Birmingham UFO Group Case Report
Author: Dave Hodrien
Release Date: 19/11/2024
On the morning of 16th November 2024 I was contacted by a man named Shaun who had been working on a house in Castle Vale, Birmingham. He had just witnessed two black coloured UFOs for a number of minutes. This report goes over the sighting in depth.
Sighting Details
At around 11.28am Shaun was working the rear of a property on a side road of garages off Renfrew Square. It was a dry and mild but cloudy morning, with a strong breeze blowing. A large flock of seagulls situated in the sky visible over a cream-coloured block of flats to the East of his location caught his eye and he looked up at them. He then realised there was a larger object in the centre of the flock.
Initially he thought it was a very large seagull or other bird, but shortly realised it was much too sizeable for this. He also realised there were in fact two objects, identically sized. The objects were positioned one behind the other and heading Eastward away from him in the sky visible above the roof of a nearby block of flats on Turnhouse Road.
They appeared to be curved arrowhead shaped and jet black in colour, with no visible markings. Shaun stated that they looked “rubber-like in appearance and shiny like a diver’s wetsuit.” They looked to be quite large, Shaun estimates about the size of a single decker bus (approximately 40 feet). They seemed to be a bit higher up than a patrol helicopter would fly at, maybe around 600 feet up.
The objects were not flat but instead had depth to them. They were travelling on a level and straight course at a slow speed, seemingly around 20 mph. As he watched them he realised they were rotating slowly anti-clockwise. But before they rolled right over they started to tip back the other way. This side to side rotation continued, almost as if the objects were trying to right themselves. He walked to the end of the side road to get a better look.
A minute later a lady came out of a house several doors away. He called over to her “Can you see that?” pointing out the objects. She replied “Yes! What is it? Oh, there’s two of them!” A moment later she was joined by her son. She pointed the UFOs out to him but he didn’t seem that interested and got into his car. The lady continued to watch for about 30 seconds before also leaving.
After a short while Shaun lost his view of the objects behind the roof of the block of flats due to the angle. He walked along Renfrew Square to the T-junction with Turnhouse Road to see the sky from a different angle and continue watching them.
The objects were not rotating continuously. They would rotate a while, then level out, then start rotating again. This pattern continued for the duration of the sighting, which lasted about 4-5 minutes.
Despite having a camera phone on him he sadly was too transfixed by the objects to get it out and start filming them. He informed me it is an older model Motorola and the camera is not particularly good on it, so they may not have been captured very well even if he had tried.
Sighting Analysis
The objects seen in this incident were obviously quite an unusual shape, and were clearly not normal aircraft or drones of any kind. In addition to the odd appearance, I also confirmed on Flight Radar 24 that there were no aircraft with transponders in the vicinity at the time of the sighting:
Hand gliders are less curved than the shape drawn by the key witness, and also would not tip from side to side in the manner that was described. These aspects also put hot air balloons out of the question.
However I do wonder if the objects were some two large and black coloured novelty balloons drifting on air currents. The wind at the time of the sighting was facing Eastward, which is the direction the objects were travelling, as confirmed by the below weather screenshot:
Shaun said that the objects looked much too big to be balloons, but did not put this explanation out of the question, as it was hard to tell exactly how far away the objects were, so therefore hard to accurately judge their size.
I have found the two below black balloons online which are a little reminiscent of the shape described and drawn by the witness, though not identical:
However both of these balloon examples are normal sized novelty balloons, it seems extremely unlikely that these particular balloons could be mistaken for something the size of a bus. That said, novelty balloons of some kind does seem to be the most likely explanation at this point in time, although a more unusual explanation cannot be entirely ruled out.
Due to their slow speed it is entirely possible that there were other witnesses who are yet to come forward. If you believe you also witnessed these objects please get in touch.
Copyright Dave Hodrien 2024
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