According to the UK’s National Archives website, “the files contain a wide range of UFO-related documents, drawings, letters and parliamentary questions covering the years 2000-2005.”
Even Winston Churchill was perplexed, as evidenced by the following quote at the bottom of the Archives homepage:
“What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?”
Churchill was deeply concerned with UFO’s. One encounter in particular frightened the hell out of him: RAF pilots were flying across the English Channel when they were approached and “shadowed” by a metallic flying object, sticking around long enough for the pilots to take photos and make brief sketches of the craft. Churchill was quoted as saying, “This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic among the general population and destroy one’s belief in the Church.”
There is a highlight guide to help readers navigate the massive amount of files. And it is in this highlight guide that perhaps the most interesting one exists.
“File DEFE 24/2036 (p63-68) contains two colour photographs of “unusual atmospheric occurrence” taken by a retired RAF officer during a holiday in Sri Lanka in March 2004. He heard a clap of thunder followed by the appearance of a doughnut-shaped cloud in the sky that “did not rise but headed from the high atmosphere towards the earth”. He believed it to be an “air burst” of some kind. Submitted to MoD via RAF Fylingdales. File DEFE 24/2036 (p63-68) contains two colour photographs of “unusual atmospheric occurrence” taken by a retired RAF officer during a holiday in Sri Lanka in March 2004. He heard a clap of thunder followed by the appearance of a doughnut-shaped cloud in the sky that “did not rise but headed from the high atmosphere towards the earth”. He believed it to be an “air burst” of some kind. Submitted to MoD via RAF Fylingdales.”
The photograph of the mysterious Sri Lankan airburst is stunning enough, but to understand how significant this UFO is, one must understand that Sri Lanka is thought by some to be an inter-dimensional portal, a stargate of sorts. To see the photograph of the strange atmospheric perturbation in Sri Lanka is great fodder then for everyone from New Agers to UFO enthusiasts alike.
There are 34 pdf files which can be downloaded for free for one month, which means you can save them to your desktop and peruse them at your leisure.
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Eh, this is kinda fun. But to play Debby Downer for a second, it’s obviously a picture of an lcd screen displaying a clouded sky. You can see the nicks in the screen, and anyone who owns a laptop will recognize the thumbprint distortion as happens when someone grasps their laptop by the screen to move it. It was then touched up using the same background picture to make the distortion appear to have depth within the image. It might be real, but logic says I can duplicate this in 30 seconds and declare it as WWII era UFO capture.
I would agree with you, however the nicks you refer to may just be degredation of the photograph. Right now we dont know how it was digitized… it could be a photo of a photo, it could be a scan of a photo, etc. Also, while it does look like a thumbprint, it appears behind the cloud formation. I would have to say that it is just a lenticular cloud formation higher above the clouds in the foreground and therefor being lit by the sun differently. Interesting nonetheless!
Well, I really didn’t get through half my problems with this pic. What is your source that makes you believe this is real? I didn’t even mention the inaccuracy of the granularity, or the wierd bi-lateral deformation in the center of the pic…
Can we please get some more fantastic stuff? I love this site, but a lame doctored pic of a thumbprint is no fun.