This is a list of notable alleged sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in the United Kingdom. Many more sightings have become known since the gradual release, between 2008 and 2013, of the Ministry of Defence's UFO sighting reports by the National Archives. In recent years, there have been reports of many slowly moving lights in the night sky, which can be easily explained as Chinese lanterns. Undertaken between 1997 and 2000, Project Condign concluded that all the investigated sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena in the UK could be attributed to misidentified but explicable objects, or poorly understood natural phenomena. London is the city with the most UFO sightings in the UK, followed by Manchester and Birmingham.
12th century 1113: Religious pilgrims in South West England reported seeing a glowing fire-belching "dragon" emerge from the sea, flying into the air, and disappearing into the sky.
13th century January 1254: In St Albans, England, a scribe wrote of a glowing floating light, thus recorded it, "...in serene sky and clear air, with stars shining and the Moon eight days old, there suddenly appeared in the sky a kind of large ship elegantly shaped, well equipped and of marvellous colour." 1290: Friars of Byland Abbey, described "a flat, round shining silvery object" flying overhead of them. However, this report is a hoax perpetrated by two teenagers in the 1950s.
20th century 1900s 11 May 1909: sightings, from early May 1909, of a mystery airship appeared over Ipswich, Cardiff, and Dublin. It had two visible lights, and would fly at around 01:00 in the morning. It was seen to travel at a "rapid rate", most unlike conventional airships. It acquired the name "scareship" or "phantom airship". In one night, the same type of craft was seen in Ipswich and Cardiff.Western Mail Wednesday 10 May 1909, page 6 19 May 1909: at midnight, a "scareship" was seen over Tharston in south Norfolk, by grocer's assistant Mr Chatten who worked at J.A. Lammas, cycling home. It was 400 ft long, rapidly moving towards Norwich. He could not hear any motor. On the same day, another was seen at Wroxham in Norfolk.Eastern Evening News Thursday 20 May 1909, page 3 The Willows airships were the first British airships. One had been built by 1909, with a 7 hp engine, built by Ernest Willows of Wales. An airship first crossed the English Channel on 4 November 1910, the Willows No. 3. German Zeppelins were most unlikely to have reached Cardiff, in 1909. The Zeppelins could not travel at a "rapid rate", being underpowered. Large inertia, of a possible object, would infer unremarkable acceleration. In 1909 "mystery airships" were also seen in Australia, on 16 July 1909, also with a light on the front and back, and in Sweden.
1910s Late 1912: the "scareships" returned. On 14 October 1912, a "scareship" appeared over Kent. In parliament on 27 November 1912 Conservative MP William Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford asked Winston Churchill if Britain had "any airship capable of travelling at the rate of sixty miles an hour". Zeppelin airships had only reached the UK in 1914.
1940s February 1942: A woman named Eileen Arnold was walking down Cheltenham High Street when she suddenly experienced an altered state of consciousness as she became "tuned into another reality". She became aware of a large oval shape moving slowly above the rooftops. She stated that it radiated light from holes in its side and had quills which detached one by one, also emitting light. Following the encounter, Eileen believed she had numerous psychic experiences. September 1942: Albert Lancaster believed he was abducted by aliens while working as a guard at a radar site near Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, Northumberland. He claimed to have a sudden urge to go outside, followed by a "strange impulse to look at the sky." He claims he saw a glowing light surrounded by dark mist and, assuming it to be a German weapon, went to raise the alarm before being struck by a beam of light from the cloud, followed by a floating sensation, then becoming aware he was back at his post. After this experience, he believed he had psychic powers for a period of time. 5 August 1944: According to records released on 5 August 2010, British wartime PM Winston Churchill banned the reporting, for fifty years, of an alleged UFO incident because of concerns that it could create mass panic. Reports given to Churchill claimed the incident involved a Royal Air Force (RAF) reconnaissance plane returning from a mission in France or Germany. Allegedly, when flying over or near the English coastline, the aircraft was suddenly intercepted by a strange metallic object that matched its course and speed for a time before accelerating away and disappearing. The plane's crew were reported to have photographed the object, which they said had "hovered noiselessly" near the aircraft, before moving off. According to the documents, details of the cover-up emerged when a man wrote to the government in 1999 seeking to find out more about the incident. He described how his grandfather, who served with the RAF in the Second World War, was present when Churchill and U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower discussed how to deal with the UFO encounter. The files come from more than 5,000 pages of UFO reports, letters, and drawings from members of the public, as well as questions raised by Members of the UK Parliament. They are available to download for free for a month from The National Archives website.
1950s 1 June 1950 — A Gloster Meteor at RAF Tangmere passes a flying saucer lit up with lights, described as "Britain's first flying saucer". The object was reported to be "shining, revolving, and disc-like" at 20,000 ft at 14:30, flying eastwards over the Portsmouth area. RAF Tangmere asked the radar station at RAF Wartling in Sussex if it had seen the object, and it had on its PPI screen. It led to the setting up of the Flying Saucer Working Party.Daily Herald Wednesday 7 June 1950, page 1Western Mail Wednesday 7 June 1950, page 1 14 August 1950 — A disc UFO 50 feet in diameter is seen over the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at 11:27 by an experienced pilot F/Lt Hubbard. He claimed to see another similar object on 5 September 1950 at 16:09. 26 August 1950 — In the early hours of the morning a 20-year-old woman was walking back to her home in the village of Stanton Drew, Somerset, from a party when she decided to take a shortcut through a field near to the stone circles whereupon she heard a buzzing sound, she turned to her left and noticed a bright saucer-shaped object hovering over the next field. A door on the craft began to open and she screamed, started to run and did not stop until she got home. 14–25 September 1952 — Exercise Mainbrace. On 19 September at 10:53, a silver disc-shaped object followed a Gloster Meteor returning to RAF Topcliffe and was seen by observers on the ground. It rotated whilst hovering. It then travelled towards the west at high speed. On 21 September, six RAF planes followed a spherical object over the North Sea. It followed one of the planes back to the base. It was the front-page headline on 20 September 1952 on the Yorkshire Evening Press and on 21 September 1952 on the Sunday Dispatch, and was reported by 31-year-old Shackleton pilot Flt Lt John Kilburn of 269 Squadron, from Thornhill, Cumberland.Sunday Mirror Sunday 21 September 1952, page 7 It was discussed in parliament on 2 February 1959 by Labour MP Roy Mason, later the Secretary of State for Defence from 1974-76 21 October 1952 — Two RAF pilots in a Gloster Meteor saw three disc-shaped objects at 35,000 feet in the Little Rissington UFO incident. 9 October 1953 — Two BEA pilots flying from London to Paris see a saucer objectDaily Herald Thursday 19 November 1953, page 1Weekly Dispatch (London) Sunday 18 October 1953, page 6 over the English Channel for thirty minutes in a Airspeed Ambassador (Elizabethan); former RAF pilot Captain Peter Fletcher, of Putney, and First Officer R. L. Lemon, of Iver in Buckinghamshire,Daily Express Saturday 10 October 1953, page 1 had taken off at 09:00 from London Airport 3 November 1953 — Terry Johnson and Geoffrey Smythe in an RAF de Havilland Vampire saw a UFO over RAF West Malling. It was discussed in parliament on 24 November 1953 by the Conservative Rochdale MP Lt-Col Wentworth Schofield, where the Conservative Secretary of State for Air, Nigel Birch, Baron Rhyl, said that the sighting was merely "a weather balloon", and was discussed again on 25 November 1953 by the Labour Northampton MP, Reginald Paget, Baron Paget of Northampton 29 June 1954 — A BOAC pilot in a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser sees seven UFOs when travelling back from New York to London over the North Atlantic; in G-ALSC Boeing 377-10-28 (sold to Transocean Air Lines in January 1959) RMA Centaurus; the aircraft left New York Idlewild Airport at 17:03 on Flight 510-196 heading for refuelling at CFB Goose Bay, where the pilot saw seven UFOs four hours later near Newfoundland for eighteen minutes at 19,000 ft from 01:05 GMT to 01:23 GMT; Captain James Howard, aged 33 from Bristol, was a former RAF Bomber Command Squadron Leader on his 265th crossing of the Atlantic, and he was interviewed on 3 July 1954 for the BBC In Town TonightBBC Genome with air hostess 28-year-old Daphne Webster of Hounslow, and the Canadian First Officer Lee Boyd, the co-pilot, who flew in the Pathfinder Force in World War II and was shown on Thursday 9 May 1968 on BBC1 "Flying Saucers and the people who see them", with Stephen Black, and the two Devon policemen from October 1967, and the programme discussed the 1968 Condon Committee report of the University of ColoradoThe Scotsman Thursday 9 May 1968, page 21 and was mentioned in the House of Lords on Thursday 18 January 1979 by Brinsley Trench, 8th Earl of Clancarty. 14 October 1954 — F/Lt James Salandin of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, flying in a No. 604 Squadron RAF Gloster Meteor F8 from RAF North Weald, narrowly missed two UFOs over Southend-on-Sea at around 16:30 at 16,000 ft. The objects were circular with one being coloured silver and the other gold. He narrowly avoided having a head-on collision with the silver object. 17 July 1955 — At noon on King Harold's Way in Bexleyheath in the London Borough of Bexley a 30-foot-wide saucer-shaped object was seen to hover a few feet above a street in broad daylight by Margaret Fry BBC, 20 May 2008 and her doctor on a very hot cloudless day. Car engines nearby to the object stalled. It was seen by around thirty people and made a humming noise and landed at the junction of Ashbourne Road and Whitfield Road. It hovered over Bedonwell Primary School (now Bedonwell Junior School) for around one minute. It finally shot off into the sky. Another UFO had landed a few streets away at the same time. A similar object had been seen in Bexleyheath in 1952.
13 August 1956 — Lakenheath-Bentwaters incident — 12 to 15 objects were picked up by USAF radar over East Anglia at 12:00. One object was tracked at more than 4,000 mph by USAF GCA radar at RAF Bentwaters. The objects sometimes travelled in formation, then converged to form a larger object and performed sharp turns. One object was tracked for 26 miles (41.8 kilometres) which then hovered for five minutes then flew off. One object at 22:00 was tracked at 12,000 mph. RAF de Havilland Venoms from RAF Waterbeach had sightings of the objects. 22 September 1956 — a large, spherical glass-like 80-foot-diameter object was seen over the Cleethorpes coast for over an hour and also seen on radar from RAF Manby at 15:00. RAF planes approached the object and it flew off.Louth Standard Saturday 29 September 1956, page 16