Tornado sightings!

[typerated]

UFO files: RAF tornado crew spotted UFO over North Sea - Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/8357165/UFO-files-RAF-tornado-crew-spotted-UFO-over-North-Sea.html)

Surely someone is having a laugh.

[green granite]

Perhaps the paper's date is wrong, should have been the 1st.

[typerated]

Just what I thought!

[El Grifo]

Transcript of the alleged coms Transcriptie opname radiocommunicatie V2.0 (http://www.ufonet.nl/nieuws/tornado/NL.htm)

[99 Change Hands]

Some of the details don't ring true but this sounds like McAlps leading a stream back to Laarbruch trying to make it before the bar closed when he was overtaken by an aircraft above him with a blue pulsing light. Dutch Mil said they couldn't see it.

I was sitting in my quarter in Goch at the time, and, within ten minutes of the incident, the whole town was shaken by a sonic boom. We had had a similar boom some weeks before and Wildenrath had gone on BFBS to apologise for an over-enthusiastic F4 pilot. My mate in ATC told me that Wildenrath had not been flying at the time of the first boom.

I seem to recall that Nick Pope considers this one of the two best UFO cases with UK involvement, along with the overflight of Shawbury/Cosford.

[Really annoyed]

The crew were returning from a ''low level'' mission in the UK to RAF Laarbruch in GermanyUmmm is Laarbruch still open or something?
Do you think that the UFO had a white paper cup in the window just like that herc has?

[Ewan Whosearmy]

RA

This was Nov 1990.

[Tashengurt]

I suppose it would have been too much to ask them to draw a sketch?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Also in 1990 (I think), a letter from the 'Lancashire UFO Society' arrived at our base wondering why a QRA had been scrambled to intercept a UFO off Blackpool at dusk. In fact the F3 was on a routine training mission, and was intercepting...me!, in another F3 with a malfunctioning left reheat and malfunctioning lights.
Notice how many other UFOs there are on fireworks night?
Also notice how few UFO sightings there are these days, now there's a lot less military flying.
Not much of a believer in little green men. Far more likely to be medium-sized men in green growbags.

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

The UFO pilot was lying - the RAF doesn't have any aircraft.

[Haraka]

I think this satisfactorily puts the cork in this one.( Although it did cause a bit of a ripple in RAFG at the time)

The Tornado Case (1990) (http://www.ufonet.nl/nieuws/tornado/index2.html)


Doubtless Mr. Pope also has his opinion.

[TEEEJ]

If you read the comments on the Telegraph article you will see replies by James Oberg. Oberg is retired from NASA and now a journalist and historian.

James Oberg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Oberg)

Oberg has the case pretty much summed up.

Recorded audio communications from Dutch radio enthusiast.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~fwestra/pub/sound/EHMC_Tornados.mp3

It was a real event and it does exist in the UK National Archives. The following link contains correspondence from the Tornado Pilot and released signals on the reporting of the aerial phenomena.

http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pdfs/defe-24-2041-1-1.pdf

Once pounced upon by the 'UFO Conspiracy' people it, like other reports, often gets blown out of all proportion. The sighting was reported by others including ground based observers and airline pilots. At the time of the event Russian space debris was burning up on re-entry.

The MoD did not investigate as the sighting took place outside UK airspace. A possible explanation of the sighting could be the re-entry of a Russian rocket-body logged byRAF Fylingdales (see also DEFE 24/2027 p35)

From

Reader's Guide for UFO files (http://www.scribd.com/doc/50229117/Reader-s-Guide-for-UFO-files)

In the Telegraph comments Jim Oberg refers to post by IsaacKoi (10:18 AM by Isaackoi) on the following link

Britain's latest batch of UFO files - March 2011, page 3 (http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread669186/pg3#pid10710114)

TJ

[Thelma Viaduct]

A Tornado pilot will be just as surprised/mystified to see exotic hardware as your typical civvy, if not more so, he is acutely accustomed to seeing what he has been trained to identify.

Think about it, a Tornado is a 1960's design era aircraft and all that entails.
That pilot and nav is flying about in 1960's technology with other mil aircraft that are also 1960's tech.

Since computer advances in everything from design to materials technology, I'd be surprised if there wasn't exotic hardware cutting about the skies.
Look back in time, from 1910 to 1950, then extrapolate 1960 to 2000 with the aid of supercomputers...........

The description sounds very much like Thunderbird 2 though. :ok:

[just another jocky]

Sounds like the incident I spoke to one of the reporting pilots about (he's still serving so I shan't mention his name). According to him, it was below and quite close, so not debris on re-entry, had windows and a blue pulsing 'doughnut' exhaust.

Curiously, he noted the rough heading of it and a few days later came across a newspaper report that a BA pilot had reported something very similar. He actually traced this guy, went to see him to check out his story and it did....they reckoned it was the same thing, 15 minutes apart, same description, same heading. Trouble is, his sighting was over the North Sea, BA pilot was over Italy! In 15 minutes.

This is what he told me. I cannot vouch for its accuracy, but I know him and he a pretty straight guy.

[moggiee]

There's always something that doesn't ring true in these cases, though.

Why, for example, if you were testing some sort of high performance, super-secret mega jet would you send it at relatively low level through some of the busiest airspace in the world? Unless you WANT it to be seen, in which case you just publish a photo through the area 57 press office!

I'm no GR expert (my Tornado knowledge is all related to the F3) but would a GR1 be able to get a "radar lock" on a target? Also, what self respecting pilot wouldn't attempt to lock it up if he could (get it on tape in that snazzy little VCR in the back seat - assuming that the GR1 had it).

As said elsewhere, some sketches would have been nice, too.

[LFFC]

This is quite an old story, but I always thought that the recording sounds quite genuine.

RT Recording (http://www.xs4all.nl/~fwestra/pub/sound/EHMC_Tornados.mp3)

[Just This Once...]

I'm no GR expert (my Tornado knowledge is all related to the F3) but would a GR1 be able to get a "radar lock" on a target? Also, what self respecting pilot wouldn't attempt to lock it up if he could (get it on tape in that snazzy little VCR in the back seat - assuming that the GR1 had it).

A GR1 equipped with an EV3 radar could get a radar lock (single target) and a rather crude b-scope display in the back. This could be cued to give a rather laggy display in the HUD ready for air-to-air override mode to be taken from the front.

The rather quaint recording system (HDDR) in the GR1 was a digital display projector projected in front of a bit wet film to capture the head-down display image - if one remembered to set it to run. The front relied on wet film too for the HUD.

ah, F/A, Stab, Baro-IN, HDDR...

[Thelma Viaduct]

Sounds very similar to the Belgian incidents around the same time.

TR3B watching & listening to the Berlin wall falling down and all the associated 'noise' that would generate.

The Belgian UFO Wave - UFO Encounters (http://www.ufoencounters.co.uk/the-belgian-ufo-wave.html)

[99 Change Hands]

Thanks for that link Haraka, very interesting reading.

I now have a different problem; having been told that 637 Flight had seen the lights on the homeward leg I had associated them with the big boom in Goch and assumed we were talking Aurora or some such. Now that I know it was at 18Z, I'm back to square one!

[Thelma Viaduct]

There's always something that doesn't ring true in these cases, though.

Why, for example, if you were testing some sort of high performance, super-secret mega jet would you send it at relatively low level through some of the busiest airspace in the world? Unless you WANT it to be seen, in which case you just publish a photo through the area 57 press office!

Isn't that the whole point of a stealthy clandestine recce aircraft??? the fact that it can operate in 'busy' areas.

Yeah sometimes it will be seen, but only by a tiny minority that won't be able to describe it, as they've never seen anything like it before and the likelihood of them seeing it again is even more remote. Even then, most people will think they're just talking bull, hence why the 'UFO' culture is actually a benefit to development aircraft.

Despite the 'test' aircraft being witnessed, 99.99% of the world are still non the wiser to it's existence and the reason why it hasn't gone through the area 57 press office.