POLICE officers in North Devon saw a UFO which led to military fears about national defence, documents just disclosed by the National Archives reveal.

The archives contain a report supplied to the Ministry of Defence by the Devon UFO Research Organisation (Duforo), which details reports of UFOs in the skies over the West County and Wales in the early hours of a spring morning 16 years ago.

Duforo collated information from a variety of sources, including the police, the MoD, and UFO enthusiasts.

The report states that Duforo received a phone call from a police sergeant in Bodmin at 2.20am on March 31, 1993, saying that an hour earlier, while driving towards Dobwalls on the A38, he had seen two very bright objects about 2,000 feet in the air.

The report goes on: "Knowing the night sky fairly well he immediately realised that they were not stars and did not conform to any known aircraft or their navigation lights.

"At this point he stopped his patrol car and got out. He watched the objects for a few seconds and was amazed to see them suddenly start to ascend at a fairly fast rate of knots."

He said the lights then moved in an arc over him and disappeared, leaving vapour-like trails.

The sergeant said several other officers had made similar reports to the police control room in Exeter.

Duforo was then put in touch with a sergeant and police constable who had been on duty near Lynton on the same morning.

The report states: "They noticed two very bright lights approaching from the north across the Bristol Channel. Stopping their patrol car they watched as the lights drew nearer to them."

They also noticed a smaller third light between the other two lights. The sergeant got the impression the three lights were attached to one large object, which he could not make out.

Both officers saw two vapour-like trails, although they were more like "beams of light".

It later emerged, the report claims, that the night before there had been other weird sightings, including in North Devon.

The mystery appeared to have been solved when it was revealed that a Russian rocket, that had put a radio satellite called Cosmos 2238 into orbit, had been re-entering the Earth's atmosphere at around that time.

But, as the MoD conceded, the majority of the sightings did not tally with the timing of the rocket.

Strange unexplained lights, apparently attached to an aircraft, were seen by at least 70 people and many of the statements were from police officers and military personnel.

Some reports spoke of a large object moving at slow speed making a humming sound. Nothing unusual was found on radar recordings.

There was talk in Parliament and the press at the time of the US Government testing an experimental aircraft called Aurora in the UK.

The British Government denied this was happening.

But the archives just released contain a restricted MoD minute from April 21, 1993, which states that the sightings seen on March 31 were "highly unusual" because there was no obvious explanation for the large number of similar and reliable accounts.

The MoD minute concludes: "In summary, there would seem to be considerable evidence that a UFO of unknown origin has been operating over the UK.

"Given recent speculation about Aurora by both media and MPs, I am not sure that this is something we should necessarily let lie, although equally there would seem to be little else we can do."

Another minute states that the UFO was of "considerable defence significance".

The names of those who saw the UFOs have been blacked out of the documents.

● The

Journal

would like to hear from the police officers who saw this UFO. You can phone 01271 347430 or e-mail awilshaw@c-dm.co.uk