A short history of UFOs

1897: The Aurora Incident

On an April day in 1897, residents of the small Texas town of Aurora looked to the skies to see a large cylindrical object plunging to earth.

The strange craft crashed into a windmill owned by Judge Proctor, and, according to contemporary newspaper accounts “went to pieces in a terrific explosion … wrecking the windmill and a water tank and destroying the judge’s flower garden”.

The body of a badly disfigured pilot was discovered in the wreckage with evidence “that he was not an inhabitant of this world”.

Not knowing what else to do, the citizens of Aurora buried the pilot in the local cemetery.

Over time, the location of the grave became lost, and in the 1970s a proposal was made to attempt to dig it up. It was prevented by the cemetery authorities, who argued successfully that no exhumation could take place without permission from the deceased’s relatives.

1944: Foo Fighters

In the final years of the Second World War, American and British pilots began reporting bright lights chasing their aircraft.

The objects were most numerous over Belgium in 1944, with pilots reporting lights in formation and able to outmanoeuvre any attempts to intercept them.

Nicknamed “foo fighters” after a nonsense phrase from a popular newspaper cartoon, the objects were at first thought to be Nazi secret weapons, although they caused no damage.

After the war, no evidence of secret weapons was found, and an investigation concluded they were natural phenomena, possibly reflections of light from ice crystals.

Many were not convinced, and the foo fighters became the first of the modern UFO sightings, embedded in popular culture and later becoming the name of the rock band founded by drummer Dave Grohl.

1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still

Cold War paranoia collided with fears of alien invasion in the classic sci-fi thriller The Day the Earth Stood Still.

A flying saucer lands in Washington DC with the alien pilot Klaatu accompanied by a gigantic and all powerful robot, Gort.

Modern weapons are useless against Gort, with Klaatu warning that unless humanity puts aside its warlike ways, the robot will destroy the planet on behalf of an interstellar coalition.

The film was released as the nuclear arms race was developing, and real fears of Armageddon – its message one of disarmament and peaceful collaboration as much as alien invasion.

Although only moderately successful at the box office, the film was placed on the Library of Congress National Film Registry and is said to have inspired US President Ronald Reagan to reach out to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985.

1980 Rendlesham Forest Incident

Most UFO stories originate in the United States, but one of the most compelling comes from rural England.

In late December, 1980, a security guard at a Royal Air Force base being used by the US Air Force in Suffolk reported bright lights descending into nearby Rendlesham Forest

Several servicemen entered the forest and reported a glowing metal object that moved off through the trees, driving animals on a nearby farm into a frenzy.

Returning in daylight, they found a triangular impression on the ground, with broken branches and burn marks. Higher than normal radiation levels were detected.

Two days later, three bright lights were seen hovering in the sky, occasional sending beams to the ground.

Explanations include lights from a nearby lighthouse and RAF navigation beacon, and a possible prank played on the Americans by members of the British Special Air Service.

2004-2019 Pentagon UFO videos

US Navy pilots are known for keeping cool under pressure, and certainly not for their vivid imagination. Which makes a series of UFO encounters off southern California and the Atlantic coast as credible as they are unsettling.

On November 14, 2004, David Favor, a pilot from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz was asked to investigate a radar contact from the USS Princeton which appeared at 80,000 feet before dropping rapidly and hovering.

Favor closed in on a white oval about 12 metres long just above the sea which then ascended rapidly before disappearing.

During 2014-2015, pilots from the Nimitz and the USS Theodore Roosevelt also reporting detecting aircraft on their instruments which they could not identify.

The most extraordinary encounter was recorded at night in 2019 on an infrared camera from the USS Omaha, showing a sphere flying rapidly over the ocean, before slowing and disappearing underwater.

In September, the Pentagon released three videos taken by pilots, saying they were “part of a larger issue of an increased number of training range incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena in recent years".

Suggestions include instrument malfunction and natural phenomenon, but to this day no single explanation has been offered for these UFOs, or UAPs, as the Pentagon prefers to call them.

It is difficult to say which troubles the US military most – the possibility that a hostile power has developed a revolutionary new kind of aircraft propulsion, or that they are being tested by aliens from another planet.