Article/Document:

Flying Triangles - A Historical Perspective

Nick Redfern and Irene Bott, Alien Encounters magazine

original source |  fair use notice

Summary: As the majority of people with an interest in UFO mystery will know, in recent years there has been a tremendous increase in the number of triangular and delta-shaped UFOs seen operating in Britain’s airspace.

As the majority of people with an interest in UFO mystery will know, in recent years there has been a tremendous increase in the number of triangular and delta-shaped UFOs seen operating in Britain’s airspace.

For example, the late 1980’s saw an abundance of such reports from the Staffordshire area (something which ultimately led to questions being asked in parliament following a wave of encounters with triangular craft in may of 1988), while Derbyshire was a focal point for similar activity throughout the 1990’s.

‘It was a massive triangular object with flashing lights all around it,’ reported a witness to just such a vehicle seen in the Ashbourne area of Derbyshire in 1993. ‘It was very big, made no noise, and seemed to be coming down over back lane travelling towards Uttoxeter.’

In 1995, the Triangles were still out in force in the area of Derbyshire: ‘It had no sound and through binoculars we could see it was of a triangular nature with green lights on each corner.’ Stated an eyewitness to a Triangle seen over moorland between Ashbourne and Wirksworth in March of that year.

Considering the fact that many reports similar to those referenced above have only surfaced in the last decade of so, a number of commentators have suggested that the Flying Triangles are not the result of intensified alien intrusions in our airspace; rather they are the result of radical developments on the part of British and American defence contractors, and here in the British Isles, are at least partly operated out of the British Aerospace facility at Warton, near Manchester.

This theory is entirely reasonable, and respected investigator Tim Matthews has called together a convincing body of evidence in support of just such a scenario. However, there is a problem: sightings of identical craft to those being seen on a large scale today have been reported throughout the country for decades. How can we be certain? Quite simply, whilst conducting a great deal of research into the available RAF and Air Ministry-originated UFO files now declassified and on display at the Public Record Office at Kew, we uncovered a variety of reports suggesting that encounters with the Triangles are far from being a new phenomenon, after all. Consider the evidence:

The earliest report which we were able to uncover dated from September 1952 and concerned the sighting of triangular-shaped UFOs seen during a NATO exercise called ‘Mainbrace’. Significantly, UFOs were witnessed by military personnel reported throughout Mainbrace, including a now-famous encounter reported by half a dozen Royal Air Force personnel stationed at RAF Topcliffe in Yorkshire who saw a circular shaped UFO operating near the airfield.

Interestingly enough, it was later stated by Edward J. Ruppelt (the one-time head of the U.S. Air Force’s UFO study programme, project blue book) that it was the sightings reported throughout mainbrace which caused the British Government to officially recognise the UFO mystery. And what do the files on Exercise Mainbrace tell us about the Triangles?

Barely one day into the exercise, at least two reports of encounters with triangular-shaped vehicles were filed with the authorities by naval personnel on board ships off the coast of Ireland. The first such encounter involved what was referred to as a ‘blue/green triangle’ which was observed flying over the sea at a speed of 1,500 miles per hour; while later that same day, a triangular formation of lights emitting a ‘white light exhaust’ was seen in the same vicinity.

The next file which caught out attention dated from 1956. This in itself was significant since 1956 was the very year in which the Royal Air Force upgraded its UFO investigations to ‘Secret’ level following a now famous area of England.

Reading through the files, we were able to see that details of the incident had been reported to Air Ministry by the prime witness: a Mr W. Arnold of Greater Manchester. In a 1962 letter to the Air Ministry, Mr Arnold wrote: ‘The recent Flying Saucers sighted over Manchester are not a new phenomenon, and one was sighted by myself in 1956 in the early hours of the morning. It was always my belief that this aircraft was a British experimental plane. It carried no markings whatever and was of highly polished metal. If a am mistaken that this plane is British, then alternatively it could be a photo reconnaissance plane from source unknown and of an interesting design!’

Most remarkable of all, Arnold had included with his letter a hand drawn picture of the object he had viewed which looked like a cross between a triangle and the heel of a shoe and it is perhaps notable that a number of witnesses to the reported UFO crash near Roswell in 1947 stated that rather than being saucer shaped, the crashed object was heel like in design.

And what did the Air Ministry have to say about Arnold’s letter/ In an internal memorandum generated only days later, it was reported that Arnold had probably viewed an aircraft flown from the AVRO works at Woodford, near Manchester. The Air Ministry Secretariat which dealt with Arnold’s report was unable to give a conclusive explanation, but suggested that he had viewed a ‘prototype Vulcan’ aircraft undergoing trials.

The most important factor for us, however, was that Arnold’s sighting of a triangular shaped UFO in Britain’s airspace had occurred in precisely the same location that advanced aircraft of an identical configuration are being seen today!

There are two scenarios: either AVRO and British Aerospace have been flying highly advanced triangular shaped aircraft throughout Manchester and the surrounding areas for at least four decades (and if so, why, forty years on, is such technology not in widespread use?), or an unknown presence has been operating in our skies and utilising triangular aeroforms for more than four decades.

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