August 1974 - Castle Vale, Solihull & Liverpool - Oval UFO Formation Sightings

Birmingham UFO Group Case Report Last Updated: 29/03/2018

Introduction

This report covers a stunning incident involving a formation of UFOs which took place in early August 1974 and was witnessed by many people at various locations around England. The incident was investigated by a previous UFO group based in Birmingham named the Unidentified Flying Objects Study and Information Service (UFOSIS), and also made the newspapers. In December 2009 Andrew, one of a number of witnesses who saw the objects over Castle Vale, attended one of BUFOG’s monthly meetings. Afterwards he sent me details of his sighting at my request.

On 14th August 2010 I was contacted by another man named Gary Smith. He informed me that he too had witnessed the fleet of UFOs, along with up to 30 other witnesses in the area of Campden Green, Solihull! He got in touch after doing a search for the incident on the net and locating this report detailing the Castle Vale sighting! I was extremely pleased by this, as this is one of the reasons I write these reports in the first place.

On 1st September 2010 I met Gary at Campden Green so he could go through his sighting with me directly. I returned there the following day to take some photographs which can be seen in this report.

In April 2011 another man got in touch with me via Richard Hall's website, and he spoke of an incident involving a formation of UFOs. He claimed it happened in 1973 but did not seem certain. I feel that he probably has the year wrong, and is probably speaking of the same incident.

In January 2017, a lady got in touch via E-Mail to inform me that she and her mother had also witnessed the blue orbs observed by the gentlemen at Castle Vale prior to the appearance of the formation.

In March 2018 Gary put me in touch with Leigh Brooks, another of the witnesses who was present for the sighting in Solihull. He too gave a statement about what he remembered seeing.

The fact that this incident has been reported now by four different groups of individuals is extremely impressive. It remains the most highly reported incident that I have yet investigated.

PART 1: CASTLE VALE SIGHTINGS

Andrew’s notes on the incident are very comprehensive so I have reproduced them in their entirety below, which is why they are written in 1st person.

When

Early August 1974 (Round about the 4th or 5th).

Where

Tangmere Drive, Castle Vale, North Birmingham.

Map of sighting location (Position marked A is where the witnesses were standing):

What Happened

A friend of mine, Nigel, his girlfriend Sandra and I were waiting at a bus stop between 10.45 and 11.00 pm following an evening at a pub disco (The Albatross Pub, now demolished).

Castle Vale lies under the flight path to Birmingham Airport, so we were used to seeing and identifying aeroplanes on final landing approach. We had in previous years also spent evenings watching the Pleiades meteorites (late August- early September) entering the atmosphere from Nigel’s back garden, and could easily differentiate between a plane and a meteorite.

This particular evening while we waiting for the bus to arrive, a medium sized passenger plane passed overhead heading for Birmingham Airport, the aircraft noise causing me to look up. The plane was travelling roughly North to South at several hundred feet and descending.

As I watched the plane pass over head, I noticed two small blue/white lights following the plane very closely, less than half a planes length behind it, both points of light were constant, not blinking or changing colour, were parallel to each other and no more than 50 feet apart, based on the relative size of the plane. I drew the attention of my friend Nigel to the sight, and as we watched, the twin spots of light stopped following the plane stopped abruptly and then shot off in opposite directions, in right angles with respect to the path of the plane (West & East) at amazing speeds and were out of sight in seconds.

Map showing route of aeroplane and UFOs:

Map showing path of UFOs after they changed course:

It was as we tried to follow the path of one of the light spots (East bound) that the main event happened.

A group of oval/egg-shaped self illuminated objects, at least 8, possibly 10 or even 12 in number in a clearly defined V formation passed overhead from due East to North West at an astonishing speed.

There was no noise, and any estimate of height or size was difficult to gauge as there was no real terms of reference. However, it was a very clear night with no cloud cover and a lot of stars visible, and even though there was a high degree of light pollution from the surrounding houses, because Castle Vale is flat (it used to be Castle Bromwich Aerodrome), it was possible to track these objects clearly from horizon to horizon as they passed overhead, and although it happened very quickly it was possible to see stars being obscured by the objects as they passed.

The objects appeared a pearlescent silvery white and internally illuminated not reflective, and had a silvery-yellow/green corona surrounding around and extending out from each object as distance equivalent to about 5 or 10% of the size of the object. There were no other lights or colours visible, and the formatio