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Air 2/18871: Letter from Air Commodore A. N. Davis to Charles F. Lockwood, 17 March 1972
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[FULL TEXT]
From: Mr A N Davis DSO DFC
S4(Air)
AF/CX 38/67/S4f(Air)
17 March 1972
Mr Charles F Lockwood
5 The Ridgeway
Farnsfield
Newark
Notts
Thank you for your letter of 21 February addressed to Miss Jamieson. In her temporary absence on leave I have gone through your three letters (starting with the one of 25 January addressed to the Minister of Defence) and Miss Jamieson's replies.
I appreciate your concern over the handling of UFO reports but I am not convinced that any of your proposals would add significantly to our knowledge of the UFO phenomenon. Our own experience supports the conclusions of the Condon Report (an exhaustive study of UFOs by the University of Colorado) in 1968-69 that further extensive study of UFOs was not justified in the expectation that scientific knowledge would be advanced thereby. We therefore continue to examine UFO reports as part of normal staff functions for any possible defence implications, but we do not pursue our investigations where insufficient data is given because further public expenditure on suvh investigations would not be justified.
May I deal briefly with the various proposals made in your three letters? Taking them seriatim -
You suggest that the UFO
organisation to which you belong should set aside funds
for radar development and should put forward a new
photographic technique which you have thought out. It is
not for me to suggest how private funds should be spent,
but I would remind you that very large sums are being
spent by public companies and by government research on
development of radar and to a lesser extent on
photographic techniques, and technological progress in
both these fields has been enormous.
That we should seek out a
scientific body to pursue investigations into unexplained
UFO reports. Again I would refer to the conclusions of
the Condon Report mentioned above.
That the public relations
of the Ministry of Defence are at fault in their
inadequate explanations ot the public. I am sorry if this
is so; this branch, consisting of Miss Jamieson and
myself, is responsible for coordinating action taken on
UFO reports and dealing with correspondence with members
of the public. But we have many other responsibilities,
quite unconnected with UFOs, and we do at times receive a
flood of letters concerning UFOs, most of them repeating
ideas which have oreviously been considered by Ministers
and rejected on the grounds of unjustifiable expenditure.
At times we may deal with suggestions too briefly, but I
am now answering all your points in full.
That it is logically
contradictory to say that the unexplained reports were no
different in kind from those for which a simple
explanation was found. Nearly all unexplained reports are
lacking in some essential data - such as the time and
place of the incident. Hense although we may strongly
suspect, from the description, that they relate to an
aircraft, balloon, satellite or other ordinary event, we
cannot positively identify the object observed, and the
report remains unexplained.
That we have published no
explanation of the Lakenheath incident of 1956. Our
detailed UFO reports going back before 1962 have been
destroyed but if there had been any evidence to indicate
the existence of an unidentified but real flying object (and
not just an anomalous radar echo) it would of course have
been retained and investigated in great depth. I was
airborne myself at the time in a Venom Night Fighter from
Coltishall, and was vectored on to a suspected UFO but
made no radar contact and found myself chasing a star.
such things as the FSR report on Brazilian sightings over a period of two years up to October 1971. This is a good example of a report which is not worth further investigation. It is totally unspecific as to place, date or circumstances, and happened a long time ago. We have no intention of wasting tax payers money on trying to get further evidence of such South American will-o'-the-wisps.