Some Media Responses to the Warminster Mystery

This is a photo from Arthur Shuttlewood's Warnings from Flying Friends (1968): "UFO over Cradle Hill, August 1967.  Picture by Birmingham Contact U.K. group member Roger Blackwell."

The following excerpts are from the tenth and eighteenth chapters of UFOs — Key to the New Age (1971) by Arthur Shuttlewood.

Spacecraft of our flying friends, and the thinking intelligence behind or aboard them, are not extroverts and exhibitionists, normally.  They do not flaunt their colourful chariots without intent.  But occasionally it seems as though they deliberately set out to impress the minds of acknowledged experts in matters scientific and astronomical such as Robert Chapman, science correspondent of the Sunday Express, and the noted astronomer whose BBC TV The Sky at Night broadcasts are known to millions in Britain, Patrick Moore.  Others include a zoologist, an aircraft designer, geologist, doctors, teachers, sociologists and many amateur astronomers.

Robert Chapman and his newspaper had the moral courage to publish what he saw of an inexplicable nature when he came to Warminster; and in fact he wrote a book on UFOs that incorporated a visual experience that mystified him.  He admitted that at Warminster he came across the only evidence he was compelled to accept as baffling to his scientific mind and training.  Nowhere else had he seen aerial phenomena that were unexplainable.  I was pleased, for his sake, that our flying friends were kind enough to show themselves during what was a dreadful night for sky-watching, laden with storm clouds.  Because he dealt with the incidents clearly and fully, I shall not repeat them here for the unworthy sake of advertising the central theme of this and my other two works on Ufora: that UFOs definitely exist whether we welcome their advent or not.

However, it should be placed on record, faithfully, what happened during the Warminster visit of Patrick Moore—for the most revealing part was discreetly secreted from the public.  By Moore?  By the BBC?  By the Government or one of its hush-hush departments?  Your guess is as shrewd as mine, although someone was responsible for keeping important knowledge from the viewing world.  What, precisely, did Patrick see over Cradle Hill on the night of January 31st, 1969?  And what was its effect upon him and his companions?  The answers, had a BBC2 TV programme in May that year not been ruthlessly cut at the most exciting point, could undoubtedly have boosted the strict authenticity of UFO sightings at Warminster because of Moore's reputation; and had a reciprocal dowsing effect upon hosts of cynics and armchair critics pouring cold water of disbelief and scorn on the local enigma in particular and the far wider issue of UFOs in general.

A colour TV camera unit under producer Simon Campbell-Jones, complete with lighting and sound engineers, even a clapper-board girl meticulously logging scenes and "takes" in sequence, visited our town to take film and recordings for a fact-finding purpose in a presentation called One Pair of Eyes.  Although they were at Warminster twenty-four hours, spending several hours in filming and interviewing, only about five minutes of carefully edited film found its way into the actual programme.  People must have been left wondering, because the fact was obscured: Did Patrick Moore see anything unidentifiable or not?  For there were precious few clues in the disjointed programme to indicate Yea or Nay.

You can accept my solemn word for it that he did—and his unusual visual experience was shared by the whole thrilled unit, including the inevitable joker, a cameraman who honestly doubted the wisdom of trekking up our hill at night because (a) it had been a busy day already, and (b) he feared missing the final instalment of a space fiction Dr. Who epic for children on BBC1.  It was the wrong night for that, anyway!  Patently, the BBC team were all dubious over prospects of seeing anything untoward when we reached the hill at around 8 p.m. and they had set up their various apparatus.  Patrick Moore, director of the Armagh planetarium, was the interviewer, and on the short sky-watch the technical crew were extremely cold, having just returned from an exotic assignment in sunny Bali.

There were humorous remarks and a few caustic comments about the improbability of UFOs—even if real—daring to come into our atmosphere on such a cold night.  This made me laugh, though not openly in front of our guests.  There was absolute faith tingling through my being that their journey would be rewarded; and the programme idea was theirs anyway, not mine.  I told Simon Campbell-Jones earlier that no co-operation could be given unless Moore was given an opportunity to visit our hill and satisfy himself that UFOs exist.  Apparently he has always been sternly anti-UFO hitherto, although I found him a pleasant person with an exuberant personality and unbounded enthusiasm.  Every doubter on the hillside warmed up more than a trifle at two minutes to 9 p.m. beneath a perfectly cloudless sky.

For it was then, immediately after a satellite arced from north to south, that the attention of a cameraman was drawn to an orange glow that developed into the shape of an ellipsoidal craft flying low and horizontally in the opposite direction from the satellite, much larger and much nearer.  To begin with, it seemed virtually to burst into prominence at low altitude near the lighted West Wilts Golf Clubhouse, started to move and became darker and dimmer for a fraction of a second before flaring into a glowing brilliance as it glided unerringly towards the darkened copse saddling Cradle Hill.

It hovered briefly over the treeline, no farther from the eye than 500 yards and fewer than thirty-five feet in altitude when hovering.  It had a typical duck-bobbing forward motion, elegant and effortless in flight.  It abruptly disappeared after a sixty-second display of uncanny aerial magic.  Then, as noiseless and graceful as the first, another flying shape caught all fascinated eyes as it "broke" from a similar part of the sky.  It was slightly smaller in dimension, although bearing identical contours and colouring.  It came into view almost a minute after its predecessor, dipping low near the treeline and floating below the copse at nearest point, at the far side, a beautiful ribbon of rainbow light tracing its eerie path.

It could not have been more than ten feet from ground level prior to rising to a tip-tilting angle and blinking out in farewell.  The size of the first UFO to our gaze was a half-crown at arm's length, so that it was roughly one-third the overall length of the copse centre, making it in my judgement some twenty-four feet from stem to stern.  Its sudden vanishing act puzzled and excited the BBC team.  The second UFO left a bright rainbow-shot bar of light in its wake that flecked the undergrowth and outlined the trees in an odd halo, its pretty pattern patching the grass in rear of the copse.  This we watched after racing up the road to view a separate phenomenon more closely.  Moore felt it could have been reflected light from the Moon, to begin with—except that it did not persist for long, while the Moon did. . . .

These phenomena, three in less than two minutes including the "natural" satellite, certainly beggared description and bathed the locality in emotional warmth, so that Patrick Moore and his companions were quietly thrilled by the sheer mystical quality of the near-landings of soundless wonders that have so frequently haunted Cradle Hill for six years.  Patrick was so excited that he rushed to assemble a reflector telescope he had brought along with him in a case.  He tried to align it on to the flying forms, but unfortunately the eye-piece fell off!  He borrowed a high-powered pair of binoculars from Julian Butler and had a close-up of the orange-hued visitors before fade-out.

Each object travelled a leisurely thousand yards or so as though wishing, with cool and calculated insistence, to be seen by all present.  These UFOs were not dissimilar from those seen by hundreds of people on the hill that single year, yet different from the more "substantial" bodied craft that cameras capture when moonlit conditions allow.  Therefore, we agreed instantly with the astronomer's assessment that: "These are a mystery.  They are not what I would call unidentifiable flying objects, however: they are simply fascinating and inexplicable light formations.  I have never before seen anything like them."  This was gratifying coming from Moore.

There was no doubting the reality of his being completely mystified and the programme producer later sent me a personal letter of thanks for giving them all "an unforgettable experience" in my company that night.  If possible, of course, he should really have thanked "them" for being so co-operative and kind.  Yet—such a great pity when observers of the unknown seek support for truth and its propagation to a deluded and cheated public—sightings of the two UFOs and ILFs (inexplicable light formations) that night were removed from the programme; so that viewers must have wondered why Patrick Moore was warmly thanking me towards the close of the interview on the hill.  Your guess—I repeat with slight exasperation, for our friends' sake—is as good as mine over who or what was responsible for the savage cutting of both film and recording.

Apart from the BBC people, on the hill were John Dunscombe, Bob Strong, Sybil Champion, Julian Butler and myself.  Our local contingent of witnesses suffered acute disbelief and nigh-horror at the manner in which a memorable experience had been maltreated when the programme was duly shown a few months later.  Another odd happening, which may or may not be connected with the advent of the dazzling duo of ILFs, is that three wrist-watches stopped on the hill before nine o'clock.  Which raises a natural question, against the bizarre backcloth of strange watch-stopping incidents related in my last book: Could invisible or dematerialised UFOs have been surveying the area even earlier than those we sighted?  This is not such a nonsensical supposition as it might appear.

The two UFOs or ILFs suddenly vanished from the scene, not after coursing at prodigious speed through the atmosphere at great height, but following a serene meander at slow pace at low altitude.  They simply meant to be seen—and went.  One moment with us—the next, no longer existing. . . . Nothing we conventionalists know is capable of these "disappearing acts"—unless one credits that the Indian rope trick and similar myths are real enough to fool all the experts.  As a statesman said: "You can fool most of the people most of the time, but not all of the people all of the time."  Perhaps the masses on our planet are only fooling themselves, though, when they close their minds and eyes to the extreme truth of UFOS—and their more "shadowy" friends of the ILF brigade!

Before the BBC unit left Warminster, a delighted and surprised Patrick Moore cordially invited the small Warminster group to visit his home at Selsea in Sussex, in future.  "You really must come down, any time, to see me," he said as we shook hands.  Very kind of him: but, had he seen nothing extraordinary and eventful, it is doubtful if that spontaneously warm invitation would have been issued to a stranger.  As for the equally unexpected "red carpet" treatment the Ufonauts gave to Robert Chapman, obviously aware of his impending visit and prepared for it, here is an extract from a review of his book Unidentified Flying Objects (Arthur Barker, London) by the editor of Bufora Journal, official organ of BUFORA:

"The author went to Warminster and visited Cradle Hill in the company of Arthur Shuttlewood.  While there, he witnessed aerial manifestations which he admits himself unable to explain away.  One more testimony to tip the scales against those who believe that the Warminster Thing is a phantom conjured up by Mr. Shuttlewood and your editor, in unholy alliance with the little town's Chamber of Commerce," wrote Dr. John Cleary-Baker.  He added: "In view of his position as science correspondent of a leading British Sunday newspaper, it is interesting and possibly significant that Mr. Chapman's terminal chapter deals with the recent Condon Report on UFOs in what can only be described as a very restrained and unenthusiastic manner."

*

TODAY'S HEADLINES — STRAIGHT FROM THE BIBLE was the title of a short series of popular articles written by Ronald Camp for Weekend, published in London; and in the November 27th issue of 1968 appeared the following, bringing the feature writer and myself a miner shoal of correspondence from interested readers: "On the night of Tuesday, August 29th, 1967, Arthur Shuttlewood, an experienced newspaperman, was standing on Cradle Hill, near Warminster in Wiltshire.  Some people think he went a bit potty that night.  But thousands believe his incredible experience was real.  This is how he described it: 'A cone-shaped unidentified flying object dropped like a fiery stone into a copse, before veering to a final resting place about 1,000 yards away.  It was shooting out beams of bright light from a conical and revolving rim, but it blacked out after six minutes.  Then, right above my head, came the awesome sound of a gigantic bird flapping leaden wings — a heavy, thumping noise, so ponderous that the whole hedge trembled and my hands were lifted by the sheer vibrationary power pulsing beneath them.

"'Imagine the downbeating thrust of the wings of a swan in flight.  The aerial intruder was 1,000 times as large and disquieting.  I felt my hair blown into confusion by this blasting pressure and swayed on my heels . . .'  The Shuttlewood story caused a sensation in a space-age world becoming saucer-conscious.  It sparked off arguments in three continents," related Camp.  "But it was old news really.  The Bible had the story first—2,498 years ago.  On Thursday, July 5th, 530 B.C., Ezekiel, the son of Buzi, an old and trusted priest, was standing by the river Chebar in Chaldes (now Southern Iraq), when he saw some winged figures and 'A great cloud, with brightness around it and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire as it were gleaming bronze. . . . As I looked at the living creatures I saw a wheel, upon the earth beside them, one for each of the four of them.  The appearance of the wheels was like the gleaming of chrysolite (a shining stone) . . . their construction being as it were a wheel within a wheel.  When they went, they went in any of their four directions, without turning.

"'The four wheels had rims and they had spokes, and their rims were full of eyes round about.  And when the living creatures went, the wheels went beside them; when they rose from the earth, the wheels rose. . . . And when the living creatures went, I heard the sound of their wings, like the sound of many waters, like the thunder of the Almighty, a sound of tumult . . .'  Ezekiel 1:4.  I have spoken with Arthur Shuttlewood and the sincerity of his report is beyond doubt.  But modern scientists, probing into the unknown, believe that Ezekiel may have seen the first flying saucers on record — reported in the Bible," writes the author. 

*

In the third chapter of The Flying Saucerers (1976), Shuttlewood presented an article about UFOlogy (also mentioning Ezekiel) from a weekly British police magazine, as follows.

Do the governments and police forces of different countries on earth take UFOs at all seriously?  Is every report carefully logged and investigated?  The blunt answer is in the affirmative.  Titled "Police and Unidentified Flying Objects," an article appeared in the Christmas Eve (24 December 1971) edition of The Police Review in Britain.  The editor is Brian M. Clarke, the writer police sergeant M. D. Davies, Warwickshire and Coventry Constabulary.  It proves that the police, astute and shrewd observers, do not take UFO sighting reports lightly or dismiss them out of hand and unworthy of investigation.  It also mentions film of one of these jewelled flyers in the firmament taken by an ITV News at Ten cameraman in October 1971 and shown to millions of viewers on television.  Here, then, is the police view:

"The recent vapour trail sighting and film of an alleged unidentified flying object over Oxfordshire brings to the foreground again the question of inquiry into such phenomena.  To what extent any inquiry is undertaken mainly depends on the beliefs of the investigator and his attitude towards such reports.  If the inquiry is conducted by someone with an open mind, good detail and statements will be obtained; but there are also those who are sceptical and sarcastic, those who disbelieve on religious grounds, and indeed some even who are simply frightened.

"As the Police Service in an unmovable body when it comes to facts, it finds very little real evidence to go on.  Consequently officers are inclined to turn to the 'experts' for the answer, while all along the main expertise required upon which to give a satisfactory report is within their own hands.  Unfortunately there are no experts in 'Ufology' (the study of UFOs), although there are several persons who would have you believe there are.  Therein lies the danger.  Such persons claiming expertise should first be asked, 'Expert in what?'  Invariably they will be expert in astronomy, meteorology or psychology, etc., and probably good in their own field; but Ufology combines a study of many different factors and our experts are merely laymen with some special knowledge.

"This expertise must be pooled to arrive at some helpful knowledge, above that of a speculation based within their own confines.  To rely on such speculations leaves senior officers to be placed in an embarrassing position similar to those connected with the fiery cross sightings of October 1967.  While official explanations claiming that it was the planet Venus (proved wrong) or an artificial satellite reflecting the moon (proved wrong) were being put forward, less credibility was attached to each successive explanation.  Finally the Ministry of Defence admitted 'there is still no rational explanation for the objects.'

"Far better for it to have been first assessed as to what it was not, as indeed should be the practice with all inquiries into unknown aerial phenomena.  Witnesses are usually sincere and have integrity.  They come forward to report something which they have seen and which they do not understand.  The main ingredient of expertise must be that of the interrogator in questioning these witnesses.  What points he can elucidate will bear heavily in the final conclusion, with the assistance of other experts, as to what the object was not.

"Fortunately, in the United Kingdom we have not been subjected to such mania as exists in the United States, and there is still time to formulate a sensible and accepted approach to future sights.  At the moment there is no special branch or department which looks solely into the UFO problem (so we are led to believe).  Whitehall leaves all reports to a secretarial department that used to be termed S4f (Air).  This department also deals with complaints of low flying, jet noise, compensation, etc.  Main sightings, as that of the Moigne Downs, are usually investigated by a team of three — a scientist, a psychologist and a secretary-writer.

"The American Air Force's Project Blue Book, their official inquiry into UFOs, was in the hands of a major, a sergeant and a secretary, and received a low-priority rating; hardly conducive to issuing authoritative conclusions, particularly when, in the well-known Sorocco, New Mexico sighting, the Air Force investigator wrote that 'it will require very possibly the attention of the Secretary of the Air Force himself.'  Indeed, at one crash scene near Pittsburgh, it is reported that the military refused to allow even the police to approach the scene.  The official explanation finally was that it was a meteor.  This was despite the fact that the minimum speed ever recorded for a meteor is 27,000 miles an hour and that they travel straight.

"Yet this 'meteor' was not only tracked in its descent on radar at only 1,062.5 miles per hour, but it also made a 25 degree turn over Cleveland. . . . Reports of sightings come in all shapes and sizes, yet because one such sighting appears far-fetched it should not all be treated lightly.  Many begin with 'a bright light, like a star,' which then carried out some strange manoeuvre.  This is not uncommon — and if we accept that some foreign body is observing us from the heavens which does not willingly wish to be seen, what better than to give the appearance of a star?

"For every one person who observed the movement there must be one hundred who accept that it is merely a star.  (All Christians should find it easy to believe in such activity, for does not the Bible tell us of a 'moving star' which directed certain people to a certain place?)  When we can eliminate what the object was not, we can then openly speculate.  For example, when a sighting is made in space beyond the atmosphere of Earth, devoid of weather balloons, high-flying aircraft, reflections, mock suns, hoaxers, etc., then there can be only two other alternatives: another satellite or its debris, or another space vehicle.

"Such a recorded sighting was made by McDivitt and White aboard Gemini 4.  As the only alternative was another space vehicle, NASA stated that it was the dust-monitoring satellite Pegasus 2.  Unfortunately again, the statement has been proved wrong by the publication of minutely detailed records of exactly what Pegasus 2 was doing at that time.  Would it not seem incredible that the Gemini 4 mission would be programmed so that it was on collision course with Pegasus 2, which itself was still being tracked and monitored?  Then again, what really happened to Voskhad 1 in 1964 which necessitated it being brought back in a hurry after only twenty-four hours of a prolonged flight?  Were the German newspapers correct in relaying a Moscow source stating that the vehicle 'was repeatedly overtaken by extremely fast flying discs which struck the craft violent, shattering blows with their powerful magnetic fields?'

"Can we also accept that Voskhod 2 was subjected to similar treatment when, afterwards, at a carefully controlled press conference on 27 March 1965, the crew admitted sighting an unmanned satellite about half a mile away that they were not able to identify and which subsequently blotted out contact with ground control stations for several hours?  And why now are certain books on unidentified flying objects recommended to Soviet cosmonauts as interesting material for study and suggested as being useful for comparative study in connection with the flight of Voskhod 1?  In these days of tension, how does the track of a Polaris missile become botched-up on radar for fourteen minutes, as on 10 January 1961?

"Is the fact that, prior to losing the true trace, an unidentified flying object appeared?  Or was it merely a weather balloon, high flying aircraft, mock sun?  It seems strange, does it not, that radar operators who are expert in deciphering mechanical blips, and upon whose interpretation one day the responsibility for starting World War 3 may depend, can offer no explanation as to its identification.  Here in the United Kingdom the position should not be allowed automatically to follow that of the States, though one can imagine Police standing orders containing instructions similar to those of the USAAF in their AFA200/2 instruction issued 26 August 1953 — 'All genuine reports of UFOs must be kept from the public' (note the word 'genuine').

"Also in para. 9 that top ranking Air Force officers are warned not to probe beyond the first reporting stage.  Under Section 111 of a joint Army, Naval and Air publication (JANAP 146(B)), any pilot who reveals an official UFO report can be imprisoned for from one to ten years and be fined 10,000 dollars.  Perhaps I have caused some thought on the matter of Ufology — and primarily that was my intention.  Whether or not you believe in 'flying saucers' is not relevant.  What is, is that each sighting should be treated with respect, that the witnesses should not be brushed off, and that questions should be asked which produce answers to prove what the object was not.

"After all, Ezekiel witnessed the landing of a space vehicle and faithfully recorded it in the Bible.  Are we now to say that what he saw was an illusion?  Be very careful how you answer . . . 'And I looked, and behold a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire unfolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the mist thereof as the colour of beryl . . . came the likeness of four living creatures.  They had the likeness of a man, and every one had four faces, and every one had four wings.  And the wheels were full of eyes round about?  (Ezekiel, chapter 10 and 12)."