Within the MOD UFO files civil servants, intelligence officers and military staff debate how the British Government should respond to growing public interest in the phenomena and what they called ‘the media’s obsession with UFOs’.

In his UK Restricted minute ‘Wrap Up of UAP Material’ dated 22 March 2000 the report’s author – a retired RAF scientist – refers to a collection of slides and photographs that he consulted in the MoD’s archive. These contained images of the ‘ASTRA/AURORA‘ project – a top secret, hypersonic Cold War spyplane.

British concerns about a ‘possible stealthy platform flying in UK airspace’ are mentioned in a letter – originally classified Secret – sent by the UK’s Air Attache, Air Commodore Simon Baldwin to Sir Donald Spiers, The Controller of Aircraft at MoD Main Building in London early in December. It says the British had informally passed on their concerns to the Pentagon and had now received ‘more definite information on the source of the sighting’.

The “Calvine incident” was described ‘as one of the most intriguing in the Ministry of Defence’s files’ in Nick Pope’s book Open Skies, Closed Minds, however, no one in the UFO community had heard of the photographs and, up to that point, no media source had ever published stories about them.

During the 1930s British scientists working on a ‘death ray’ discovered that when radio waves from a transmitter struck targets such as aircraft, ships and buildings they bounced back and could be detected by a receiver.

Who was the defence expert responsible for the UK’s ‘definitive report’ on UFOs? Dr David Clarke reports on his research into the elusive figure behind the Condign report.