Birmingham UFO Group Case Report
Author: Dave Hodrien
Release Date: 25/07/2011
Last Updated: 05/11/2024
In 2011 I was contacted by a man named Les Bond who wanted to discuss two sightings he had back in the 1960s. This report covers the second of these sightings. A link to the report on the first can be found near the end of this report.
Sighting Details
It was around 11.30pm on a late evening in the latter half of July 1968. Les and his wife were outside at Butlins in Bognor Regis on the South coast of England where they were on holiday. It was a clear and calm evening and the stars were visible above them.
They were walking back to their chalet along one of the camp avenues and looking up at the stars. Les was pointing out star constellations. Suddenly they saw what appeared to be two objects rapidly descending off to their right. Les immediately said “Look at that!” They were amazed to see two formations of white lights side by side. Each formation had two lights at the front close together, and two lights at the rear spaced further apart. They gave the impression of large triangular shaped objects, each approximately 40 feet in length and 20 feet wide. However as they descended, Les noticed that the stars were visible between the lights.
Initially the lights were at an altitude of about 10000 feet. Within a couple of seconds they descended rapidly in a curved arc until they were at an altitude of 500 feet. They then continued in a curve back up out of sight, which took a further couple of seconds. It gave the impression that they had been on a giant invisible rope and had swung down and then back up. Les and his wife were both astounded by what they had just seen. Les estimates the objects were moving at at least 300 mph. He noted that the objects had been completely silent and there had been no sonic boom.
There were other people in the area but Les is not aware if anyone else saw the objects. He and his wife stood still a while hoping to see the UFOs again but they did not reappear. In the morning Les bought the local newspaper but there was no report of anyone else seeing the objects.
Sighting Analysis
Due to the incredible manoeuvre the objects performed, this sighting was clearly of something out of the ordinary, and also under intelligent control. The fact that the lights swooped down and then back up, and were in two identical formations proves that they were not a meteorite shower.
They were moving much too fast and controlled to have been white LED balloons or other inflatable objects, and this sighting occurred decades before drones were a possibility. If the objects were two distant formations of jets, then why would they have swooped down and then back up to high altitude over several seconds? The objects appeared to be silent, and jets would not be allowed to perform such a manoeuvre after dark due to the noise pollution. I cannot think of any mundane explanations which adequately explain what was seen.
The fact that Les saw the stars between the lights may suggest that this was a formation of eight objects, not two large triangular objects. However I have investigated a number of Flying Triangle cases where the main body of the craft has been invisible for part of the sighting, with only the lights visible in the sky. So perhaps this was a similar case. The lighting configuration on the objects was uncommon for Flying Triangle craft, though not unheard of.
Les had a previous sighting of a blurred white orb back in 1960 with his older brother and a friend. Click here to read the details of this case.
Copyright Dave Hodrien 2024
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