talking about the witnesses becoming "Part of the UFO industry", without a hint of irony made me laugh. Yes Dave, cos you're not part of it at all are you? Nick Pope seems to be morphing into Bamber Gascoigne.

reply to post by mirageman


Amazing, since Nat Geo is a debunking outfit. They put "Chasing" on just to make money off of UFO's, while at the same time trying to debunk them.

Originally posted by FireMoon
Recorded it and watching now. The Kerr testimony about the definite Radar contact is interesting. David Clarke talking about the witnesses becoming "Part of the UFO industry", without a hint of irony made me laugh. Yes Dave, cos you're not part of it at all are you? Nick Pope seems to be morphing into Bamber Gascoigne.

For a Nat Geo show it was almost a balanced view. Although it left a lot out of the Rendlesham story it did leave the mystery somewhat open ended. Even though Clarke was on it. As it's aim is to concentrate on European UFO cases I will probably watch UFO Untold Stories again. Chasing UFOs was not quite as bad as I expected but then they found a USAF button allegedly from 1947 - 49......

As for Nick Pope, I laughed loudly with your comparison to Bamber Gascoigne. Perhaps he's going to launch his own Paranormal Quiz "Universally Challenged"?

I was going to say "as long as this doesn't feature Rendlesham I'll give it a watch", but alas, the most cliched UK ufo documentary subject is afoot. Yes, it's a very interesting case, but Christ, it's covered in so many documentaries I find it extremely boring now every time it gets covered again.

Originally posted by markymint
I was going to say "as long as this doesn't feature Rendlesham I'll give it a watch", but alas, the most cliched UK ufo documentary subject is afoot. Yes, it's a very interesting case, but Christ, it's covered in so many documentaries I find it extremely boring now every time it gets covered again.

I haven't quite reached that point just yet and this documentary did offer up some interesting radar returns that have not previously been covered in detail. It also offered a sighting from the 1930s in Venice which I was not familiar with. Nick Popes appearance was a hair raising experience too

Second episode was more interesting. The Jose Francisco Rodrigues case with his Dormier and the contemporaneous loss of power at the HEP station is most fascinating given the case in Uruguay Karl12 recently posted about.

. Rodrigues sighting

Originally posted by FireMoon
Second episode was more interesting. The Jose Francisco Rodrigues case with his Dormier and the contemporaneous loss of power at the HEP station is most fascinating given the case in Uruguay Karl12 recently posted about.

. Rodrigues sighting

Just watched that episode and it was a fascinating case indeed Firemoon.

They also showed the Bob Taylor, West Lothian case from 1979. Which is one that has always intrigued. It is almost like a real life episode of the Twilight Zone and was even treated by police as a criminal investigation.

Originally posted by mirageman
natgeotv.com...

Just watching the first episode. If you missed it you can catch it at 9pm (on Nat Geo +1)

Repeats across the week on the above link.

Just seen a rather tame telling of the Rendlesham case. Although Nick Pope has gone a little hairier in his old age.

Anyway a heads up for anyone interested in the UK and Ireland.

Followed by Chasing UFOs which got panned by most people in the States.

edit on 13/11/12 by mirageman because: whoops!

Thanx for the heads up, its Sky+ now

Originally posted by FireMoon
Recorded it and watching now. The Kerr testimony about the definite Radar contact is interesting. David Clarke talking about the witnesses becoming "Part of the UFO industry", without a hint of irony made me laugh. Yes Dave, cos you're not part of it at all are you? Nick Pope seems to be morphing into Bamber Gascoigne.

Nick pope , with a starter for 10

Episode 3 was the best yet and just maybe a slight shift in emphasis, in a very subtle manner. The two Danish cases discussed did show without any actual commentary during the show, just how , at times, the so called "rationalists" like David Clarke not only come off as being a tad arrogant rather, actually as gullible as the most fervent believer if they really do believe some of their so called "explanations".

Put it this way, if my car's electrics go totally haywire and the engine cuts out as a blindingly silent white light appears almost on top of me and the object is picked up on radar, then Clarke's inevitable trotting out of the old " People see strange coincidences as part of a single event", really does look a tad desperate an explanation indeed.

The investigation of the so called "Angel Hair" was a new one on me. I had no idea that it had been collected and studied on a fairly scientific basis and that some are claiming it consisted of an "unknown tentacled life form". I would think, it's probably an unknown earthly life form that exists in the upper atmosphere however, an interesting case. Sadly, the "Angel Hair" sample was lost in a fire at Lisbon university.

Evora Angel Hair incident 1959

Angel Hair 2


Danish Sightings

Claus Lundholm; Evald Maarup sightings

The show does not mention that this was the second time in 3 years that the same thing happened to Evald Maarup

I just watched "National Geographic UFO Europe Untold Stories S01E01". It was surprisingly even-handed. My only problem with it was not having enough eye-witness interviews, but other than that it is well worth a view
www.youtube.com...

Just watched the episode featuring the crash of William Shaffner's Lightning. Sadly totally and utterly inaccurate and actually quite insulting to the intelligence. The story did not come to light in 1992. I had been known for several years prior to that and was first published in July 1988 as part of Arrrgh! Bruce Barrymore Halpenny's second book, The whole "fake tape" was concocted years later and tonight's episode didn't even mention that it was an audio tape not just a written document.

The MOD admitted, although this was only reported in one newspaper, that, the fake tape, "Must have been made in house". Even having admitted the tape must have been faked by military personnel they then did absolutely nothing to ascertain quite who had done it.

The fact is, Halpenny was far far better connected than either Nick Pope or David Clark and he actually spoke directly to some of those involved in the incident. Halpenny's account has been, in effect, deliberately side lined and ignored as it shoots the MOD's official explanation to pieces. That doesn't make it an alien ship, if simply means they are lying about the details of what actually happened.

the portuguese episode was a strange one with photo and witness statements, but the photo of the ufo looked like a drone....
what bugs me about these programs is they have an expert who says that these ufos could of been a weather balloon or flares when its quite obvious that they dont act in the way the witness's have stated. the military aircraft adviser says its a drone all the time, do they ever show these guys the evidence?
i liked the ufo chasers tho but the girl does my head in, always debunking everything.

Originally posted by FireMoon
Just watched the episode featuring the crash of William Shaffner's Lightning. Sadly totally and utterly inaccurate and actually quite insulting to the intelligence. The story did not come to light in 1992. I had been known for several years prior to that and was first published in July 1988 as part of Arrrgh! Bruce Barrymore Halpenny's second book, The whole "fake tape" was concocted years later and tonight's episode didn't even mention that it was an audio tape not just a written document.

The MOD admitted, although this was only reported in one newspaper, that, the fake tape, "Must have been made in house". Even having admitted the tape must have been faked by military personnel they then did absolutely nothing to ascertain quite who had done it.

The fact is, Halpenny was far far better connected than either Nick Pope or David Clark and he actually spoke directly to some of those involved in the incident. Halpenny's account has been, in effect, deliberately side lined and ignored as it shoots the MOD's official explanation to pieces. That doesn't make it an alien ship, if simply means they are lying about the details of what actually happened.

I wasn't impressed with that explanation myself Firemoon. The fact that Schaffner's family were never told the official "truth" as it now is during the 3 decades that followed the pilot's death suggests something isn't quite right with this case. Of course as you say it doesn't prove ET was involved but there is something not quite right about the official explanation and there are whispers about American involvement which never surfaced in this episode.

I've still got a number of previous episodes to catch up with of this series. For Nat Geo it is actually an interesting one as it highlights European case.

But alas, Dr David Clarke,seems to have become the voice of the Ministry of Defence.

reply to post by mirageman


As far as I could ascertain and I did a lot of work on this incident with a view to a documentary covering it the following happened.

Shaffner was on standby with his engines running, which was a standard operational procedure at time time when ever there was any sort of tension with the Warsaw pact. . That means , his Lightning was probably parked in an open blast pen ready to taxi onto the runway and take off at a moments notice.

This is where the first dispute over what happened appears. Several personnel, including some ground crew there that night say the following. Shaffner received a direct order from an American source ,via RAF Binbrook to scramble and intercept a target over the North Sea. Two Radar operators, on station that night, have told investigators the following. Shortly before Shaffner took off, an unknown Radar contact had entered the area of the North Sea from the direction of Iceland at a phenomenal rate of knots and then suddenly slowed. In their opinion that was the "unknown object" that Shaffner was ordered to investigate.

Now this is where another problem arises. The ground crew involved have said that. Shaffner's Lightning had reached and gone past the point where it was considered safe for him to take off on any sort of mission and he should have throttled down, killed the engines and allowed the next aircraft to take over his station. This was simply because, the Lightning's engines , under the rules, had to be serviced and passed fit to fly after they had been powered up for a certain length of time irrespective of whether the aircraft had taken off.

In other words, Shaffner took off in a plane that was "not fit for purpose, something further exacerbated by them now claiming the cockpit ejection system was faulty as well. in other words they are claiming that, a vastly experienced pilot, took off knowing he shouldn't and failed to execute a very basic training run, to such an extent, he crashed into the sea without putting so much as a dent in the nose of his aircraft. Most of the damage shown in the pictures was caused during the raising of XS894, contemporary reports say it looked as if it had been "parked" on the sea floor.

Now none of this means a UFO was involved only there's one piece of information that is constantly left out. Two witnesses, on land walking their dog, said they saw an aircraft chasing a "bright light" over the Wash that night and then, minutes late,r saw two more aircraft heading in the same direction as well. They didn't see what happened to any of the objects after that, yet their testimony was given long before the "fake tape" surfaced.

That still leaves us with , pretty much, a mundane, as mundane as a pilot being killed doing his job can be, crash. Only there's a follow up.... XS894 has never been scrapped, that is, it has never been officially scrapped as it should appear as, in the records as it was recovered and brought back to land. We know this as the geeks that record the history of every single English Electric Lightning can find no record of its' scrapping anywhere. Which is a real coincidence as investigators were told that, XS894 was shipped to the USA and still there in some unknown hanger and location. Yes, that's right, the USA arbitrarily, took one of the RAF's aircraft, after it had crashed on a "routine mission" and shipped it back to the USA.

Now, the MOD, Nick Pope and Dave Clarke can say what they like, that's what the actual serving personnel told investigators before the fake tape surfaced in 1992.

Damn i dont have satellite/cable TV
Im gonna have to wait until its uploaded on Youtube or some place.
Thanks for heads up though S&F