The Anomalous Archive

A complete, concise Archive account of a case whose surviving record does not support a full investigation.

RAF Little Rissington, Gloucestershire, England · 21 October 1952

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At first, Michael Swiney thought he was looking at parachutes.

His Meteor had climbed through cloud. Above it were three pale shapes, unfamiliar enough to interrupt a routine training flight.

In the other seat was Lieutenant David Crofts of the Royal Navy. Both men would remember the encounter more than half a century later: the light on the objects, the uncertainty, the decision to abandon the exercise.

Their recollections might have remained another story told long after the event. But in the RAF station’s record book, under the date 21 October 1952, a brief entry survives.

Three objects had been reported. Radar plots were said to support the sighting.

The entry does not tell us what they were.

Above the Cloud

Flight Lieutenant Swiney was an instructor at the Central Flying School, based at RAF Little Rissington in Gloucestershire, England. Crofts was his student. Their aircraft was a Gloster Meteor T.7, a two-seat trainer from Britain’s first generation of jet aircraft.

In interviews conducted by researcher David Clarke in 2004, the men recalled emerging from cloud at approximately 12,000 feet and seeing the objects higher up.

Swiney remembered circular, plate-like forms. Crofts described a reflective appearance, comparing them to glass catching sunlight.

The parachute explanation did not satisfy them. The objects appeared to change position and then disappear. Swiney called off the exercise and reported what they had seen.

The detail belongs to those later interviews. The contemporary station entry is much shorter. [1, 2]

A Few Lines in the Record Book

The Operations Record Book describes three “saucer-shaped objects” travelling at high speed at about 35,000 feet during a high-level navigation exercise.

It adds that air-traffic control subsequently reported radar plots which appeared to confirm the crew’s account.

Then comes the official conclusion: the Air Ministry discounted an extraterrestrial explanation.

No alternative identification follows in the surviving entry.

The two altitude figures sometimes repeated in accounts of the case refer to different parts of the story. Approximately 12,000 feet is the height at which the men later remembered emerging from cloud. Approximately 35,000 feet appears in the station’s description of the objects. Neither supplies a recoverable measurement of their distance from the Meteor.

Swiney also referred to an entry in his own flying logbook, recording the sighting and the reported radar support. The station book is therefore best described as the surviving official summary, rather than the only record of any kind associated with the encounter. [1, 2]

The Questions Afterwards

Swiney and Crofts remembered being questioned after the flight. Statements were taken and drawings requested.

They also recalled learning that fighters had been sent to investigate, without making contact. Those aircraft were not something the two men had watched intercepting the objects themselves; this was information they remembered receiving afterwards.

That distinction leaves two overlapping histories: what happened in the Meteor’s cockpit, and what the crew were told had happened elsewhere.

The surviving station entry mentions supporting radar plots. It does not preserve the plots, identify the equipment or describe an interception in sufficient detail to reconstruct it.

When Swiney later sought his original report, he was told that many early UFO records had been routinely destroyed. Clarke’s published account places the missing papers within that history of disposal. It does not establish the individual fate of every document connected with this flight. [2]

What the Radar Cannot Now Tell Us

Radar is central to the case because it appears to offer a second way of observing the same event.

But the surviving evidence is a written reference to radar support, rather than a set of returns available for inspection.

Without timings, bearings and the original plots, it is not possible to demonstrate how closely the radar information matched what the airmen saw. The description may reflect a genuine correlation. It may also compress a more uncertain exchange between crew and ground control.

The phrase in the record book remains significant. Its underlying evidence is missing.

Possible Explanations

Parachutes were Swiney’s first interpretation. Balloons offer another possible explanation for pale objects seen at height. Neither can be tested adequately without a flight path, weather information tied to the observation and a reliable estimate of distance.

The reported high speed is a difficulty for those suggestions. Yet the surviving summary does not show how it was calculated, or whether it came from the visual observation, the radar information, or both.

Reflections and atmospheric effects could complicate the appearance of objects above cloud. An unfamiliar or poorly seen aircraft is another possibility. There is no recovered identification linking any of these explanations to the three forms reported that afternoon.

Nor does the absence of an identification establish an extraordinary origin. The Air Ministry rejected an extraterrestrial interpretation, but the reasoning behind that conclusion is not supplied by the station entry.

The difficulty is not a shortage of possible answers. It is the absence of the observations needed to choose between them.

Evidence Assessment

Archive Assessment

Little Rissington has a firmer historical basis than a sighting known only through a late interview. The station record establishes that a report was made and entered into the RAF’s account of its activities.

The uncertainty lies in what that report can now establish about the objects themselves.

The witnesses’ later descriptions give the encounter its texture: three pale forms above cloud, the first thought of parachutes, the interruption of a training flight. The official summary gives it a date and a place in the record. Neither preserves enough information for a reliable identification.

The men returned to their airfield. The entry was written. Somewhere between the few lines that remain and the papers that have not been found lies the explanation they were seeking.

Continue Through the Archive

For another encounter involving military witnesses and questions about what the surviving evidence can establish, continue with The Nimitz Tic Tac Encounter.

Or follow the history of an image whose original negatives remain missing in The Calvine Photograph.