Birmingham UFO Group Case Report
Author: Dave Hodrien
Release Year: 2011
Last Updated: 04/11/2024
Sighting Details
At 2.00am on 14th June 2011, Mark Oliver and his co-driver David Shimmin were out in their HGV delivering produce to a fast food outlet on Fenton Street, Barnsley. It was a dry clear night with a light breeze. The stars were visible in the sky overhead. Due to the time of night there was very little traffic on the road, and no pedestrians.
Mark parked the truck facing to the South outside the restaurant. The men then got to work unpacking the truck. While they worked they noticed a police helicopter fly across the sky.
Five minutes later, David locked up the restaurant while Mark walked round to the front of the truck to prepare to leave. As he did he noticed a bright white light in the sky, moving in from his right and heading in an Easterly direction.
The light was glaringly bright, which caused the edges to appear fuzzy rather than sharply defined. It appeared to be at most 1000 feet in the air, and less than a mile from his location. It was completely silent. Initially he assumed it was a plane, but quickly realised it looked different. Mark estimates it was moving at less than 100 mph.
David finished locking up and reached the truck, and Mark pointed out the object to him. Both witnesses then watched the light for about a minute until it had disappeared out of sight.
Sighting Analysis
I agree with the witnesses that the object was unlikely to have been an aircraft, due to the lack of normal navigation lights. Nor could it have been a drone, as these were not commercially available until 2013.
However there are a number of other mundane possibilities. The object did not perform any advanced manoeuvres which would indicate it was under intelligent control. If it was indeed at the height that it appeared to be, then it could have been a brightly glowing LED balloon drifting on an air current.
Potentially it only appeared to be in the atmosphere, but instead was much higher up out in orbit. The International Space Station can be ruled out as at 2am on 14/06/2011 it was over the East coast of the USA not the United Kingdom, as shown by the below ISS Tracker screenshot:
However a particularly bright satellite cannot be entirely ruled out. Sometimes it is extremely difficult to judge true distance of an object in the sky, especially during hours of darkness.
No mundane explanation can be confirmed without doubt, so there is still the possibility it was something more unusual.
Copyright Dave Hodrien 2024
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