DEFE 24/1922 — MoD UFO Reports 1962–1979 (Broad Haven / Welsh Triangle era)
The earliest MoD UFO desk file in the released corpus, DEFE 24/1922 compiles handwritten incident-report forms and parliamentary-handling correspondence spanning (per catalog) 1962–1979, with special attention to the 1977 Broad Haven / Welsh Triangle wave in Pembrokeshire; only 12 of 120 pages yield machine-readable text.
Brief
DEFE 24/1922 is a 120-page Secretariat Air Staff working folder combining raw UFO sighting-report forms with policy and parliamentary correspondence, including material on the 1977 Pembrokeshire wave known as the 'Dyfed enigma.' Of the 12 pages with extractable text, three carry coherent incident entries: a January 1985 one-hour observation of a reddish stationary object south of Aberystwyth confirmed through 10x50 binoculars; a January 1985 five-minute sighting of a bright light exhibiting hovering behavior followed by rapid acceleration; and an October sighting of approximately 50 red and white lights moving east-to-west near Rushton on the A45. The 1985 dates on extracted pages create a direct discrepancy with the file's catalogued 1962–1979 window, suggesting the folder was used as an active working file for several years beyond its nominal period, or that later reports were appended to it.
Metadata
- Agency
- UK Ministry of Defence / Secretariat Air Staff
- Release
- 2008-10-08
- Type
- PDF • .pdf
- Length
- 120 pages
- Classification
- UNCLASSIFIED
- Tags
- bright light, hovering, rapid acceleration, stationary reddish object, formation of ~50 lights, Wales, Aberystwyth, Pembrokeshire, Broad Haven, Welsh Triangle, Dyfed enigma, Rushton A45, handwritten report forms, 1977, 1985
Key points
- The file's catalogued coverage is 1962–1979, but two extracted report forms carry unambiguous 1985 dates ('26 Jan 85 2202Z' on page 4 and '101830Z JAN UNTIL 101930Z JAN 85' on page 19), indicating the document extends beyond or was appended past its stated period.p.4
- A January 1985 report from 12 miles south of Aberystwyth logs a reddish, stationary object observed for one hour by naked eye and 10x50 binoculars, with the object's brightness characterised as several times the magnitude of Venus.p.19
- A second January 1985 report describes a bright light observed for approximately five minutes at 2202Z by a witness outdoors walking a dog; the movements field records 'Hovering then rapid acceleration' with no bearing or distance provided.p.4
- An October sighting near Rushton on the A45 documents approximately 50 red and white lights in a row moving east-to-west over 20 seconds, observed at roughly 45 degrees elevation by a witness in a moving vehicle under broken cloud.p.67
- All legible pages follow the standard MoD UFO incident-report form with identical field structure: date/time/duration, object description, exact observer position, observation method, direction, angle of sight, distance, movements, and meteorological conditions.p.9
- 108 of the 120 pages are handwritten or image-only and yield no machine-readable text, meaning the Broad Haven / Welsh Triangle materials cited in the catalog description are inaccessible without vision-OCR processing.p.110
- No named programs, operational code-names, or agency program designators appear in any extractable page; page 104 contains only a sparse routing slip referencing 'OPS GE' and 'RAP' designators.p.104
Verbatim
Most interesting
- The 1977 Broad Haven / Welsh Triangle wave — the 'Dyfed enigma' cited as central to this file in the MoD catalog — does not appear by name in any of the 12 machine-readable pages, placing the relevant correspondence entirely within the 108 unextractable pages.
- The Aberystwyth observer used both naked eye and 10x50 binoculars and benchmarked the object's brightness against Venus — a level of observational precision more consistent with a trained or amateur astronomer than a casual civilian witness.
- The Rushton sighting logs approximately 50 discrete light sources in a single row formation, which is among the highest individual-light counts in any MoD report form visible in this file.
- The 1985 dates on extracted pages conflict with the National Archives catalog description of 1962–1979, a discrepancy not flagged in the catalog entry and visible only from the page-level content.
- Pages 24 and 110 appear to be graphic or photographic inserts — possibly maps, photographs, or attachment covers — with no recoverable text whatsoever, suggesting the file contains physical enclosures beyond the standard form set.