THE ROSEWELL INCIDENT?
The Debrief’s Lt. Tim McMillan (Ret.) posed an interesting question on Twitter on 18th February 2021. When it came to understanding what had crashed near Roswell, New Mexico back in July 1947, he asked what would have happened if it had occurred in Britain. “What would the UK have done and why?” A good question, and one that I started to ponder. Would British residents, listening to the news on their wireless sets one night in early July 1947, have heard the following announcement?
“This is the BBC Home Service. Here is the news for Tuesday 8th July 1947, with Alvar Lidell. Recent reports of a crash in central Scotland involving what local residents have termed as a ‘flying saucer’, have been dismissed by the War Office as ‘nothing more than idle speculation’ or ‘mere fantasy’. An article printed in a Scottish newspaper suggesting that the Air Ministry had discovered a ‘flying disc’ near Rosewell, Midlothian, proved to be incorrect when the remains of a meteorological balloon were produced by officers from RAF Leuchars, demonstrating that it was the source of the erroneous reports. A spokesman from the Air Ministry stated earlier this evening that he understood the initial alarm caused by the discovery of the wreckage of the weather balloon, but he sought to reassure local residents and the country at large that there was no reason for anyone to panic. In other news…..”
Clearly this didn’t happen, but looking back to the original timeframe, give or take six or seven years on each side, Tim’s question can be addressed by looking at a series of events that occurred in the 1940s and 1950s. As a wartime history enthusiast with a huge interest in UAPs, I came up with some WW2 examples that appeared to have elements in common with Roswell. I also remembered visiting a little-known airfield in Scotland whilst writing an article for an aviation magazine some years ago, a location connected with a rather secretive intelligence-gathering operation. Six years after this clandestine project was being conducted, an even more obscure incident occurred nearby, which definitely had the mark of Roswell about it. Let’s take a deep dive into all of these.
A tale of two Junkers
In May 1943, a Luftwaffe aircraft landed at RAF Dyce (now Aberdeen Airport) after its crew had decided to defect to the Allies. It was a twin-engined Junkers Ju 88R-1 night-fighter, werke nummer 360043, belonging to the 10th Staffel of Nachtjagdgeschwader (“Night Fighter Wing”) 3, based at Aalborg-West in Denmark. The pilot, Herbert Schmid, had flown to up Kristiansand, before refuelling and officially intending to patrol the Skagerrak, the strait between Norway and Denmark. Shortly after take-off, the pilot sent a radio distress call to his headquarters, reporting that one of his engines was on fire. He then descended to sea level, flying just above the waves to get below German radar coverage. The Luftwaffe sent out air-sea-rescue seaplanes to look for survivors, but finding none, believed that Schmid and his crew had been lost at sea.
This is where the parallels with Roswell begin. The Ju 88 was fitted with Lichtenstein B/C airborne radar. Recognising its value, and the fact that it had arrived in secret, British Air Intelligence did not want word getting back to Germany. If it had, the Luftwaffe may have become aware of the huge opportunity given to the Allies in terms of developing counter-measures for Lichtenstein B/C, which had proved most effective against RAF bombers over Occupied Europe. The Luftwaffe believed that the British had yet to determine the radar’s wavelength, as German night-fighters only operated over territory they controlled and so if one crashed, the equipment would not fall into enemy hands. Doctor R. V. Jones, Assistant Director of Intelligence (Science), and a key player in both the electronic war against the Germans and analysis of their secret weapons programmes, was informed of the aircraft’s arrival. He immediately arranged for the Ju 88 to be locked in a hangar to stop any high altitude Luftwaffe reconnaissance machines from photographing it, which would of course have alerted the enemy that the British knew about Lichtenstein B/C.
A Junkers Ju 88 landed at RAF Dyce, near Aberdeen, Scotland in 1943, the crew having opted to defect to the Allies. On board was radar equipment that helped the RAF in their bombing raids over Germany.
Guards were put on the hangar and unauthorised personnel kept away. In addition to hiding the machine from prying eyes, measures were taken to prevent everyone who had seen the aircraft from talking about it once they were off-duty. Whilst propaganda messages proclaimed that “Careless Talk Costs Lives”, gossip continued and there was always a possibility that an as yet undiscovered German agent in the Aberdeen area would learn that the Ju 88 had not crashed into the North Sea. Dr Jones therefore took the drastic step of flying up to Dyce from London and addressing the airfield’s entire staff complement personally. He gave them an impromptu talk (in general terms) on German radar, what counter-measures Air Intelligence were planning, and most importantly, the value of the JU 88 night-fighter at the base and how it would help in finding ways to beat the enemy. This tactic worked, and word did not leak out.
The Ju 88 was flown down to Farnborough in Hampshire. Secret testing activity, as at Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson AFB), was carried out during WW2. Air Ministry technicians and radar experts examined the night-fighter to see what kind of electronic equipment was installed. Schmid had brought documentation relating to the set with him when he defected. Both the radar and the instructions were a huge windfall for Air Intelligence 2(g), the German aircraft section, and assisted in the creation of counter-measures for RAF Bomber Command, including “Window”, a radar jamming device consisting of strips of aluminium foil (now known as “Chaff”).
As with Roswell, there are elements to the story which are not yet fully understood or proven, involving possible collusion between certain German personalities and British Intelligence during the war itself, pre-arranged flights between the warring countries and the Luftwaffe crew being given new identities as they freely co-operated with RAF interrogators and the experts at Farnborough. The story of the defecting crew was little known after the war, appearing in only a few books and documentaries. The rumours around possible intelligence operations prior to the defection have only added to the speculation around what was originally a straightforward tale. It is likely that a cover story was invented to hide the arrival of the Ju 88: this would probably have involved one of No.1426 Flight’s fleet of captured Luftwaffe aircraft, used for comparison trials and enemy identification exercises. RAF-operated Ju 88s were seen around Britain on familiarisation flights, so such a cover story would have been believable, even to RAF personnel.
A second Junkers night-fighter, this time a Ju 88G-1 fitted with FuG 220 Lichtenstein SN-2, a much improved set designed to beat the “Window” jamming, landed in error at RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk in July 1944 after the pilot became lost and flew across the North Sea by mistake. The airfield guards took the entire crew prisoner before they had a chance to destroy the radar gear. As with the Dyce aircraft, it was spirited away and the crew kept incommunicado, at least until the electronics could be analysed. W/n 712273 belonged to 7./NJG 2 at Twente in Holland. It was fitted with two passive radar receivers, FuG 227 Flensburg and FuG 350 Naxos. Both detected different kinds of electronic emissions from heavy bombers, and the windfall allowed the introduction of further counter-measures to limit their effectiveness.
So, machines fitted with technology considered to be advanced or at least unknown, had landed under somewhat strange circumstances. The military spirited both of them away under guard, unauthorised personnel were allowed nowhere near, and a lid was placed on any leaks of information. Both aircraft were taken to a secret facility where the technology could be examined, dissected and evaluated. Anyone that enquired about them would have been met with silence, denials or treated as threats to national security. A cover story would have been drafted if one had been needed. One of the cases now involves rumours that circulated long after the event itself, none of which have been proven. Does any of this sound familiar?
ULTRA: The secret which was hidden for thirty years
Before 1974, few outside the intelligence communities in Britain and the US had even heard of Ultra, let alone knew what role it had played in the defeat of Germany during WW2. Those participating in the project were sworn to secrecy and honoured that oath until the mid-1970s and beyond, some refusing to speak about their activities even on their deathbeds. It was probably the greatest secret of WW2, and most people today are still unaware of the exact chain of events that led up to British mathematicians and cryptanalysts breaking the German Enigma code.
The first Enigma cipher devices were available in Germany in 1923. Designed to allow military, diplomatic and private companies to send sensitive or secret messages, the more complex military Enigma machines looked like an enhanced typewriter. A very complicated series of metal rotors, plugboards and complex wiring all contributed to what was believed to be an unbreakable cypher. The only flaw in the system was that no letter could encrypt as itself. With three usable rotors out of 5 and a plugboard with 10 sets of paired letters, military machines offered 158 quintillion settings, placing them beyond the codebreaking abilities of European cryptanalysis teams. Enigma seemed unbreakable, and to many intelligence agencies, it was. However, Polish cryptanalysts had solved some of the mysteries. By 1939, the Polish Cipher Bureau, aided by British and French intelligence services, had cracked the secrets of the rotor wiring and the plugboard. The addition of a fourth and fifth rotor in 1938 halted this work in its tracks. After Poland was invaded in September 1939, the cryptanalysts, plus their copies of the Enigmas and the electro-mechanical machines they had constructed to help crack the codes, were evacuated to Britain. This is where the secrecy and the parallels with Roswell really kick in.
Although incomplete, the men and material rescued from Poland proved invaluable to British codebreaking efforts. The cryptanalysts and translators were based at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire. Hut 6 housed a team dealing with Heer (Army) and Luftwaffe communications, while Hut 8 looked at Kriegsmarine (Navy) traffic. Hut 3 dealt with translations. Activities at Bletchley Park were conducted under the strictest security. Recruits were vetted and signed the Official Secrets Act (1939) before working at the site. All were constantly reminded of the need for secrecy, even with family and friends. This extended to conversations with colleagues from other parts of Bletchley, a strict “need to know” policy being in force at all times. A security warning issued in 1942 was frank: “Do not talk at meals. Do not talk in the transport. Do not talk whilst travelling. Do not talk in the billet. Do not talk by your own fireside. Be careful even in your own hut.” Each staff member had their own duties, and often did not know what colleagues were doing, or in some cases, what their own tasks accomplished. This was an early example of “compartmentalisation”. At its height, 9,000 people worked at Bletchley, and they all followed the rules. Only a handful of very senior commanders and officials outside the facility knew what went on there.
The three rotor Enigma machine, the Polish Cipher Bureau had cracked the secret of the machine when an updated model with two extra rotors was released, coinciding with the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939.
©Grupp/German Federal Archive via Wikimedia
A small amount of information had made its way into the public eye during the 1960s, mainly through French and Polish sources, although it related to work done before the British took over cryptanalysis. However, in 1973 a former French intelligence officer wrote a book detailing how the decryption had worked. The following year, the British Government lifted the secrecy ban and a former officer at Bletchley Park, responsible for the dissemination of intercepted material, published “The Ultra Secret”, effectively blowing the lid off the whole affair. It appears that the secret was kept willingly by those who participated in the codebreaking project, and governments could have prevented publication of books if required, or may simply have denied any knowledge of Ultra if they had wished to continue the secrecy. Patriotism, duty and fear of retribution would have motivated the former staff members at Bletchley Park to keep quiet about their own role during WW2, and many refused to talk even after the ban was lifted in 1974. Again, this is reminiscent of Roswell, where some former US Army Air Force witnesses appeared too frightened to speak out, even years after the supposed crash took place. Others stated they were afraid of losing pensions or other benefits, and it is possible that some witnesses may have decided not to speak due to a sense of duty.
An American secret base on British shores?
Have you ever heard of RAF Evanton? Chances are, unless you are an aviation nerd like me, lived in the area or had relatives who served there, the answer is no. It was located on the shores of the Cromarty Firth, about 12 miles north-west of Inverness, in northern Scotland. I visited it in 2003 and found an airfield with its runways and hangar buildings still intact, but long since abandoned. Established in 1922 as a naval aerodrome for the Fleet Air Arm, it was expanded in 1937 to operate larger machines, becoming home to a succession of obscure training units before ending up as a storage yard for Coastal Command aircraft types in 1944. Although the aerodrome officially closed in 1947, it was kept on a “Care and Maintenance” basis (i.e., mothballed) until the runways were reopened in 1950 for pilot training during the Korean War before being shut down again in 1953.
However, the story of this virtually unknown site takes a more Roswell-ian turn in July 1955, when members of the USAF’s 1st Air Division Survey Team arrived at the site. This was a scouting mission to see whether the old airfield had the necessary facilities from which an extremely secret operation could be mounted. It appears that the project went under many different codenames, including “Grayback”, “Genetrix”, “Moby Dick” and “Project 119L”. The last one was the designation of what would be deployed from Evanton, namely “Weapons System 119L”. What was this mysterious weapon? Was it a secret, high-performance jet aircraft, armed with nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles like the AIR-2 Genie? Or perhaps a new photo-reconnaissance aircraft capable of low-level operations, like the Douglas RB-66 Destroyer? No. It was a balloon, a successor to Project Mogul. Now that is definitely an echo of Roswell!
In 1955, American photo-reconnaissance coverage inside the Soviet Union was rated at poor to non-existent. This was, of course, before the advent of spy satellites which could traverse Russia with impunity. The same could not be said for USAF and US Navy reconnaissance aircraft which strayed across the Soviet Union’s borders. North American B-45 Tornado jets (leased to Britain, painted in RAF markings and flown by British crews) often penetrated Russian airspace between 1952 and 1954, operating from West German airfields and flying as far as Kiev. No RAF B-45s were shot down, although at least one was fired on. Several American aircraft operating both electronic intelligence and photo-reconnaissance missions over the fringes of Soviet territory were brought down between 1951 and 1955, and casualties naturally mounted. There had to be a better way of obtaining coverage inside Russia without subjecting crews to attack from the Soviet air defences.
Enter “Weapons System 119L”. A polyethylene balloon, 40 foot high when inflated to its full extent, was fixed to a gondola containing a DMQ-1 automatic camera system. The latter had two 6-inch lenses and was capable of taking 500 exposures, each one covering a 50 mile-wide swathe on either side of the balloon’s path. The mission called for launch at a site where westerly winds would then blow the balloon eastwards over the Soviet Union, at altitudes of 50,000 to 100,000 feet, well above the service ceilings of Russian interceptors. Once over the Pacific or Canada, a radio signal would be transmitted so a specially designed “catch” aircraft such as a Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar could retrieve the gondola and its film. Various launch sites were scouted, and in addition to Evanton, locations in Norway, Germany and Turkey were selected.
Evanton was chosen to house “Detachment 4” of the USAF’s 28th Weather Squadron, the unit’s cover identity. The original plan had been to launch all of the balloons from Scotland but the weather conditions soon ruled out that idea. In addition, it was further away from Russia than any of the mainland locations. Nevertheless, between August and October 1955, 131 American personnel, including five civilians, arrived at Evanton, together with enough equipment and material for 500 balloon launches. The equipment arrived by sea to the port at nearby Invergordon, the local population never witnessing anything like it, with trucks arriving and departing at all hours. Local residents were told that the project involved studying meteorological phenomenon. The same cover story was given to the Admiralty, who had allowed the RAF to take over the site. Senior air force officers were the only British personnel who knew what the Americans were actually doing at Evanton. Neither the Americans nor the UK Government wanted the project to become common knowledge. They did not want the Russians knowing what they were doing, wishing to avoid potential political fallout if it had become known that the Americans were sending “spy balloons” out over the Soviet Union from Scotland. Balloons, secret military projects, cover stories and locals kept in the dark: it all sounds like a rather familiar story.
The abandoned airfield of RAF Evanton, 12 miles northwest of Inverness, Scotland, home of a top secret reconnaissance balloon project in 1955.
© Claire Pegrum via Geograph.org.uk and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
The operation did not run smoothly, as the planned start date for launches was pushed back by a month to early January 1956. By 4th February only 60 had been successfully launched. The UK Government’s ban on balloon flights over East Germany terminated the project, as the winds only allowed for more northerly flying routes on very few days. By 6th February 1956, the date the project ended at Evanton, 103 balloons had been launched and 43 had failed, most ending up in nearby farmers’ fields or in the Cromarty Firth. Just one of the 103 had successfully overflown the Soviet Union and collected over the Pacific, the camera taking 1,006 shots. Launches from other sites did not fare much better. Although the mission altitude was believed to be well over 50,000 feet, Russian pilots discovered that the balloons descended to lower levels in the cool night air. Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17 Fresco and MiG-19 Farmer interceptors could reach them at about 50,000 feet, their pilots dispatching them with cannon fire.
However, the history of “Detachment 4” has an even closer parallel with Roswell when the tale of a local farmer is included in the story, and you can see where this is going, can’t you? In July 1962, “Mac” Brazel – sorry, Donald McKenzie, a shepherd living near Ardgay (pronounced “Ard-guy”), about 11 miles due north of Evanton, discovered a significant amount of metallic debris with strange writing on it, lying in a remote area of the hills south-west of the village. Believing that it was a satellite, maybe one of the Russian Sputniks that had been launched in 1957 and 1958, McKenzie reported his find to the local police station, but scepticism prevailed and there was no investigation for about three months. The shepherd simply left the strange debris in place.
In October 1962, the RAF Kinloss Mountain Rescue Unit was dispatched to the site to find the wreckage found by the shepherd. Some bore Russian and possibly Chinese writing, plus “cartoons” informing the finder that a reward would be given for safe return of the wreckage. Donald McKenzie’s report of a Russian satellite now appeared more credible. Had a Sputnik, or a similar Soviet spacecraft, come down in the Highlands of Scotland? The RAF Mountain Rescue Unit believed so, based on the type of debris they found. According to Frank Card’s 1993 book Whensoever, 50 Years of the RAF Mountain Rescue Service 1943-1993, the four man team from Kinloss were fairly sure that they had found a Russian spacecraft.
“At the reported spot was this strange object. It had obviously been there some time, and important items seemed to have been removed…. To RAF eyes, the engineering seemed crude. There was what appeared to be a camera port with thick glass, and some sort of camera. No-one was told or was even allowed to speculate that the object was a spacecraft, but the brass recovery plate gave the game away.”
The plate displayed a series of etched “cartoons”, basically informing the finder that a reward would be given for notifying the authorities of its existence. The wreckage was mainly comprised of a large metal box, big enough to fit a man inside, although no body was found at the site. However, none of the pieces displayed any scorch or burn marks associated with atmospheric re-entry. The wreckage proved to be a complete mystery, The team returned to Kinloss with some of the electronics found at the site, and the Inspectorate Office at the base made enquiries, but they did not get very far. They were told in no uncertain terms that they had “no need to know”. Even as late as 2012, the Ministry of Defence was claiming ignorance about the whole incident, stating that it did not hold records from that time and therefore could not make any comments about the claims.
Although unproven, it is likely that what the shepherd found back in 1962 was one of the “Weapons System 119L” gondolas. It is likely that the Americans had tracked the balloon as it drifted off course, and had retrieved anything that could have betrayed its true purpose, leaving the remaining debris behind to maintain the meteorological project cover story. Given the amount of secrecy that surrounded the entire project, it is no wonder that enquiries from Kinloss went nowhere. Preserving the secret would have been the priority, six years after the operation was shut down. However, the denials in 2012 are more difficult to explain, given that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist for more than 20 years. Perhaps old habits simply die hard.
Conclusions – What would Britain have done?
Although spread over various events, the actions that British authorities took in the t above incidents cover most of the elements of the Roswell “legend”. It is probably fair to claim that, if an off-world vehicle had crashed on the sparsely-populated moors near the village of Rosewell, south of Edinburgh, at the start of July 1947, a similar large-scale military recovery operation, together with a thorough evaluation of the craft at a secret location, would have taken place. A plausible cover story, possibly involving a crashed RAF aircraft, could have been released. The hills in southern Scotland had their fair share of wartime aeroplane wrecks: another one would not have seemed out of place, as incidents still occurred in the aftermath of WW2. However, an off course meteorological balloon would have also probably sufficed. A lingering sense of duty and patriotism, backed up by vague references to the threat posed by the Soviet Union or invoking the Official Secrets Act, would have been enough to “put the frighteners on” for most servicemen, plus the handful of local residents who may have been close enough to witness what really occurred.
Would there have been a British equivalent of Major Jesse Marcel and Sheridan Cavitt, or Colonel “Butch” Blanchard and General Roger Ramey? Could the story have been buried for thirty years before veteran UK UFO researcher Timothy Good had a chance meeting with someone who knew about the crash? One would like to think so, but would a UK Roswell have captured the imagination and interest of Ufologists around the world? That’s a question for someone else to answer…..
