- The story itself is very, very different from most UFO stories because it actually runs backwards. It works backwards, which
is what fascinated me when I first heard the tale. And that is, that the majority of stories you have an absolutely cracking story with loads of visuals in it. People talk about these flying
saucers descending in lights and you can imagine the special effects and all the rest of it. Most programs do a really good
job of the reconstructions and they have all the eyewitnesses on, and when it comes to
the end of the program it comes to the crunch they
can't show you anything. There's like a bump in the
ground or a broken twig or a burn mark on a tree or some blurred light in
the sky and that's it. But this story's the exact reverse. What we had to do is we had
to start with the evidence and the evidence are these
fragments from the UFO. We've got three pieces
of the green outer shell of some kind of vehicle. We've got the inside of
the casing in the forms of pieces of foil, and there's at least a
hundred other fragments scattered all the way around
the country that we know of. So we're starting with the evidence. I'm actually sat there holding
a piece of a flying saucer, a piece of a UFO. And I'm thinking what on earth is this. Here it is, how did it get
here, what's the story? (soft music) (ethereal choral music) (rock music) In January 1983 a mysterious
flying craft of some kind crashed in fields just outside
Aberystwyth in mid Wales. Strangely, only one local
newspaper was to run the story about this event, and
yet it could prove to be as significant as the
Roswell crash in New Mexico. Can we claim to have hard
evidence of this craft? Well, watch on. - [Gary] From that day to this, it still remains unidentified. No aircraft was missing. No pilots were missing. No mechanical things
were found on the site. We can only conclude that this remains debris from a UFO, an
unidentified flying object. - In 1983 one of the
world news clipping agency sent Gary Rowe a clipping of a crash near Aberystwyth in mid Wales. This is the story that followed. The report in a national
newspaper was headed, "Strange Debris Out of the Sky." it was from the Sunday Express
the 23rd of January 1983. It indicated that an
unidentified flying object had crashed in Wales. The similarities with the
famous Roswell incident became gradually too obvious. (upbeat music) While Gary was fortunate enough to be living in north Wales at the time, nonetheless the reported incident was some considerable distance. So he contacted the farmer
and obtained his permission to visit the crash site. (water rushing) After hastily organizing
a reconnaissance team and several hours of
driving, the team arrived. As the team examined the damage, Mr. Evans recounted the
entire series of events from the beginning. He began, "The incident must have
happened in the dead of night "as there was no sign of the debris "late on the previous evening." Early the following morning
as he trudged the fields to tend his newborn
lambs, he was confronted with masses of scattered debris extending over an area
of four of his fields. He telephoned the local police station. The local police arrived and after they conducted
a brief examination, the RAF were called in. They removed every scrap of
evidence that they could find and only one section taken
away had what looked like part of a number on it. The pieces ranged in size
from an inch to six feet. The men continued the search by torchlight as darkness fell. Mr. Evans described it as a scene straight
from a James Bond movie. So thorough was the
military clean up operation that both metal detecting and archeology were unable to shed any
more light on the UFO crash. All of the fields and the forest
had been completely cleared of all the evidence. Maybe the answer to all this rests with the civilian UFO crash recovery team who got there before the
military clean up operation. Or is this just going to
turn into another story of strange noises, vanished evidence and weird lights in the sky? It's impossible for us to be
the only intelligent life. That is absolutely out of the question. I mean you've only got to
gaze out to those stars and out to that star field and realize that there are countless,
millions of planets out there. Any one of which could be the same as us. So there's absolutely no reason why there shouldn't be another life form that has developed further than we have. By further, obviously,
that beggars definition. It's very difficult to
say what further would be. Maybe they've survived, they've changed, they've got technology we haven't got. They're using things we don't have. Maybe there is something
out there in the universe we don't know about and
they've got it and we haven't. Travel in the light spectrum or something so they're able to jump
from one place to another faster that we are. So they're doing something we're not. By virtue of the fact that we
don't know what they're doing that's what makes them unidentified. That's what makes them a mystery. So I'm quite willing to accept that there is actually life out there. That doesn't present a problem. But the second alternative,
which I find more intriguing and it's a lot harder to prove. There is a possibility that
we are doing something now that seriously affects our future and those people who are
out there in the future have found some way to come back. So maybe the flying saucers we're seeing are, in fact, time machines
that are coming back from our own future to try to influence us and change us in some way, which means that maybe we do survive and we do develop on and we
do come up with new inventions and new ideas. Maybe the physics is altered in some way such that we can break through
and cheat time in that way. But I think it could be one
of those two possibilities. If I was a betting man,
if I was gonna lay odds, I would say it's either it's a civilization from another planet that's more advanced than us or it's ourselves or
something we've created coming back at this time because it's an important
time in our history. The second one's quite appealing because I'm an archeologist. In a very physical sense
I'm involved in time travel. I'm picking things up that were dropped by people in the past and the possibility that something may break through from
the future intrigues me. I mean people always look for a third way and it's a reasonable third way. I know that there are things out there for which we do not have an explanation. Not just in terms of UFO debris, but in other areas as well. When you start looking at things that turn up on archeological
sites that shouldn't, which is termed alien technology, things pop up in places
where they're not supposed to at times when they're not supposed to. Sooner or later you have to accept that there are mysteries out there, which are very difficult to pin on us. It's very difficult to actually say that it's us that's doing them. In the modern day and age
I think a lot of the books that have been produced and things, it's actually easier for people to believe that it's not us. It's easier to say well,
it must be something else. (upbeat music) It's interesting to note here that the RAF search team at the site were unable to recognize any of the debris that belonged to any known aircraft. They also admitted to being baffled as their radar scanners had
not detected the incident or anything unusual
leading up to the incident. In fact, two weeks later they admitted that they were still unable to confirm that it was aircraft
material they had recovered, let alone offer an explanation. In their own words an RAF spokesman said, "The debris certainly had
nothing to do with us. "We are examining the fragments "to try to piece them
together in the hope of a clue "as to where it came from and what it is." (rock music) We dispatched, professional historian and researcher Scott Lloyd to
the National Library of Wales to see if any other newspapers of the day carried the story of the UFO crash. - Well from the date you gave me I went to the National Library
of Wales in Aberystwyth, it's not that far away from the site, and I went through all
the local newspapers the week before and a
couple of weeks after trying to see if there's any reference to an object crashing
in a field in Llanilar. The local papers deal
with every minor event that happens in the
local villages and I was very surprised to find no
reference to it whatsoever. Which I thought was a little unusual. However, there was some
correspondence in the Cambrian News between locals of the area,
discussing the fact that Hercules aircraft had been
flying very low in the area but that was the closest I
could find to anything crashing. I find it very unusual that an event that could reach a national newspaper wasn't recorded in the local newspapers and this is in English and Welsh. So there's three or four
local papers I looked at. So really I'd be interested to see what other evidence we can gather. This article here is a photocopy. So unfortunately we
don't have the whole page which would give us a
definite date line on the top. It's handwritten, the source, as the Sunday Express for
the 23rd of January 1983. Which is the period I looked
at in the National Library. Now we have to hope that
the person who wrote this A, got the newspaper right and B, and probably more
importantly, got the date right otherwise I've been
looking in the wrong place. Really I'd like to
continue the research by trying to contact the
police in Aberystwyth to see what report they
have of the incident and also there's a reference here to the secretary of the
Cardiganshire Farmers' Union so I'd also quite like to see if it's possible to speak to him and then we can maybe
narrow this down a bit more. And, of course, the journalist
who wrote the article, an Andrew Chapman, hopefully
we can get hold of him and then maybe we can
get closer to seeing why it didn't appear in any
of the local newspapers. (rock music) Well that's the interesting thing, how did a journalist
for a national newspaper find a story about a
small village in mid Wales when none of the local
newspapers seem to reference it. So that is quite odd. I'd like to speak to the journalist to see where he did get it from. (rock music) The other line of inquiry
is also contacting the MOD to see what they had
to say about the matter because, according to this article, they gave a statement saying there was no aircraft out at the time
and their radar scanners picked up nothing unusual. So it'd be interesting
to clarify that point. So I still think we have a
few lines of inquiry left, - It's so long since the original
newspaper article appeared that's it's author Andrew
Chapman has no idea what was his source material
for writing that article. Furthermore our researches at
the National Library of Wales didn't reveal any other newspaper
article on the UFO crash. So, once again, we've drawn a blank. The next best hope perhaps is to investigate the crash site itself. The absolute origins of the story, as Gary himself says, is
this newspaper article here that says strange debris out of the sky. And it says this, the Sunday Express 23rd January 1983, strange
debris out of the sky. An astonishing sight greeted
farmer Erwell Evans as he trudged across his fields to
tend his newly born lambs. Hundreds of pieces of
honeycomb metal foil was strewn over an area the size of
three football pitches. Huge twisted alloy plates
painted green on one side and gray on the other lay everywhere and, in a nearby copse, branches
had been sheared off trees. Mr Evans telephoned the police. Soon his farm at Llanilar
near Aberystwyth Wales was like a film set from a spy thriller. Police took away fragments
of metal for analysis. A team of uniformed RAF men
with plain clothes officers combed the land and nearby woods using flashlights as
darkness began to fall. And then it says baffled. Among the pile of debris taken away was an aerial and a large chunk of metal with part of a serial number on it. Everyone concerned was convinced that whatever it was that
covered Mr Evans' field had fallen out of the
sky at dead of night. But after two weeks, the
riddle still remains. Police are baffled, so too are the RAF. No one in the close knit Welsh community heard a plane that night. Nothing unusual showed
up on RAF radar scanner. Mr Evans, 29, who farms his
260 acres singlehanded said, "Whatever tumbled from the
sky broke up on impact. "It must have been a fair size. "Wreckage was scattered
across four fields. "Had it hit buildings, there's no doubt "the devastation could've been terrific." "It must've come down the
night before I found it "for the area was clear in the afternoon "when I checked the flock. "Yet I heard nothing at all unusual. "Although the pieces themselves
were extremely light, "they must've fallen with some force "to sever branches off trees. "It is all very disturbing." Mr Emir Hughes, Secretary of
Cardiganshire Farmers' Union said, "I've asked the Ministry of Defense "for an explanation but
so far have had no reply. "The RAF say they had no
aircraft out at the time "this debris must have landed
nor were there any maneuvers. "Not only that, their radar scanners "picked up nothing unusual." Meanwhile, villagers are still
speculating about the debris. Could it be part of a
large weather balloon? No say Aberystwyth police, too much metal. Part of a satellite? Unlikely, any remains would be charred. We have no explanation
as yet, it's baffling. An RAF spokesman said,
"The debris certainly "had nothing to do with us. "We are examining the fragments to try "to piece them together
in the hope of a clue "as to where it came from and what it is." That is the only first
hand account if you like, at the time taken just before, presumably before the
23rd of January 1983. So the obvious thing to do is to go and speak to that reporter. It's a chap by the name of Andrew Chapman. Now Andrew Chapman still
works for the Sunda Express. So we got in contact with
him over the internet, we had a number of discourses between us. At one point he said leave it with me and I'll see what I can do,
I'll check the Sunday Express archives and my own notes
and try and find the source. He then, himself Andrew
Chapman, tracked back but you're bearing in mind, I mean at the time we were
producing it it was 24 years so he had to go back 24
years to find the source. And basically he has no idea. He really does have no idea
where that article came from. Other than the fact
that obviously he spoke to the representatives of the Cardiganshire Farmers' Union
et cetera and the local police. He did the research at
the time so he knows that the contents of
that story are factual. But apart from that, he was quite surprised to learn that nobody else had reported it himself. So that extra bit of research just served to deepen the mystery. In fact it's quite exciting really 'cos instead of having
it all laid out before us and sort of having a
beginning, a middle and no end you know, the whole thrill of doing this is the fact we've got
the end but we don't have the middle or the beginning you know? The whole start of the story is not there. You know, it starts from one
article, one newspaper article, one investigation team
that made it to the crash, one witness in the form of the farmer, you know, one case containing
debris and that's it. (upbeat flute music) They found the farm
situated in a beautiful rural area of Wales near to Aberystwyth. The farmer, Mr Evans, aged 29 at the time, turned out to be very
pleasant, helpful and sociable. He led the team across four of his fields indicating where he had earlier discovered hundreds of pieces of metallic foil and other parts of a crashed craft. He described how all the pieces had looked like shattered
glass with jagged edges. Some of the shattered and twisted plates were over six feet in size. The overall impression was
that some large aircraft must have exploded above the area. The 260 acre farm is bordered
on the southwest side by a mixed wood copse owned
by the Forestry Commission. As the team approached the boundary of the field and the trees,
it became apparent that, whatever the flying object was, it had collided with the trees. After thanking Farmer Evans
for his very graphic account of events, it was time to
conduct a search of their own. That the authorities had
done a pretty thorough job of cleaning the area became obvious when, after more than an hour's
search, the team had failed to find a single scrap of material
in any of the large fields. The team next concentrated their efforts in searching the wooded area. At first, without success. It was not long before the
first piece was discovered. Other finds followed as they
searched high in the trees and used the damaged avenue as a rough guide to the search area. We've traveled some
miles outside Aberystwyth to the sleepy Welsh village of Llanilar and we've spent some time
interviewing the local residents. Unfortunately, there are not
many people left from 25 years ago and none of the ones
who are remember the crash. So, it looks like we've
hit another dead end. (haunting flute music) The most important
story that's relevant to the DVD, The UFO, The Interesting UFOs, two UFO sightings. There's two times when I've seen them. One was in 1976 which is, in this country, the hot summer of 1976 which literally cracked the flags and
baked the ground solid. And I was out camping with
friends at a local farm and we couldn't put the tent up. So we literally just threw
the tent on the floor, had it as a groundsheet and slept on that. Which means that you're then out in the open under the stars. Out in the countryside,
there's no light pollution, it's a beautifully clear night. The heavens just went on
forever, absolutely enormous sky and at some point in the early
hours I woke up and noticed that coming from the
horizon, the distant horizon, one of the stars was moving. So you've got this star
that's moving through the star field fairly slowly you know? And I'm watching it coming
and I'm thinking airplane, helicopter you know,
maybe something like that. Anyway it keeps coming and, of course, you can see the full sky
overhead and it comes 'til it's probably not
far off central above us. And it's going at this nice
steady, slow speed like that and then, all of a sudden, it goes wallop, wallop, wallop, wallop, gone. What on earth is that? What star, you know, at that distance 'cos it looked like
part of the star field, is capable of bouncing literally left, right, left, right, gone? At that speed across
the entire sky you know. And you sort of blink
at your pinch yourself and you wonder if you're still awake. So that was the first if you
like, the first encounter with anything like a UFO. Then a year later, the next summer, I'm up
on top of a local hill which affords a particularly
good view of the Mersey Valley. And, again, I'm not up there for any other reason than to enjoy the view. It's early evening, Sun's gone down but there's still a sort
of blueness to the sky and you can see the steam coming
off the local power station and you can see Warrington,
it's beginning to light up. You know, there's a hint of light there. And as I'm looking up towards
Liverpool, you can see a light coming up the Mersey Valley,
following the river itself. The unusual thing about the light is it looks like a
helicopter but it looks like a helicopter with three
search lights underneath. So you've got these
lights scanning the ground looking for something so you think, oh it's gotta be a police
helicopter you know? There's a hint of color
to the lights as well. It's gotta be a helicopter. So you see it coming up
and it passes through the steam that's coming
off the power station. Now steam is pretty
jolly hot anyway you know and it's not the sort of
thing a helicopter would do. The police certainly wouldn't fly through the steam coming off a power station. So at that point I'm thinking, this is not, it's not a helicopter. You know, it's something else. And it keeps coming up the Mersey Valley but each time it changes direction, it does so really quickly. So it doesn't curve like a helicopter, it jumps you know, when
it changes directions. So it's moving and it's
jumping back and to. And you can see the
lights moving underneath and then you've got other lights on it. There's, I think there's blue lights, white lights, red lights and you can see that it's
actually the wrong shape. It looks exactly like something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. You know, it really does. You've got that flare off
the lights and everything and you can see it coming
up the Mersey Valley. And as it's coming up, it
almost reaches the bridge at Warrington so you can see it's coming very very close to the bridge. And, all of a sudden, it just goes out. The whole lot, all the
lights just go out completely and you can just see a shape
vanish at breakneck speed straight up vertically into the sky. Gone, literally wallop straight up. So all you saw is this blur. It looked like a black
blob heading skywards. But everything just went off
like someone had pulled a plug and then it just heads straight off. Now the interesting thing is, there's a book around called Mysteries of the Mid Mersey Valley. And on the cover it shows
the lighthouse down at Hale with a flying saucer,
with a light coming out from underneath and I
noted at the time the date, 'cos I had a diary, I noted the date. I can't remember off the top
of my head now what it was but the date is the same date as Jenny Randles, who wrote this book, included the story of
this UFO doing exactly what I saw this thing do. The only difference being,
the witness who saw it from that end of the Mersey,
didn't see it disappear 'cos they lost sight of it
before it arrived at Warrington. So independently, and
we're talking probably 15 or 20 years after the
incident, this book comes out, independently the incident's
confirmed by a second viewer. So I've seen them. I've seen these things flying and flashes in the sky and other shapes and I've met people who have talked extensively about encounters they've had. So yes they're out there, I definitely know they're out there. (dramatic music) (haunting choral singing) Over the months that
followed, Gary and his team had the metal analyzed by several experts. Especially experts in
the aerospace industry. And their findings can briefly
be summarized as follows, the metal is a form of
Duralumin, which is not inconsistent with material
used to build fighter aircraft. Although they expressed surprise at the high quality of the sample. They were unable to identify
the green paint substance or the gray reflux surface
but they were adamant that this green painted surface has not formed part of the
outside skin of any aircraft. As the mystery paint is not
sufficiently aerodynamic. (engine roaring) Associates in the Armed Forces and others in the aircraft construction
industry were also asked to examine the samples
and to offer an opinion. Their findings can be summarized, the only areas of an
aircraft's construction that would normally require
the use of honeycombed or sandwich strengtheners would be the control surfaces ie. the
tail rudder or wing flaps. With a smile one expert said, "There is no known
aircraft that could lose "that quantity of its control
surfaces so as to cover "several fields with
metallic debris and survive. "I suggest that you go
back and look for something "big with engines sticking
upright out of the ground." The investigation team
returned to the site for a second time to search for debris but were unable to find any other scraps of the mystery foil or metallic plates. Undaunted, they made
plans for a third visit, this time with more
sophisticated equipment to aid their searches. However, they never made that third visit. For, just before they could
return, the Forestry Commission arrived and promptly set about
removing the wooded copse. They said it was necessary
because of wind damage. It's going back quite a few years now, I think it was in Blackpool, I
think we met in Blackpool. There was a conference there, not a very salubrious place Blackpool, it's got its nice interesting
tower, famous the world over funfairs and casinos
and things like that and there was a conference there. It's not essentially a UFO conference it's a conference called Probe
and it's quite appropriate 'cos they look at world mysteries, mysteries of all different kinds and evidence is presented
there of these mysteries so it's quite useful to stay
tuned in to that community and Gary was one of the speakers and I was a speaker at the same conference and we were poles apart
because I'm a sort of scruffy hippy type character and he's this older gentleman in a suit and as soon as we got talking, we realize we had an awful lot in common. At that time I ran a
group, he ran a group, he was doing things in his life
that I was doing in my life, we had the same interest
in archeology and new parts and all sorts of mysteries
and what have you. So it all started over a Chinese in a Chinese banqueting place in Blackpool and what really got my attention
was the bit where he said, "Well I've got four pieces
of a UFO in my garage," At which point I thought, mm
I'm gonna file that one away and I did file it away, it took quite a few years to come back to him on that particular issue. I think it took about five
or six years from us meeting. He'd had problems with people dealing with that as an issue before. I think someone had tried
to produce a production of some kind to video or DVD for him and had gone down the flying saucer route, you know, full on which was
not really what he wanted. He wanted more of a serious program and so, when I got to talking to him, he said, "Well yeah if
you can do it seriously "then we'll seriously have a go at it." So although the production's
relatively short in terms of DVD releases,
the content of it took about two years to
thoroughly investigate and then probably another six months to put the final production together. Consequently I've known Gary now for about eight or 10 years you know. - Well in '83 I was running
a UFO group in Deeside so I had a lot of people very
interested in UFOs with me and a team ready to go with all
sorts of equipment and so on when all of a sudden, I
pick a newspaper up one day, I think it was the Daily Express actually, and there's this article,
strange debris from the sky and it tells of a story
of a farmer down there near Aberystwyth on a farm at Llanilar and this farmer claims that
he went out one morning and found all this strange
debris on his land. Well obviously it had
connotations to me of Roswell and I'm thinking strange metallic debris spread all over fields? So immediately I got a small team together and we headed off. We spoke to the farmer on the telephone and this very nice gentleman
Erwell, was really helpful and he said, "Come down by all means." And we did and when we went down there, he led us out from the
farm and he took us out across these fields and he said, "Here before me in the morning, "spread out over four
fields, was metal fragments. "Metal plate, all convex shaped "and glistening metal
foil all over the place "spread over an entire four field area." Obviously when I got
there there was no metal because, as he explained,
that morning, he got up and found the fragments and
he immediately rang the police suspecting that he'd had
a plane crash on his land. The police arrived and
duly they walk around and they examine the fields and obviously they can't be of a lot of help. They recognize that there's
this metal foil there so they contact the RAF crash retrieval. Gentlemen arrive from that and they walk over the land hearing the same story and examining this material
and saying to each other, "Gosh this isn't an airplane. "We don't really know what it is." So they leave all this evidence in place and much later that same day, there's arrival of people
from the Ministry of Defense. Now there are plain clothes people here directing uniformed officers. They've got all sorts of equipment and, in the words of Mr
Erwell himself, he said, "It's like a scene here from James Bond. "They've got lights all over
the place, it's barricaded off "and they're out there collecting
these pieces of material." Well by the next morning,
when Erwell got up to see to his lambs and so on, he
went out there and it was gone. Every piece of metal and
the MOD, completely gone. Much later, we arrived
as a team to investigate. Obviously they hadn't
left a fragment anywhere, we searched the fields, we were unable to find any of it at all. In fact, the three
people that were with me were really despairing in the end. You can imagine how excited we were, the chance of finding some of this debris. So, I said to my colleagues, I said, "There's no way, I don't
care how good they are, "the MOD, and what they used, "it would be very very difficult to clear "the forest that adjoined the land." So we set off amongst the
branches and the trees and so on and it wasn't long
before we started to find strange fragments of this metal and we recovered a
number of pieces of this. You could see clearly where to look because there was a line right through the top of this wood or
this forest if you like, where all the treetops
had been sheared off, probably to a width of about 20 odd feet and all the tops of these
trees were scattered straight in a line
right across this field. So it was easy to find
where we needed to look and we came away with this material. Obviously we planned to go
back with more people and make a more thorough search,
taking more equipment with us, well, you would not believe
this but that very same week I had another phone call
from the farmer and he said, "You're still welcome to come
down and do your research "and so on but you might
be wasting your time." So I said, "Well how's that then?" He said, "Well you know that forest? "As I'm speaking to you,
they're actually removing it." I said, "Pardon, they're
removing a forest?" "Yes," he said. So I contact the Forestry
Commission and say, "Would you like to tell me why
you're removing the forest?" And a Forestry Commission
person and he sounded as if he was smiling although
obviously I couldn't see him on the telephone, he said, "Well
it's wind damage you know?" And I said, "Wind damage? "Do you usually remove a
forest for wind damage?" "No," he said, "but
we're removing this one." So I took it from that obviously
the Ministry of Defense had decided that the best
way to remove any evidence in the forest was to take the trees away and that's exactly what they did. - Or is this just going into another story of strange noises, vanished evidence and weird lights in the sky? - If you'd just like to come this way, I've got some of the
pieces here to show you. And there it is. As you can see, this large piece is almost like shattered
glass around the edge, in fact the only straight part of it is where we've had to
cut samples for testing. On top of this gray material,
this resin material, stood this sort of honeycombed metal. A sample of that in the
case there that you can see almost like tin foil, giving it enormous strength across the outside. So, if you can imagine, we'd got this material sandwiched
between two plates. You'll notice that it's
all completely shattered around the edges, almost
like shattered glass. (dramatic music) Well, as a matter of fact I've got a small sample of the material here. On the one side, as you
can see, it's a green color and on the other side it's a gray color. The gray color is some kind of resin that's not been properly identified yet and obviously there's
this Duralumin in between. You notice that all the
edges of the material look as if it's broken
glass, it's shattered. The only straight edge, in fact, is the one that I've actually cut to take samples from. All the pieces are of a
slightly concave nature indicating that this has either exploded or imploded at some time. What's interesting though is
the strength of this material. It's extremely strong
given that it's so light. Very very strong, I can
just bend it or flex it but it would take quite a serious amount of effort to put a crease into it. I think you'll agree with me
that is extremely unusual. On the side that you can see that's gray, where the resin was, attached to this there was honeycombed metal foil that resembles baking foil
but all neatly honeycombed and obviously the two pieces
of metal went either side, sandwiching this honeycomb between them. The result is, of course,
extremely strong material that can't even be crushed and yet extremely light at the same time. Quite incredible construction really. (dramatic music) (haunting choral music) - Well, he was very very clever because there's a story attached
to this so I suppose I should really tell the
story, that is a keyring, mounted at the back of this
magnifying glass is a keyring, and he had 100 of those
key rings produced. The reason being word got out through the authorities, probably through the farmer who who's land the UFO crashed on, word got out to the authorities that pieces of something
had been recovered and the classic thing is you
hear of these big black cars pulling up with all
the windows blacked out you know, the doors open
and the gentlemen get out and they're all in black with
dark sunglasses you know, and passes hanging you know, there is a measure of truth
in that because these guys actually did turn up and
came knocking on Gary's door. But Gary's answer was,
"Okay I'll do you a deal." And I thought this was incredibly clever, his answer was, "I've produced
100 of these key rings," he said, "with fragments of the UFO in and scattered them amongst
people all over the UK." And the deal with the men
in black was very simple, if you don't come after my pieces, I won't tell these 100 people to give their pieces to the media. And that was 25 years ago. So 25 years ago there were 100 of these little key rings knocking around and, of course, the
gentlemen, the men in black, thought okay there's nothing we can do, the truth is out there,
it's got out you know, he's allowed these pieces
out, we can't possibly get all 100 pieces back because
they're scattered around people that we don't
know and they literally, in silence, got back in the car, drove off and were never seen again. But, as I said, that was 25 years ago. The atmosphere has considerably changed now in the UFO community and I was fortunate enough to acquire one of the pieces so there it is. I don't know if anyone
can actually see that. - Now, following that,
obviously we were very curious with these pieces of
metal that we'd recovered, to find out what they were. And we were very lucky in
the end to have someone who is a foremost metallurgist to take these pieces and investigate them. This person's associated
with the aerospace industry and therefore had all the facilities to go ahead and do this sort of research. Well, eventually I got a report back. I must admit that most
of it went clean over the top of my head, I'm
not a metallurgist myself, but the gist of it is, the
metal is some form of Duralumin. Which is not inconsistent
with the kind of thing that you build fighter aircraft from. But there were strange anomalies in it that interested these people. They were talking about
a strangeness to it. Its strength to volume
ratio was extremely high and also they were talking
about a sort of pure alloy. Now how you can get a pure
alloy I'm not quite sure but the purity of it interested them. They were utterly convinced
that they knew no one that could make this metal and they would very much obviously like
to make it themselves, they thought this was just the stuff we ought to be making airplanes out of. The result of it was that we had to settle for that information and, to
this day, nothing else has occurred that would indicate
it's anything other than that. Although we have had separate
tests done on a few occasions. It also had some kind of
strange resin on one side of it. The nature of this has
not been fully analyzed although we are aware
of some of the chemicals this coloration that was on one side of it is not an aerodynamic material. (rock music) (electronic beeping) From that day to this, it still remains unidentified, no aircraft was missing,
no pilots were missing, no mechanical things were found
on the site associated with, there were no rivets in the construction of any of this material. And whatever this strange thing was that flew that night over that farm, it managed to explode all this material, cover four fields with it and then fly off again
undisturbed, it appears. It's quite remarkable. And as this has not been identified in the last 20 odd years,
we can only conclude, and this is as far as I'm happy to go, that this remains debris from a UFO, an unidentified flying object. (rock music) ♪ Everything is perfect ♪ ♪ And everything is bent ♪ ♪ When all you want is answers ♪ ♪ For all you'll come and spend ♪ ♪ Are you man or machine
or just somewhere between ♪ ♪ Are you man or machine ♪ ♪ Is this reality ♪ ♪ Living with you all the 21st century ♪ ♪ Are you man or machine ♪ ♪ Are you man or machine ♪ ♪ Time is always ticking ♪ ♪ Oh I'm not far away ♪ ♪ And the bullet's hollow ♪ ♪ Makes it all okay ♪ ♪ Are you man or machine
or just somewhere between ♪ ♪ Are you man or machine ♪ ♪ Is this reality ♪ ♪ Living with you all the 21st century ♪ ♪ What will it be ♪ ♪ Man or machine ♪ ♪ Man or machine ♪ - Why did we do the crash sequence? Well the crash sequence
itself is interesting and it's interesting for two reasons. The first reason it's interesting is that the physical evidence
that was there at the time of the incident was good
enough to be able to reconstruct the nature of the craft okay? You could very clearly see, in the trees, a 20 to 25 foot wide channel cut through where the flying
craft had gone through and, when it had exited the forest, it had scattered the debris
forward across the four fields. So you could easily reconstruct from that exactly what had happened so when you see the reconstruction on the DV, you can see the craft coming
down you know, we've done that, we've fudged that a bit and
made it look you know, a bit, indistinct is the word I'd
use, it's very indistinct. We haven't really made a meal of that. The bit we have made a meal of of course is where the thing
actually turns in trouble, swings down and then
smashes through the trees because that is the factual
bit, we know it did that. The reason we went for this shape, 'cos I've actually got
the model we used here. (metal ringing) Its quite an interesting one this. The reason we went for this shape is that this is what is standardly
referred to as a flying saucer and it's about as bland and innocuous a shape as you can get. It's the same shade of green roughly as the original debris
was so we're assuming the outside of the craft was that color and the other reason,
the second reason why we went for this, is
because it's actually got some writing on the bottom
here and people might notice, it actually says Belling Bed Warmer and for 50 pence on a local car boot, I found this electrical apparatus that has a light bulb inside it, you plug it in and shove the thing into your bed you see and it actually warms your bed up so this is a piece of
archeology from the late 1950s. It was 1950s blue gray when I bought it and I just thought it was amusing that we should be using a 1950s bed warmer as the shape for the UFO
you see, that crashed. The other thing as well
that's worth mentioning, these bobbles on the bottom are very indicative of a book that
influenced me fairly early on. Me dad actually gave me a copy of it when I was a child 'cos
it's a book from the 50s, which is this one actually
this is the classic, Flying Saucers Have Landed. Okay this is the George Adamski book that really pushed this forward. It's debatable whether
that's a clever model or whether it really is a UFO but it's got these balls underneath it you see? So ever since this, UFOs have
tended to take that shape so it fascinated me, I mean
actually going through Flying Saucers Have Landed again recently, just going through this for research things really haven't changed you know since this book was done. You know, I can almost imagine Adamski sitting there you know,
back when this was written and working on his research notes, banging away on his typewriter and putting this together. I wonder sometimes if he actually knew what effect this would have. 1953 that's when this was done. 1953. So you never know, '53, '83 who knows. (haunting choral music) If it's human, somebody out
there has the answer, somebody. Somebody out there knows the answer and if they're not telling
us then they've got a reason to not tell us, they've
got their own agenda and therefore if it is
human, then the rest of us, us mere mortals, will just have to continue with the limited
knowledge we have. But if anybody out there
does know any difference, answers on a postcard. (laughing) (dramatic music) (haunting choral music) (dramatic music) (haunting choral music) (rock music) In January 1983, a mysterious
flying craft of some kind crashed in fields just outside
Aberystwyth in mid Wales. Strangely, only one local newspaper was to run the story
about this event and yet, it could prove to be as significant as the Roswell Crash in New Mexico. Can we claim to have hard
evidence of this craft? Well, watch on. - [Gary] From that day to this, it still remains unidentified. No air craft was missing,
no pilots were missing, no mechanical things
were found on the site. We can only conclude that this
remains debris from a UFO, an unidentified flying object. - In 1983, one of the world
news clippings agency sent Gary Rowe a clipping of a crash near Aberystwyth in mid Wales. This is the story that followed. The report in a national
newspaper was headed, Strange Debris Out Of The Sky and it was from the Sunday Express, the 23rd of January 1983. It indicated that an
unidentified flying object had crashed in Wales. The similarities with the
famous Roswell incident became gradually too obvious. (upbeat music) While Gary was fortunate enough to be living in north Wales at the time, nonetheless the reported incident was some considerable distance. So he contacted the farmer
and obtained his permission to visit the crash site. (water rushing) After hastily organizing
a reconnaissance team and several hours of
driving, the team arrived. As the team examined the damage, Mr. Evans recounted the
entire series of events from the beginning. He began, "The incident must have
happened in the dead of night "as there was no sign of the debris "late on the previous evening." Early the following morning
as he trudged the fields to tend his newborn
lambs, he was confronted with masses of scattered debris extending over an area
of four of his fields. He telephoned the local police station. The local police arrived and after they conducted
a brief examination, the RAF were called in. They removed every scrap of
evidence that they could find and only one section taken
away had what looked like part of a number on it. The pieces ranged in size
from an inch to six feet. The men continued the search by torchlight as darkness fell. Mr. Evans described it as a scene straight
from a James Bond movie. So thorough was the
military clean up operation that both metal detecting and archeology were unable to shed any
more light on the UFO crash. All of the fields and the forest
had been completely cleared of all the evidence. Maybe the answer to all this rests with the civilian UFO crash recovery team who got there before the
military clean up operation. Or is this just going to
turn into another story of strange noises, vanished evidence and weird lights in the sky? It's interesting to note here that the RAF search team at the site were unable to recognize any of the debris that belonged to any known aircraft. They also admitted to being baffled as their radar scanners had
not detected the incident or anything unusual
leading up to the incident. In fact, two weeks later they admitted that they were still unable to confirm that it was aircraft
material they had recovered, let alone offer an explanation. In their own words an RAF spokesman said, "The debris certainly had
nothing to do with us. "We are examining the fragments "to try to piece them
together in the hope of a clue "as to where it came from and what it is." (rock music) We dispatched, professional historian and researcher Scott Lloyd to
the National Library of Wales to see if any other newspapers of the day carried the story of the UFO crash. - Well from the date you gave me I went to the National Library
of Wales in Aberystwyth, it's not that far away from the site, and I went through all
the local newspapers the week before and a
couple of weeks after trying to see if there's any reference to an object crashing
in a field in Llanilar. The local papers deal
with every minor event that happens in the
local villages and I was very surprised to find no
reference to it whatsoever. Which I thought was a little unusual. However, there was some
correspondence in the Cambrian News between locals of the area,
discussing the fact that Hercules aircraft had been
flying very low in the area but that was the closest I
could find to anything crashing. I find it very unusual that an event that could reach a national newspaper wasn't recorded in the local newspapers and this is in English and Welsh. So there's three or four
local papers I looked at. So really I'd be interested to see what other evidence we can gather. This article here is a photocopy. So unfortunately we
don't have the whole page which would give us a
definite date line on the top. It's handwritten, the source, as the Sunday Express for
the 23rd of January 1983. Which is the period I looked
at in the National Library. Now we have to hope that
the person who wrote this A, got the newspaper right and B, and probably more
importantly, got the date right otherwise I've been
looking in the wrong place. Really I'd like to
continue the research by trying to contact the
police in Aberystwyth to see what report they
have of the incident and also there's a reference here to the secretary of the
Cardiganshire Farmers' Union so I'd also quite like to see if it's possible to speak to him and then we can maybe
narrow this down a bit more. And, of course, the journalist
who wrote the article, an Andrew Chapman, hopefully
we can get hold of him and then maybe we can
get closer to seeing why it didn't appear in any
of the local newspapers. (rock music) Well that's the interesting thing, how did a journalist
for a national newspaper find a story about a
small village in mid Wales when none of the local
newspapers seem to reference it. So that is quite odd. I'd like to speak to the journalist to see where he did get it from. (rock music) The other line of inquiry
is also contacting the MOD to see what they had
to say about the matter because, according to this article, they gave a statement saying there was no aircraft out at the time
and their radar scanners picked up nothing unusual. So it'd be interesting
to clarify that point. So I still think we have a
few lines of inquiry left, - It's so long since the original
newspaper article appeared that's it's author Andrew
Chapman has no idea what was his source material
for writing that article. Furthermore our researches at
the National Library of Wales didn't reveal any other newspaper
article on the UFO crash. So, once again, we've drawn a blank. The next best hope perhaps is to investigate the crash site itself. (dramatic music) They found the farm
situated in a beautiful rural area of Wales near to Aberystwyth. The farmer, Mr Evans, aged 29 at the time, turned out to be very
pleasant, helpful and sociable. He led the team across four of his fields indicating where he had earlier discovered hundreds of pieces of metallic foil and other parts of a crashed craft. He described how all the pieces had looked like shattered
glass with jagged edges. Some of the shattered and twisted plates were over six feet in size. The overall impression was
that some large aircraft must have exploded above the area. The 260 acre farm is bordered
on the southwest side by a mixed wood copse owned
by the Forestry Commission. As the team approached the boundary of the field and the trees,
it became apparent that, whatever the flying object was, it had collided with the trees. After thanking Farmer Evans
for his very graphic account of events, it was time to
conduct a search of their own. That the authorities had
done a pretty thorough job of cleaning the area became obvious when, after more than an hour's
search, the team had failed to find a single scrap of material
in any of the large fields. The team next concentrated their efforts in searching the wooded area. At first, without success. It was not long before the
first piece was discovered. Other finds followed as they
searched high in the trees and used the damaged avenue as a rough guide to the search area. We've traveled some
miles outside Aberystwyth to the sleepy Welsh village of Llanilar and we've spent some time
interviewing the local residents. Unfortunately, there are not
many people left from 25 years ago and none of the ones
who are remember the crash. So, it looks like we've
hit another dead end. (haunting flute music) (dramatic music) (haunting choral singing) Over the months that
followed, Gary and his team had the metal analyzed by several experts. Especially experts in
the aerospace industry. And their findings can briefly
be summarized as follows, the metal is a form of
Duralumin, which is not inconsistent with material
used to build fighter aircraft. Although they expressed surprise at the high quality of the sample. They were unable to identify
the green paint substance or the gray reflux surface
but they were adamant that this green painted surface has not formed part of the
outside skin of any aircraft. As the mystery paint is not
sufficiently aerodynamic. (engine roaring) Associates in the Armed Forces and others in the aircraft construction
industry were also asked to examine the samples
and to offer an opinion. Their findings can be summarized, the only areas of an
aircraft's construction that would normally require
the use of honeycombed or sandwich strengtheners would be the control surfaces ie. the
tail rudder or wing flaps. With a smile one expert said, "There is no known
aircraft that could lose "that quantity of its control
surfaces so as to cover "several fields with
metallic debris and survive. "I suggest that you go
back and look for something "big with engines sticking
upright out of the ground." The investigation team
returned to the site for a second time to search for debris but were unable to find any other scraps of the mystery foil or metallic plates. Undaunted, they made
plans for a third visit, this time with more
sophisticated equipment to aid their searches. However, they never made that third visit. For, just before they could
return, the Forestry Commission arrived and promptly set about
removing the wooded copse. They said it was necessary
because of wind damage. - Well in '83 I was running
a UFO group in Deeside so I had a lot of people very
interested in UFOs with me and a team ready to go with all
sorts of equipment and so on when all of a sudden, I
pick a newspaper up one day, I think it was the Daily Express actually, and there's this article,
strange debris from the sky and it tells of a story
of a farmer down there near Aberystwyth on a farm at Llanilar and this farmer claims that
he went out one morning and found all this strange
debris on his land. Well obviously it had
connotations to me of Roswell and I'm thinking strange metallic debris spread all over fields? So immediately I got a small team together and we headed off. We spoke to the farmer on the telephone and this very nice gentleman
Erwell, was really helpful and he said, "Come down by all means." And we did and when we went down there, he led us out from the
farm and he took us out across these fields and he said, "Here before me in the morning, "spread out over four
fields, was metal fragments. "Metal plate, all convex shaped "and glistening metal
foil all over the place "spread over an entire four field area." Obviously when I got
there there was no metal because, as he explained,
that morning, he got up and found the fragments and
he immediately rang the police suspecting that he'd had
a plane crash on his land. The police arrived and
duly they walk around and they examine the fields and obviously they can't be of a lot of help. They recognize that there's
this metal foil there so they contact the RAF crash retrieval. Gentlemen arrive from that and they walk over the land hearing the same story and examining this material
and saying to each other, "Gosh this isn't an airplane. "We don't really know what it is." So they leave all this evidence in place and much later that same day, there's arrival of people
from the Ministry of Defense. Now there are plain clothes people here directing uniformed officers. They've got all sorts of equipment and, in the words of Mr
Erwell himself, he said, "It's like a scene here from James Bond. "They've got lights all over
the place, it's barricaded off "and they're out there collecting
these pieces of material." Well by the next morning,
when Erwell got up to see to his lambs and so on, he
went out there and it was gone. Every piece of metal and
the MOD, completely gone. Much later, we arrived
as a team to investigate. Obviously they hadn't
left a fragment anywhere, we searched the fields, we were unable to find any of it at all. In fact, the three
people that were with me were really despairing in the end. You can imagine how excited we were, the chance of finding some of this debris. So, I said to my colleagues, I said, "There's no way, I don't
care how good they are, "the MOD, and what they used, "it would be very very difficult to clear "the forest that adjoined the land." So we set off amongst the
branches and the trees and so on and it wasn't long
before we started to find strange fragments of this metal and we recovered a
number of pieces of this. You could see clearly where to look because there was a line right through the top of this wood or
this forest if you like, where all the treetops
had been sheared off, probably to a width of about 20 odd feet and all the tops of these
trees were scattered straight in a line
right across this field. So it was easy to find
where we needed to look and we came away with this material. Obviously we planned to go
back with more people and make a more thorough search,
taking more equipment with us, well, you would not believe
this but that very same week I had another phone call
from the farmer and he said, "You're still welcome to come
down and do your research "and so on but you might
be wasting your time." So I said, "Well how's that then?" He said, "Well you know that forest? "As I'm speaking to you,
they're actually removing it." I said, "Pardon, they're
removing a forest?" "Yes," he said. So I contact the Forestry
Commission and say, "Would you like to tell me why
you're removing the forest?" And a Forestry Commission
person and he sounded as if he was smiling although
obviously I couldn't see him on the telephone, he said, "Well
it's wind damage you know?" And I said, "Wind damage? "Do you usually remove a
forest for wind damage?" "No," he said, "but
we're removing this one." So I took it from that obviously
the Ministry of Defense had decided that the best
way to remove any evidence in the forest was to take the trees away and that's exactly what they did. - Or is this just going into another story of strange noises, vanished evidence and weird lights in the sky? - If you'd just like to come this way, I've got some of the
pieces here to show you. And there it is. As you can see, this large piece is almost like shattered
glass around the edge, in fact the only straight part of it is where we've had to
cut samples for testing. On top of this gray material,
this resin material, stood this sort of honeycombed metal. A sample of that in the
case there that you can see almost like tin foil, giving it enormous strength across the outside. So, if you can imagine, we'd got this material sandwiched
between two plates. You'll notice that it's
all completely shattered around the edges, almost
like shattered glass. (dramatic music) Well, as a matter of fact I've got a small sample of the material here. On the one side, as you
can see, it's a green color and on the other side it's a gray color. The gray color is some kind of resin that's not been properly identified yet and obviously there's
this Duralumin in between. You notice that all the
edges of the material look as if it's broken
glass, it's shattered. The only straight edge, in fact, is the one that I've actually cut to take samples from. All the pieces are of a
slightly concave nature indicating that this has either exploded or imploded at some time. What's interesting though is
the strength of this material. It's extremely strong
given that it's so light. Very very strong, I can
just bend it or flex it but it would take quite a serious amount of effort to put a crease into it. I think you'll agree with me
that is extremely unusual. On the side that you can see that's gray, where the resin was, attached to this there was honeycombed metal foil that resembles baking foil
but all neatly honeycombed and obviously the two pieces
of metal went either side, sandwiching this honeycomb between them. The result is, of course,
extremely strong material that can't even be crushed and yet extremely light at the same time. Quite incredible construction really. (dramatic music) (haunting choral music) - Now, following that,
obviously we were very curious with these pieces of
metal that we'd recovered, to find out what they were. And we were very lucky in
the end to have someone who is a foremost metallurgist to take these pieces and investigate them. This person's associated
with the aerospace industry and therefore had all the facilities to go ahead and do this sort of research. Well, eventually I got a report back. I must admit that most
of it went clean over the top of my head, I'm
not a metallurgist myself, but the gist of it is, the
metal is some form of Duralumin. Which is not inconsistent
with the kind of thing that you build fighter aircraft from. But there were strange anomalies in it that interested these people. They were talking about
a strangeness to it. Its strength to volume
ratio was extremely high and also they were talking
about a sort of pure alloy. Now how you can get a pure
alloy I'm not quite sure but the purity of it interested them. They were utterly convinced
that they knew no one that could make this metal and they would very much obviously like
to make it themselves, they thought this was just the stuff we ought to be making airplanes out of. The result of it was that we had to settle for that information and, to
this day, nothing else has occurred that would indicate
it's anything other than that. Although we have had separate
tests done on a few occasions. It also had some kind of
strange resin on one side of it. The nature of this has
not been fully analyzed although we are aware
of some of the chemicals that it's composed of and
I'm told that the color, this coloration that was on one side of it is not an aerodynamic material. (rock music) (electronic beeping) From that day to this, it still remains unidentified, no aircraft was missing,
no pilots were missing, no mechanical things were found
on the site associated with, there were no rivets in the construction of any of this material. And whatever this strange thing was that flew that night over that farm, it managed to explode all this material, cover four fields with it and then fly off again
undisturbed, it appears. It's quite remarkable. And as this has not been identified in the last 20 odd years,
we can only conclude, and this is as far as I'm happy to go, that this remains debris from a UFO, an unidentified flying object. (rock music) ♪ Everything is perfect ♪ ♪ And everything is bent ♪ ♪ When all you want is answers ♪ ♪ For all you'll come and spend ♪ ♪ Are you man or machine
or just somewhere between ♪ ♪ Are you man or machine ♪ ♪ Is this reality ♪ ♪ Living with you all the 21st century ♪ ♪ Are you man or machine ♪ ♪ Are you man or machine ♪ ♪ Time is always ticking ♪ ♪ Oh I'm not far away ♪ ♪ And the bullet's hollow ♪ ♪ Makes it all okay ♪ ♪ Are you man or machine
or just somewhere between ♪ ♪ Are you man or machine ♪ ♪ Is this reality ♪ ♪ Living with you all the 21st century ♪ ♪ What will it be ♪ ♪ Man or machine ♪ ♪ Man or machine ♪ - Well in '83 I was running
a UFO group in Deeside so I had a lot of people very
interested in UFOs with me and a team ready to go with all
sorts of equipment and so on when all of a sudden, I
pick a newspaper up one day, I think it was the Daily Express actually, and there's this article,
strange debris from the sky and it tells of a story
of a farmer down there near Aberystwyth on a farm at Llanilar and this farmer claims that
he went out one morning and found all this strange
debris on his land. Well obviously it had
connotations to me of Roswell and I'm thinking strange metallic debris spread all over fields? So immediately I got a small team together and we headed off. We spoke to the farmer on the telephone and this very nice gentleman
Erwell, was really helpful and he said, "Come down by all means." And we did and when we went down there, he led us out from the
farm and he took us out across these fields and he said, "Here before me in the morning, "spread out over four
fields, was metal fragments. "Metal plate, all convex shaped "and glistening metal
foil all over the place "spread over an entire four field area." Obviously when I got
there there was no metal because, as he explained,
that morning, he got up and found the fragments and
he immediately rang the police suspecting that he'd had
a plane crash on his land. The police arrived and
duly they walk around and they examine the fields and obviously they can't be of a lot of help. They recognize that there's
this metal foil there so they contact the RAF crash retrieval. Gentlemen arrive from that and they walk over the land hearing the same story and examining this material
and saying to each other, "Gosh this isn't an airplane. "We don't really know what it is." So they leave all this evidence in place and much later that same day, there's arrival of people
from the Ministry of Defense. Now there are plain clothes people here directing uniformed officers. They've got all sorts of equipment and, in the words of Mr
Erwell himself, he said, "It's like a scene here from James Bond. "They've got lights all over
the place, it's barricaded off "and they're out there collecting
these pieces of material." Well by the next morning,
when Erwell got up to see to his lambs and so on, he
went out there and it was gone. Every piece of metal and
the MOD, completely gone. Much later, we arrived
as a team to investigate. Obviously they hadn't
left a fragment anywhere, we searched the fields, we were unable to find any of it at all. In fact, the three
people that were with me were really despairing in the end. You can imagine how excited we were, the chance of finding some of this debris. So, I said to my colleagues, I said, "There's no way, I don't
care how good they are, "the MOD, and what they used, "it would be very very difficult to clear "the forest that adjoined the land." So we set off amongst the
branches and the trees and so on and it wasn't long
before we started to find strange fragments of this metal and we recovered a
number of pieces of this. You could see clearly where to look because there was a line right through the top of this wood or
this forest if you like, where all the treetops
had been sheared off, probably to a width of about 20 odd feet and all the tops of these
trees were scattered straight in a line
right across this field. So it was easy to find
where we needed to look and we came away with this material. Obviously we planned to go
back with more people and make a more thorough search,
taking more equipment with us, well, you would not believe
this but that very same week I had another phone call
from the farmer and he said, "You're still welcome to come
down and do your research "and so on but you might
be wasting your time." So I said, "Well how's that then?" He said, "Well you know that forest? "As I'm speaking to you,
they're actually removing it." I said, "Pardon, they're
removing a forest?" "Yes," he said. So I contact the Forestry
Commission and say, "Would you like to tell me why
you're removing the forest?" And a Forestry Commission
person and he sounded as if he was smiling although
obviously I couldn't see him on the telephone, he said, "Well
it's wind damage you know?" And I said, "Wind damage? "Do you usually remove a
forest for wind damage?" "No," he said, "but
we're removing this one." So I took it from that obviously
the Ministry of Defense had decided that the best
way to remove any evidence in the forest was to take the trees away and that's exactly what they did. Well, as a matter of fact I've got a small sample of the material here. On the one side, as you
can see, it's a green color and on the other side it's a gray color. The gray color is some kind of resin that's not been properly identified yet and obviously there's
this Duralumin in between. You notice that all the
edges of the material look as if it's broken
glass, it's shattered. The only straight edge, in fact, is the one that I've actually cut to take samples from. All the pieces are of a
slightly concave nature indicating that this has either exploded or imploded at some time. What's interesting though is
the strength of this material. It's extremely strong
given that it's so light. Very very strong, I can
just bend it or flex it but it would take quite a serious amount of effort to put a crease into it. On the side that you can see that's gray, where the resin was, attached to this there was honeycombed metal foil that resembles baking foil
but all neatly honeycombed and obviously the two pieces
of metal went either side, sandwiching this honeycomb between them. The result is, of course,
extremely strong material that can't even be crushed and yet extremely light at the same time. Quite incredible construction really. Well you can imagine,
when we'd got this metal, how keen we were to find out what it was. Well we were very lucky
in the end to have someone who was connected with
the aerospace industry and he very kindly took a sample along and unofficially it was tested for us. Unfortunately we couldn't
afford to send it ourselves, they wanted about four,
five thousand pounds just to test this sample. Anyway we had it tested, we're
told by one of the leading metallurgists and his findings
were very interesting. Although much of it, of course,
went clean over my head. His report indicated that the metal basically was a type of Duralumin. Which is not itself inconsistent with being that of a fighter aircraft but they were talking
about a strangeness to it. It's strength to volume
ratio was extremely high and also they were talking
about a sort of pure alloy. Now how you can get a pure
alloy I'm not quite sure but the purity of it interested them. They were utterly convinced that they knew no one that could make this
metal and they would very much, obviously, like to make it
themselves, they thought this was just the stuff we ought to
be making airplanes out of. The result of it was that we had to settle for that information and, to
this day, nothing else has occurred that would indicate
it's anything other than that. Although we have had separate
tests done on a few occasions. It also had some kind of
strange resin on one side of it. The nature of this has
not been fully analyzed although we are aware of some of the chemicals that it's composed of. And I'm told that this
coloration that was on one side of it is not an aerodynamic material and therefore would
never have been painted on anything that was an airplane even. From that day to this, it still remains unidentified, no aircraft was missing,
no pilots were missing, no mechanical things were found
on the site associated with, there were no rivets in the construction of any of this material. And whatever this strange thing was that flew that night over that farm, it managed to explode all this material, cover four fields with it and then fly off again
undisturbed, it appears. It's quite remarkable. And as this has not been identified in the last 20 odd years,
we can only conclude, and this is as far as I'm happy to go, that this remains debris from a UFO, an unidentified flying object. If you'd just like to come this way, I've got some of the
pieces here to show you. I've brought them over
specially for you to see. The larger piece had the resin on the top and here you can see a sandwich
piece with the metal foil in between and the edge on a sample of it and you can see from this how this sandwich is really compact. It has enormous strength,
rigidity across the outside without ever having to give up it's secrets. - The report in a national
newspaper was headed, "Strange Debris Out of the Sky." and it was from the Sunday
Express the 23rd of January 1983. It indicated that an
unidentified flying object had crashed in Wales. The similarities with the
famous Roswell incident became gradually too obvious. While Gary was fortunate enough to be living in north Wales at the time, nonetheless the reported incident was some considerable distance. So he contacted the farmer
and obtained his permission to visit the crash site. After hastily organizing
a reconnaissance team and several hours of
driving, the team arrived. They found the farm
situated in a beautiful rural area of Wales near to Aberystwyth. The farmer, Mr Evans, aged 29 at the time, turned out to be very
pleasant, helpful and sociable. He led the team across four of his fields indicating where he had earlier discovered hundreds of pieces of metallic foil, large alloy plates that
were green on one side and coated with hard gray substance and other parts of a crashed craft. There were also enormous
quantities of metal foil, some still neatly honeycombed between two layers of the hard gray substance. He described how all the pieces had looked like shattered glass with jagged edges. Some of the shattered and twisted plates were over six feet in size. The overall impression was that some large aircraft must have
exploded above the area. The 260 acre farm is bordered
on the southwest side by a mixed wood copse owned
by the Forestry Commission. As the team approached the boundary of the field and the trees,
it became apparent that, whatever the flying object was, it had collided with the trees. In almost a straight line
running right through the woods, it was possible to see
an avenue of damage. The damage was considerable, starting at the opposite side of
the copse to the field, several trees were
knocked down and uprooted. They were all lying in the same direction, pointing towards the field. Further into the copse, the top
section of many of the trees was sheared off in a corridor
of some 25 foot width. Other, thinner tree were
simply stripped of their bark. Broken branches and twigs
extended right through the copse and onto the very edge
of the field itself. It was obvious that something
of considerable force has collided with the trees to
cause this amount of damage. It was equally obvious that
the light alloy material described could not
have caused this amount of damage simply by falling. As the team examined the
damage, Mr Evans recounted the entire series of
events, from the beginning. He began, "The incident must have happened "in the dead of night as there was no sign "of the debris late on
the previous evening. During the night of the crash, he hadn't heard anything unusual. In fact, no one questioned
in the close knit community had heard or seen any aircraft. Early the following morning,
as he trudged the fields to attend his newborn
lambs, he was confronted with masses of scattered debris, extending over an area
of four of his fields. Fearing a plane crash,
he quickly searched for the main body of the aircraft
but failed to find it. In fact there were no
engines or mechanical components of any kind. None of the debris had
any rivets or resembled anything that he had ever seen before. He telephoned the local police station. The local police arrived
and, after they had conducted a brief examination,
the RAF were called in. During the remainder of the entire day, teams of police, uniformed RAF men and plain clothed
individuals giving orders thoroughly searched the
fields and the nearby woods. They removed every scrap of evidence that they could find and
only one section taken away had what looked like
part of a number on it. Another piece resembled an
aerial but, apart from those, all the remainder of the
pieces looked very similar and were either extremely
light metal foil, alloy metal plates or honeycombed foil sandwiched between alloy plates. The pieces ranged in size
from an inch to six feet. The men continued the search
by torchlight as darkness fell. Mr Evans described it as a scene straight from a James Bond movie. It's interesting to note
here that the RAF search team at the site were unable to recognize any of the debris that
belonged to any known aircraft. They also admitted to being baffled as their radar scanners had
not detected the incident or anything unusual
leading up to the incident. In fact, two weeks
later, they admitted that they were still unable to
confirm that it was aircraft material they had recovered,
let alone offer an explanation. In their own words, an RAF spokesman said, "The debris certainly had
nothing to do with us. "We are examining the fragments to try "to piece them together
in the hope of a clue "as to where it came from and what it is. After thanking Farmer Evans
for his very graphic account of events, it was time to
conduct a search of their own. That the authorities had
done a pretty thorough job of cleaning the area became obvious when, after more than an hour's
search, the team had failed to find a single scrap of material
in any of the large fields. The team next concentrated their efforts in searching the wooded area. At first, without success. But morale remained high as
the team of investigators continued to search, heartened
by the certainty that the woods could not have been
totally cleared of all debris given the density of the undergrowth and especially as the
searchers from the MOD had searched mainly through the night. It was not long before the
first piece was discovered. Other finds followed as they searched high in the trees and
used the damaged avenue as a rough guide to the search area. At the conclusion, they
had secured several pieces of the strange flying craft
which were representative of the different materials
described by Farmer Evans. Mindful of the importance of
the samples that were found and the fate of poor Mac Brazel, who was the farmer in
the Roswell Incident, and the way his few samples
had been taken away from him, they set in motion a scheme to ensure the complete safety of
the Welsh crash fragments. When they got the fragments home, just as they'd been told, all
the pieces that were found were jagged around the
edges like shattered glass. One honeycomb foil section
was as light as a feather and found to be so strong
that it could not be crushed. A small section of thin
alloy plate measured roughly two and a half inches across
and was little thicker than 100 gram paper yet it could
only be bent using great force. Its jagged edges were so hard and sharp that it could be used like
a craft knife to cut things. Both the specimens and
several other thicker plates looked as if they had been painted on one side with a rough dark green paint. The obverse was thinly coated with a skin of hard gray plastic looking
material in which there was a fine, uniform, indented
pattern that resembled the edge on view of a bee's honeycomb. It was consistent with
having originally had honeycomb foil attached to its surface. They noted with interest that the edges of all the samples were
slightly bent outwards ie. concave towards the green side. Because it would require
very considerable force to cause this durable and hard alloy to disintegrate and
shatter into fragments, it was concluded that the flying
object had struck the trees and exploded, exuding
large amounts of debris but somehow it had survived
to continue on its flight. The team had the metal
tested by their own appointed expert metallurgist associated
with the aerospace industry and their findings and opinions can be briefly summarized as follows, the metal is a form of
Duralumin, which is not inconsistent with material
used to build fighter aircraft. Although the team did express surprise at the high quality of the samples. They were unable to identify
the green paint substance or the gray reflux surface
but they were adamant that this green painted surface has not formed part of the
outside skin of any aircraft. As the mystery paint is not
sufficiently aerodynamic. Associates in the Armed Forces and others in the aircraft construction
industry were also asked to examine the samples
and to offer an opinion. Their findings can be summarized thus, the only areas of an
aircraft's construction that would normally require
the use of honeycombed or sandwich strengtheners would be the control surfaces ie.
the tail rudder or ailerons, which are in fact wing flaps. With a smile one expert said, "There is no known
aircraft that could lose "that quantity of its control
surfaces so as to cover "several fields with
metallic debris and survive. "I suggest that you go
back and look for something "big with engines sticking
upright out of the ground." The investigation team
returned to the site for a second time to search for debris but were unable to find any other scraps of the mystery foil or metallic plates. Undaunted, they made
plans for a third visit, this time with more
sophisticated equipment to aid their searches. However, they never made that third visit. For, just before they could
return, the Forestry Commission arrived and promptly set about
removing the wooded copse. They said it was necessary
because of wind damage.
