Interview with Squadron Leader Victor Mitchell. RAF (Ops) Ground Environment.
October 6, 2002. Southampton

VM: Vic Mitchell; DC: Dave Clarke; AR: Andy Roberts

VM: My name is Victor David Mitchell. I am now 67 years old. I joined the Royal Air Force in 1951, to be precise on the 24^th April, 1951 and I joined No 6 Radio School at Cranwell as an aircraft apprentice and spent three years learning the trade of ground radar fitter. After the 3 years I was sent on to work in the real man's world, starting with RAF Chigwell, which is in Essex, I worked for a number of years on the ground radar systems specifically for the airfields. I dealt with AN/CPN 4, ACR 7, AR1s and all the usual airfield control radars. The job was to maintain them, to strip down and repair or to act as an emergency servicing agent, where you would rush off out to an airfield where they had broken down and get them back on the air again. Subsequent to the work on ACR 7s and MPN 11s and CPN 4s I went on a course to do the radar bomb score units, prior to going to Christmas Island, short term to Christmas Island, back to UK, more navigation equipment and then posted to Henlow. At Henlow I started getting involved in the Vast Convoys. Now these would be fairly heavy radar systems towed around on vehicles, used in the Air Defence world as opposed to the air traffic world, Type 13-14-15, the Convoy vehicles that went with them. Thereafter to Singapore in 1964 where I was doing exactly the same job, built up the servicing of the defence radars that were in the Far East and this meant that I travelled Penang down Borneo, Vietnam and all the way around the place. In 66 I came back from Singapore and went on a Commissioning course at Henlow and strange as it may seem I went from Ground Radar to Fighter Controller. The reason why I went for Fighter Controller was they weren't looking for people with my practical background. You had to have a university education in order to become commissioned in those days. So I became a Fighter Controller in 1966. I was sent to RAF Bawdsey, the home of radar, to study the black art of putting one fighter aircraft behind another fighter aircraft and thereafter onto the operational side of ensuring that we intercepted all the unknown aircraft that were around. We might want to talk about 'unknowns' later on. Because it is a specific term which needs to be specified, because the word is used out of context in a lot of cases. So there you would go down the due process, you would be on a squadron and you would sit and await the call, something would have been seen on the radar by the operations guys, they would have reported it up the chain, there had been a decision to scramble a Lightning or a Phantom or whatever it was from whatever airfield to go up and intercept a particular target. I was allocated in those early days as the Fighter Controller and I would go with an assistant down to a small cabin where we had a radar display, a search display and another display by the side of it which is a height-finder display. The search radar detected the aircraft, the aircraft's position was identified to you, your assistant took heights on it all the time. So therefore you could go through the whole process of putting your fighter in the best position to use his onboard weapon systems. Here again there are a number of questions regarding terminology. I was reading in one of the pieces you gave me 'gun's tied' and all that sort of nonsense, well it doesn't happen that way...what you would normally get, having put a pilot in a position, they would call 'Contact' which means immediate they have got it on their radar system, they can see it or see it visually and on the radar. They would then lock onto the aircraft with whatever weapon's system they had got and then they would call 'Judy' which meant they didn't need anymore help, you kept quiet and let them carry on with it, and then they had carried out the interception they would call 'Splash' and the splash implied they had fired, hit the target, and then were off again...so that's the terminology that was used from 66 onwards, and it's not much different from what had been used in the past.

AR: Once the pilot had called 'Judy' could the ground control override that, or was it totally the pilot's show from then on?

VM: It would not be accepted if you interfered. You would have to have had a very, very good reason to interfere on the pure operational task of intercepting a specific target, that's down to him. He's got a much better weapons system than you. The only time you would say anything would be if he was being approached or the whole arrangement was going close to another target, another aircraft, if it was a dangerous situation then obviously you step in and tell them where there's a stranger to your right, ten degrees or whatever. You wouldn't normally interfere with them. They would be allowed to get on because their weapons system is much more precise than yours. So they would carry on, complete the interception, and let's assume this was a complete one off, and return to base. You would vector them back to the base and see them all the way down, and hand them over to the GCA, that's the equipment on the ground at the airfield. They would take them on, land them and that would be it. Now important factors, and I note there wasn't much said about the actions to record these things . . . Recording, now this is quite an important part because the actions taken by the ground control staff would be that if a fighter aircraft was scrambled there would be what they call a Chief Controller's Logbook, the logbook in which he recognises everything which is done . . .

DC: Which is what is missing in the [Lakenheath-Bentwaters] case . . .

M: Absolutely. Absolutely. So the Chief Controller's logbook is the most important thing. It gives times, it gives what was scrambled, what the call signs were, what the target was etc. The intercept controller didn't necessarily keep a logbook as such; when the interception was over he would go and talk with the Chief Controller so that any important information was passed to the Chief Controller for him to add into his logbook...so primarily the Chief Controller's logbook was the major factor in any situation. Now, in the latish 50s, there was a system on the ROTOR sites known as the PDU or Photographic Display Unit . . . now that is the sort of thing one would want to get one's hands on if one could because it was nothing more than a mechanism to record each revolution of the radar display. One 15 second bite would be photographed, processed and then displayed on the reverse side of a piece of plastic sheeting. So if we had a PDU down here the last 15 seconds worth of radar information would be shown up there - well you've seen the photographs of people sitting round looking at these, that happens. Now that piece of equipment was quite important for the following reason that whenever there was an air miss incident they would have the film and people would be lying all over the top of it saying 'is that it there . . . no he was there...' They would be looking at historic information, but it was the best way there was of recording actual radar information. Running parallel with that would have been the voice recording systems, they had 11-track voice recorders and everything had to be recorded for air safety purposes. So that was about the only sort of recording that was ever done. If it was a for-real incident normally there would be a report sent to HQ, I'm talking now in the 60s but I see no reason why it would have been different in the earlier days, a report would be sent to HQ 11 Group, 11 Group would be the Fighter Command centre, and in later years it would also go to the Air Defence Operations Centre, Strike Command, that's more recent. Every interception we did in Scotland of course was for real. We were intercepting Bear, Bison and that sort of things. There was always a report on when you intercepted it, how, what the salient features were of the aircraft from the ground point of view, what route was it taking, and that was reported down. There was a form of reporting system, but it wasn't the real accurate thing that you' re looking for . . .

DC: It seems that none of the material has survived.

VM: I'm sure you're right. Have you spoken to anyone at Neatishead?

DC: Yes and they say nothing from that era has survived, try the MOD! And they say we've got nothing, have you tried Neatishead?

VM: Right. I tell you why, because not so long ago somebody came across a 16mil film of the apprentices in 1961 at Cranwell on which I appear you see, so somewhere along the line there are these pieces of information which could prove relevant. One of the problems there is going to be with PDU film of course is that there were masses and masses of it, there really was. There is a radar element at Henlow...there's a chap called Vic Ludlow. He seems to have lots of bits and pieces, Type 13 and 14 equipment. He may well be in a position to give you some advice of where to look . . . but it is fairly unlikely that you will come across anything and if you do it will not be specific within the time frame you are talking about.

DC: It seems even the reports have not survived.

VM: The only thing that is likely to have survived are fighter pilot's logbooks

DC: They have but only the monthly squadron reports, which are largely useless.

VM: They don't go into detail about a specific incident, no they don't.

DC: So this is what you were involved in from what period?

VM: I'm talking now from 66 onward to 70 I was doing that, I was also instructing at the School for Fighter Control and then going on to squadrons. In the early, 1970, there was a post down at RSRE Malvern open which was an operational liaison post. They were developing down there a number of new style systems and they wanted an operators input because they were then talking about things like the new Air Defence radar system which was already in place by then. My job was to go down and provide operational advice on what was happening and what was needed. I will give you an example, the engineers wanted to have an all singing and all dancing system, and we're now talking about automatic tracking of radar . . . that when you get a radar return in, automatically it is analysed into its individual parts. They use track and they identify it as being a track in a position, and they put a large circle of area around that, where will the next one be. It's automatic tracking. But the problem with this of course, is that if you take that track you don't know where the devil it is going so you have to have another one to follow on and now you start refining it down, what direction, is it associated with that, etc etc it goes on through this whole process. The only difficulty with systems like this is when you receive a return from an aircraft, that return is made up of, it's not a single blob, it's a return of a number of individual strikes. As the radar passes around through the microphone, and depending upon how many pulses are going out, you get a series of little splodges. Those splodges through the eye seem to be one return. To the electronic system they count those and there is a minimum and maximum number. The problem with the minimum maximum number is how do you determine how many strikes you want? If the aircraft is moving along and its moving alongside another one, you have got twice the number of strikes that you should have, and the system says: 'That can't be an aircraft' and removes it! Now I have actually seen this happen. We did a trial up at Bawdsey many years ago. So we are talking now about the modern era of systems when they are actually locking onto and tracking radars . . . that was one of the inputs I had to advise them how we as individuals in the Fighter Control world would use a radar system in its automatic, auto-tracking mode. They wanted to have masses and masses of track history, now to take out masses of track history of course you end up needing masses and masses of storage space and you just can't deal with it. So we got round to, on my advice, having limited track history which was decaying in nature because as you watch an aircraft passing across a normal unprocessed radar picture you leave a response there. You get a nice bright response as the radar goes through it. Next one round through it 's moved on a bit, this response has started to die because of the phosphorescence and afterglow and everything so you actually get a nice little track which gives you a jolly good indication . . . the controllers use it, obviously, to determine where this guy is going, what speed is he going at, how fast is he going, there's a whole range of basic information that you drag out from a track. So in the new world where this is been electronic, you still want this information because the purpose of tracking a target is going to depend very much on the programmes that are written in and you can't believe the programmes because they are saying there has got to be so many strikes, it's got to be going in that direction . . .

DC: So before this electronic stage it was entirely down to human beings

VM: It was that computer there [points to head], absolutely right.

DC: So what year are we talking that there was this change . . .

VM: I'm talking 1970 . . . we were looking at the new future air defence radar systems for the UK, I was looking at underground sensor systems for Northern Ireland, methods of catching people walking around, countermeasures for anti-radar missiles, how you decoy a missile that is locked onto your radar, how do you decoy it away from your radar and in what direction do you decoy it away...so these were the sort of areas I must have spent 3 years down there, but it was all operationally associated. Then they sent me to Buchan to do operation duties again before they moved me from there. I was at Buchan from 1972-73, but the job there was front line again, we were intercepting the Soviets through the Iceland-Faroe gap using the old-style radar, the analogue radar, the Type 80 and FPS-6, was the height-finder, so you were back to doing the job you had always done, using your eyes and using your brains, knowledge and experience to follow things around.

DC: You mention in your letter two or three incidents at Buchan where you were asked to do a reconstruction involving something that may have been an 'unknown'...

VM: Yes, these will have been anything that happened where you had a friendly aircraft involved in near misses with civilian aircraft or even a potentially hostile aircraft. You would have to go down and find out, find the aircraft on the PDU, watch it go forward, tie it in with the recordings. It was a fairly hairy business quite honestly. I don't recall any UFO incidents, although hang on a minute, if memory serves me there was one occasion where we were asked to look but the trouble is there we were always involved in keeping a 24 hour watch and there were certain special aircraft that used to go out and back in again and quite often you would get something coming out, climbing up going quite quick in the general direction of NE and then it would be gone from sight. There were occasions when they were looked at, but I can't recall actually having to look for a UFO.

DC: You mean your attention would be focused on the Russians . . .

VM: Well, I think this is the crux of the whole problem as far as people are concerned. If you are using a radar display, irrespective of what type, whether it be the old Type 80 or the new type, you are going to be looking at a certain area and your mind is saying 'ok that's my aircraft coming out from Leuchars...there's a pair of them I can see there.' You identify them by getting them to transmit secondary radar, 'squawk 23456' or whatever it is, so you identify them. You are now looking at those aircraft, but you are also looking at a wider area of probably about 30 miles around them because what you have to be careful of obviously are air routes, airliners, other aircraft moving in and out . . . there have been incidents up in that part of the world. So you are watching this general area. Now, if something were to appear as you were doing an operational task, if something were to appear somewhere down here you might see it subconsciously. But unless it appeared again and its movement was in a direction of conflict with your aircraft you are not going to worry about it. If it\rquote s going to move in conflict with your aircraft you are now going to start paying attention to it, and you are going to watch what speed is it doing, and should I be telling my guys anything about this, should I be moving anything around. So, your mind is concentrated totally on that small 30 mile area of intercepting that one with that one. Now the other side of the house were the guys who used to sit down on a radar display and look for aircraft that should not be there. Because whenever anyone came into UK airspace they were required by law to identify themselves with an IFF coding. Anything that came in and didn t have an IFF coding on it or it had an IFF coding which wasnt recognised, then the first thing that would be done would be to alert the Battle Flight, or as they called it the QRA, Quick Reaction Alert. The QRA guys would be alerted and they would sit at cockpit readiness and if you could not identify it and the Chief Controller and Master Controller was concerned about it off they would go, and you would put it in and you would look at it and get the answer to it. But again under those situations you are still only looking at a fairly short area plus which you have got to remember too the speed was always the important factor. If somethings just poddling along it can be a chopper. You get to know your radar and its performance. Anything going along below say 3,000 feet is going to be seen but it may not be seen because it could be in clutter from trees and all that sort of business...

DC: Well here we are touching on the 1956 incident, what was going on there seems to have gone on for a long time before someone decided to respond...

VM: Absolutely. [produces maps] These are two drawings showing the type of radar envelope that would be apparent with something like a Type 80 radar. The radar obviously works in 2 dimensions - a horizontal azimuthal direction, and in the azimuthal direction it has a very very narrow beam, the idea being that it can be used to highlight targets, so all your power is concentrated in that main beam. This is the search radar, and you are looking down on it, OK. This is a pencil beam which is sweeping around. Now, because we want to get as many aircraft as we can within that pencil beam its vertical parameter is quite large....this is the width piece, 1 degree beam width and up to 200,000 feet there. There is a burst of energy goes out and you get returns. Now you don't know where that is, because it could be low down it could be high up. But you can narrow it down because if you only see it low down then it has got to be close in because you normal radar range is around about 27 or 32 miles because you are then hit by the drop off of the earth characteristic. So anything up to, at low level, can well be seen within this distance, 27 miles, but also within this distance you have also got all the muck and everything, ground returns and everything like that, so you are in difficulties from day one.

DC: So something that was at low level you could only detect it, using one of these radars, within that small distance, ie 30 miles?

VM: Yes that's right because low level, the level is in relationship to the earth. So low level operations, and this is the thing that I looked at briefly...if you draw a map showing the distance between Neatishead, Bentwaters and Lakenheath, it is a roughly a triangle, about 60 miles. So whoever was at Neatishead is unlikely to have seen anything low level above Woodbridge or Bentwaters, and vice versa, they won't see it at Bentwaters, not at low level.

DC: That's interesting.

VM: Now the important point about what they did, and I can see this happening...that the airbase had a problem. They had seen something, something odd of course. They had scrambled, or they had told the GCI and GCI had scrambled something and went up to have a look at it. And it would be a sensible ploy to make sure that the person who had control over the fighter aircraft to put them in the right position would be the guy who had the best coverage. So if it is flying at low level around Bentwaters then it would be the GCA guy there who would have it...but there is no correlation between it all. It's concerning me that you are not going to be getting the full range of information that would be pertinent.

DC: That's what we always felt, that we were missing one vital piece of the jigsaw.

VM: If you look at the places involved: Neatishead, Lakenheath and Bentwaters. They are a triangle aren't they? [draws radius circles around then on map], so you can reckon low level for them is out to about there....to about there....so there is going to be movement in and out of those areas where if something is down over Bentwaters, it is probably better for Bentwaters to be dealing with it if it is at low level. From what I can see they are talking about 3-4,000 feet aren't they? So it's got to be local to them. These guys [GCI Neatishead] are unlikely to see it unless it pops up.

DC: Which might explain why Neatishead might have turned over control of the aircraft to the GCA at Lakenheath?

VM: Yes, absolutely. The GCA guys knew they were being buzzed, and had actually seen something, and the Neatishead controller who was responsible for scrambling the aircraft can't see anything. He would say to them, right OK, get them airborne, put them in the right direction, call Woodbridge or Bentwaters or wherever it is. Then Bentwaters would get hold of them and put them in the right direction. 3 or 4,000 feet, my honest opinion is from the map that they are not going to see much in that area there, and certainly Neatishead is unlikely to see if it's overhead there [pointing to map] . . . Neatishead, if you take 60 miles down here you could probably see something at 9 or 10,000 feet. Because this is the crucial bit, because you are hugging the earth's crust out to about 27 to 33 miles. So herein lies the problem. Common sense says you pass it over to the guy with the best system. Either the pilot or the GCA guy depending upon what's been seen. Now you may well argue that here another problem arises because you start looking at the radar performance of Neatishead, and it is going to be entirely different to the radar performance of the CPN-4. The CPN-4 has a search radar on board, it is revving at about 8 revs per minute, the Neatishead guy would be going round at 4 per minute as he is looking at long distance, whereas the GCA is looking at about 60 miles. They are in the same radar spectrum band. When you come to questions about could this have been anomalous propagation or could this be interference from another radars, I would say no. Because if this was interference from other radars what you would see, as your radar passed through the direction of the emission of the other one you would see little lines running all the way across, that's the interference. It is unlikely that what the guys saw there was that. Erm, I do not believe to answer the question about angels, that it was angels. Angels as far as I am aware are ionised pockets of air. They normally occur, or are most prevalent, early in the morning or early in the evening and they tend to drift on the winds, in other words like a load of tadpoles rushing across. Those are angels. Now, you can argue, I think you may want to look in greater detail at the propagation. The transmission of a radar signal out, and striking the moon. [point to drawing] . . . you make a transmission here, and the radar pulse will travel out into space; the measuring system that you have got will receive the returns from objects that you have got within this time frame, but this pulse is still carrying on, it's still keeping going. So you send out the next pulse, and the same thing happens. So you have now got two pulses going out into space. It's perfectly reasonable if the moon is low, or high for that matter, that at some stage some return energy would displayed from the moon itself, but it wouldn't be displayed there, it would be displayed down here. So there would be no correlation between that pulse that went out there and the return that comes up there. So it would be a spurious return. However, looking at what these guys saw, I cannot conceive that that was the answer to it because if it were, it would follow the normal pattern of a return. It might be a bit more blodgy, but it would follow that sort of pattern. Plus there is evidence there that says this thing moved around. So, of the things they suggest that is a possibility but I don' t think it would do because if you had sequential pulses going out and coming back in they would appear on sequential time bases all the way down, and it may well be that they would move around. But I think that anyone who with knowledge of the use of the radar system. . . .

DC: What about this condition where you have got trapping and ducting of radar signals so that you are seeing things many miles away. . . .

VM: Yes, absolutely right. Your wave is bent down and all that. I have only seen it once, and I cannot recall in detail, but I don't think it would be...it's the same sort of philosophy as the moon. You know, you bend the beam down and its trapped, and it goes out and it goes on and on and on and picks up the Ural mountains and throws it back in your face!

DC: But perhaps it is that very rarity! So that something like that happens and causes a case like this, which when looked at years later can't be explained, but you don't know everything about the conditions at the time....

VM: Absolutely. You haven't got the photographic evidence or anything else either.

DC: So we will never know?

VM: No. I don' think there is any way of knowing it at all. A summary of my feeling is that those guys saw something. I'm fairly happy with what they said, and what they picked up that something occurred which they had not normally, or hadn't experienced before. You have only got to look a few years later at the Rendlesham incidents. Rendlesham is not too far away is it? You may well argue that the Americans have been messing around with things, I don't know. There is a question in my mind as to what was going on in that time-frame that we were doing, or that we and the Americans were doing. It is unlikely that they would have advised the Air Defence system if they were doing experimental operations. Unlikely. They were very very cagey about Black Bird and people like that zooming out. They would just say, here's a special going out . . .

DC: At the time of the 56 incident was the time the U2 was based there . . . .

VM: That's right. So, what do you say? I don't think you can dispute the honest reporting of these guys. I can' t suggest anything specific to you that could point you in any one direction, because the anomalous propagation is there, third or fourth return from the moon is a possibility, but I think that that would become self evident. If you are seeing the merging of blobs of light and going away, I don't know, then there are the Perseids, but the Perseid wouldn't be applicable to this. They go in straight lines. Shhh, straight across no messing around. If it was any other atmospheric condition that we are aware of that would be a straight line trajectory, and it would be very, very obvious. Balloons? Well I don't know. There are reports in there of nearly 4,000 miles per hour. Going back to the other point, you get something moving at 4K across your radar, it's going to blip so fast across there you are not even going to look at it. Or you might see one, and you quite often get a spurious return coming up. So you are not going to worry about it, you are only going to worry about it if it comes again...

DC: Was it possible to pick up meteors up on radar?

VM: I've never seen one. But then I haven't been looking for them!

DC: But these events were right at the height of a shower, the Perseids.

VM: Yes it was.

DC: And certainly when the people at Bentwaters became aware that something was being tracked, they went outside and saw shooting stars...

VM: That's right, yes. But they wouldn't manoeuvre. And I get the impression from what's been written in there that this thing did manoeuvre around. One time it was in front, and then it was behind.

DC: It seems odd to me too that this began happening at 9.30 in the evening and yet it wasn't until 2 am in the morning that aircraft were scrambled to have a look...

VM: Again it comes back down to the operational function of the air defence system. The air defence system has a number of radar displays, circular displays at which people sit. And their job is to look for things. And they are normally used to looking at aircraft performing a directional track at a certain speed or within a range of speeds. If something is doing that, and you are seeing a normal track, who is to say it isn't a UFO, if such things exist? You see? Who is to say it isn't? If something appears as a normal track and then stops and doesn't move, it would be dismissed because it would be ground clutter.

DC: And if it was computerised, would it be removed from the display?

VM: Well, absolutely, if you have got Moving Target Indication (MTI), you have got Circular Polarisation, designed to cut out returns from raindrops, you have got all these features. . . . now think about the theoretical shape of a UFO. Here is an ideal large raindrop, which Circular Polarisation says, piss off you, we don't want you! [laughter] MTI, the same philosophy is the same thing, it allows a moving target to pass through a dense area of clutter and be displayed. It removes the clutter from it. But what are the implications if something is actually moving slowly or stopping and moving slowly . . . how long does it take, because what you do with MTI is you compare successive blocks of returns...and has it moved on, or is it still there, and you cancel out those that are still there. But it is extremely difficult at this stage . . . I mean were we back now in 1956 applying these sorts of philosophies and thoughts to it, then you could probably come up with a fairly reasonable answer, but it really is difficult.

DC: If you can put yourself in the position of someone at Fighter Command at the time, looking at all the information from Neatishead and the fighters...

VM: Well let's put yourself in the position of the Air Defence Commander or his operational chap who was sitting there at the time. Let me just talk about the live QRA guys who are armed up to go. The nudge to the Air Defence operations commander would be from a unit. They would have seen something down there, and they would have thought, perhaps, we are getting these reports in from a variety of stations, we ought to go and really do something. So he would phone him sitting up in his bunker, now him in his bunker here probably had a PDU display. But instead of radar signals being on there would be little blocks, a la 1940 Fighter Command room, and they would be moving these around with little arrows on it...so they would be doing that sort of thing. And all they would be doing is taking the picture on the radar at Neatishead and talking it through to the headquarters, and the girls there would be putting on the plaques. The question as to whether or not that particular incident was reported back up the line comes back to this thing [points to map] - if it was seen by them, and them, and not by them, these guys aren't going to report it. If they get reports of aircraft buzzing the area he is not going to go too quickly to the air commander and say shall I launch? So things could have been happening earlier on in the evening and he sat there and he thought 'well, it could be anything really.' Wait until you start getting verbals from the airfields...

DC: Well he did say he didn't see anything until they rang him, and that's when he started looking....

VM: That's right. If he did that, it's unlikely that he would have seen anything, because of the very reason of the distance he was looking.

DC: It begins to make sense now that you explain it like that.

VM: If the guys at the airfield are so insistent about it, he is going to think, well I'm going to cover my arse on this one, so he would phone the air defence commander say say we are having some problems here I think we should launch.

DC: That would be the Sector Commander he would call?

VM: The Sector Commander, yes. Or 11 Group commander. Because the commander has the authority to launch the weapons. They come under his control. He authorises them, the controller at Neatishead would launch them, scramble the QRA, and they would come under his control for the purposes of interception. As we said earlier, if he hasn't got the cover the sensible thing is to say call Lakenheath, or call Woodbridge.

DC: Which is what seems to have happened even though he [Freddie] doesn't remember that, he seems to think he was still in control of this.

VM: Well he would have been in overall control, you see because you see the radar systems that were employed they designed as, you see this was a Control and Reporting System....

DC: Well also they didn't have height-finders, at the airbases, so he must have been supplying the height information?

VM: Now it is possible that he might have seen them on height-finder. Because a height finder is nothing more than these [points to radar diagrams] turned through 90 degrees...right? So this thing is now looking down, it's got quite a wide coverage, and it\rquote s looking along, so it could well be that they could have got some height finding information, but who is to say? Because the height finder, you move it around like this, so they would not be necessarily a consistent tracking on it.

DC: It's interesting but doesn't take us any nearer finding out what it was.

VM: Personally I don't see you ever getting an answer to it. I'll be quite honest with you. I think we do see things, either you don't want to go any further with it because you know you will be black-balled or what have you, and things that are reported aren't reported quite correctly through the appropriate intelligence system and all the way down the line, but they tend to say 'well we'll put this down to anomalous propagation' , you see?

DC: You mentioned the Rendlesham incident. How aware are you of what happened there...was that when you were serving?

VM: No, I can't remember where I was when it happened, to be honest with you. But I did see the TV story on it.

DC: It must have been shortly after you left that post, because it was Jack Badcock who is named on the memos that have been released. He said he looked at the radars at the relevant times but couldn't see anything.

VM: Right. Well, why couldn't he see anything on radar at the relevant time? I suppose we ought to talk about that, didn't we really. As I said earlier it seems to me that there was no reason why you cannot see a UFO on radar if you know that it is a UFO. The great difficulty that one is faced with is, are you likely to get a radar return from a UFO? Now, I think the New Zealand incident was one where they had got both ground radar and guys on board the aircraft, and everyone had seen it. The UFO under those circumstance was I believe flying fairly slowly in parallel with the aircraft, so it would have been performing a normal sort of tracking event. Now, if the UFO as we call, was travelling at a far greater rate, it is unlikely that the aircrew would have seen it. It is unlikely that the ground radar would have seen it because they wouldn't be correlating anything other than their own track. As I said right at the beginning they would be only looking at that one particular track. If the aircrew saw it and it was moving at 4,000 mph they might see a streak go past them or whatever they would see. So we come back down to the question of why are we not seeing more of these? Why are we not recording more of these? I think that the difficulty lies in the shape of these items - they are almost of a shape which reflects any incident radar wave in many many directions. It's the B1 bomber, the stealth philosophy, the stealth ships you've got, you can't see them on radar, because any return that you've got coming back is so miniscule. And be mindful these days that there is...we have gone away from the old eyeball, brainbox and seeing it on an analogue radar to a much more sophisticated way of doing things. Now whereas yesteryear you would be able to see a number of individual strikes on a return from an aircraft, nowadays you don't see that because they're combined into one point of light, one track, one track position. The return that you would get from a radar which was subsequently processed and presented as a track, and getting that from a UFO may well not be a track for the simple reason that if the UFO is manoeuvring around and its ovoid shape, the returns that the returns that the basic radar is getting are going to be erratic. Remember earlier that I said you count the number of returns to decide whether it was a track. If the thing is moving from 2 to 10 and then back to 0 again in terms of each time it goes round you get 2 and then 10 returns and then you get nothing again, the tracking programme is going to say: 'bugger this, I can't hack it anymore,' and then throw it out. So you may well have a problem trying to track anything on modern radars because we have developed ourselves so much to be very sophisticated, have a nice blank screen and just aircraft on it, so that a lot of the information is in sub-clutter visibility, it is way down here, and we have removed it.

DC: So the computers are only looking for certain types of returns, that it recognises as typical of aircraft?

VM: Yes. Yes. Yes. The programmes...remember I said earlier about losing aircraft? Well we went on an experiment at Bawdsey when I was at RSRE Malvern we went up to Bawsdey, we took some plot extraction auto-tracking systems up there, and we sent a couple of Canberras into the North Sea and then asked them to come in flying at different distances behind one another and in echelon, and they got to a point where, I think it was about 3 and a half miles set by half a mile, and we lost the track completely. And the reason we lost it was because first of all the programme that we were using for tracking said that we can only have an aircraft return that is a quarter of a mile long, and it has got to be 300 yards wide. And here you have got two quarters, and 600 yards, theoretically. So the computer says: not interested mate, go away. Now that was very important to the system, because if you think about that and go one step further and say the intelligence guys from the Russkies can say well if we can go in this formation we can piss all over Britain without being caught. This is a bit jokey, but this is what happens. You lose the actual track because of the unnecessarily rigid criteria that you put on your tracking programme.

AR: So would this suggest that the powers that be are not interested in looking for anything that isn't conventional, even if they did or didn' t exist...they just have no facility for looking for them?

VM: I can't speak for what they are doing after I left. But generally speaking when I had been to Buchan and then to MoD and all over the place; when I went to MoD my job at Ops (GE) 2 was to look after current UK radar and overseas radar systems, and part and parcel of that, as a little carry-all, was UFOs. And the responsibility for UFOs was not to tip the bucket. I had to collect all the information, the reports that came in, and I always used to scan through them....

DC: Who sent you those reports?

VM: They originated from a variety of places. Police officers, police stations, members of the public reporting to police stations. Occasionally you would get reports from airfields, but generally speaking airfield reports would have gone up another road, they would have gone up to Air 2C or something like that...

DC: S4f (Air) or Sec AS 2?

VM: Yes, something like that. They would have gone up to that. Now we never spoke with them, which is stupid really. Absolutely stupid. But of course it was a here is my patch, don' t want you interfering in it philosophy. And if we find something we are going to keep it to ourselves. But if we find something we are not going to tell you because it would also make us look silly because we found it. It's a little bit sort of we know that they know that they know scenario. So you keep your head down...

DC: What year did you arrive in that posting at MoD?

VM: 1976 or 1977 I went there. And I was there until 81. So in that time frame there were about 350, 360 reports per year. On average it was one a day.

DC: Now I'm interested in who sent you those reports, did they come via the air force operations room?

VM: No, no. They came from a variety of places. They would come from army, mainly from police, some from the navy, at each station there is a UFO reporting procedure. So it would be normally people having reported something passing across the sky, right

DC: So you wouldn't get those reports via the Air Staff, Sec AS2?

VM: No no no. They would come directly to us. And what we would get was: a bright light seen down somewhere in southwest Cornwall, proceeding northeast towards the east coast. And you would look this up and get other reports crossing across there...and you could then correlate it with what Jack Badcock was doing. Jack worked with Fylingdales. Of course Fylingdales had access to all the bits of machinery that were floating around. And they could tell you - ah yes, its a rivet off a Soyuz, re-entered the atmosphere at so and so. That's the sort of thing they could do. And this thing came as a fiery ball, and that's what it was. So an awful lot of these you could say OK it's this time of year, or there is a naval exercise or there's an army exercise going on. There were one or two....I remember one from down in Wales somewhere that a person reported seeing a silver object in a field and people in suits....

AR: yes, in 1977, around Haverfordwest in Wales....

VM: Yes, that\rquote s right, Haverfordwest...these people in silver suits. That came up and you look at it and think, [laughs] the Welsh bloke has been chewing the onions again....

AR: Apparently that was a local roundtable man who was dressing up and having some fun walking around...

VM: oh yes...[laughs]

DC: But you do remember having that report?

VM: Oh yes!

DC: But what would you do with a report like that?

VM: Well this is the whole problem, you see. Do you remember me telling you about the incident of the lady from Andover? Well I picked that up after the event. I was reading through the file one day and it struck me particularly well qualified report on what had happened. And I thought, well perhaps I ought to ring this woman. So I did. I rang and spoke to her about it, and you know said this is who I am etc. She said well thank goodness that somebody is taking notice of it. Now when I finished chatting to her about it, she went through the whole process of how she had come off the slip-road on M3, going up the A34 etc, there lights, blue lights, spotlights, engine dying and everything. I went and saw an RAF Air Commodore, DD (Ops), and said to him look, I\rquote ve done this, and it does seem that we ought really to be looking at some of these things because there are lots of little events like this. And he said no he said, you leave it alone he said, you stick to your own job, we don't want you wasting your time on things like that. Now whether he meant don't waste your time or there is a parallel universe going on, there is another chapter going on...the thing was leave it alone. You do your job. And your job is to collate all this information and answer Parliamentary questions when they come down, so that we can say ' in this month we have had 72 reported incidents etc etc'.

AR: So if he was saying don't look any further because someone else is looking at them, how would they have knowledge of cases such as the one you have just talked about?

VM: I would need to look at the signals and look at the distribution within MoD. I mean this something you may be able to get at in files at the historic branches etc.

DC: We have seen some of those distribution lists...they seem to go to yourselves, Sec(AS)2 and DI55. Did you have any contact with them?

VM: No.

DC: None at all?

VM: No.

DC: Do you know what they did?

VM: No. This is typical isn'it? Don't share your information with anyone else because then they will know just as much as you if not more.

DC: But surely if they were doing some kind of investigation of their own, they would need to know what your input was in order to have all the information...

VM: If you\rquote ve read that book by that chap who came from one of those departments [Nick Pope]..well, he's got no fundamental radar experience whatsoever, but he's made a small fortune out of writing about it. But that would be the attitude that would prevail. They wouldn' t think of coming and talking to us. Or they may have done, divide the blighters up into little groups over here, never the twain shall meet, so we leave it alone. And if something comes up and we think it is necessary to bring these guys in, we will.

DC: Presumably when you moved to MoD Whitehall, this was the first time you had to deal with UFOs as part of your job?

VM: Yes.

DC: You arrive the first morning for the new job, were you briefed by the person who had been doing the job before you?

VM: No I think he had already left. So I sat down with a chap called Boddy, a Wing Commander. You see there were three of us working in an office, all Squadron Leaders. Jack Badcock, Bob Livingstone and myself. Each having our own division to deal with things. I looked after ground radar, UK overseas and maintenance of those. Bob looked after training and everything else and Jack looked after Fylingdales. We obviously exchanged information, moved around and picked up jobs as and when they came along. We reported to a Wing Commander. He reported to a Group Captain. Now one of those Group Captains was a chap called Neil Colvin, and I managed to track him down. So there are people around who may be able to answer the more important, overall management questions which I can't. It is unlikely that anything would come down, even to Wing Commander rank, if there was something going on. It would only be by innuendo...we don't want these guys messing around with that, or tell Mitchell to keep his nose out of that. We don't want him doing it. But this is all summise.

DC: But who told you how to deal with UFOs?

VM: It would have been a verbal briefing - we get these on a regular basis, the girls from the registry will bring them in for you in the file, you will look through them and you would look at them you see. So there was no direct list of duties to look at each particular report and deal with it in any way. What would have happened would probably have been that at some stage after a while there I would go in at some stage and ask, what are we doing with these? Should I not be making a list or doing something with them? And the answer would come back, well when we get Parliamentary questions we will pull the files out and deal with them then.

DC: How was it that you ended up dealing with Parliamentary questions, because if you listen to Nick Pope he says it was the Air Staff secretariat\rquote s responsibility to answer them...

VM: It probably was their answer. My job was to take the question that came down and write the paper in answer to the question. It then went through the politico organisation...the spin doctors. I would write the factual bits and pieces. It would go up through the Wing Commander, it was passed on. If I said it was black here, it could well be pink or yellow by the time it came out there! Clancarty was the big questioning individual at the time.

DC: This particular incident at the Winchester bypass, what do you remember about that specifically? What did the lady tell you?

VM: I would have found out about it because it happened before I arrived. So therefore it was one of my own reading-in functions. I can only imagine that what I would have done is, there was a UFO file that would have come in and I would have looked through this and thought 'well this is bloody interesting and it's down from where I come from.' You would read into it and it was purely by luck that you would pick it up, and you would have a natural interest because this area is full of cornfields and all these people were rushing around treading the corn down...

DC: This was before the corn circles started appearing, wasn't it?

VM: I know, I think they were getting a few bits and pieces even in those days, but they weren't widely reported. It was the lads out on a night out. But what I can remember about it when I spoke to her she said that she had been going off the sliproad, and I can't remember whether she was going north up the M3 or south down the M3, but she was taking the sliproad onto the A34 to go up the A34 to Andover and she said - and this is dodgy memory - but she said she experienced either two blue lights or one big bright light and she said that the ignition on her car faltered and the car switched off. And sometime later everything was alright and she drove off. Now that's all I can remember, I mean her actual report could be much more expansive than that, but that's all I can remember of what she told me. Because I went to the AOC, the Air Commodore, and said 'look, I feel that we really ought to be . . . if we are going to do this job we really ought to be looking at it.' And he said: 'It is not your area of responsibility. Don't do it again.'

DC: He wasn't happy that you had actually phoned this woman?

VM: No. He wasn't happy at all. Now, what you make of that I don't know. But I never ever phoned anyone after that because what happens if you do then somebody will go to the newspapers, you have the MoD onto you and then you're in trouble.

DC: Well that seems to have happened in this case, because the woman was later quoted as saying someone from the Government had called her demanding that she did not say anything about the sighting.

VM: That may not have been me then.

DC: Well it may well have been you, but that the story has been exaggerated subsequently....

VM: That's right.

DC: It must be the same case because the time frame is right - November 1976.

VM: The time frame is right, but it was prior to me being there but it was me probably doing read-ins. You see prior to going into a job like that if nobody briefs you you have got to read back and see what people have written on the notes, things like 'bloody crazy'....

DC: Yes, we have seen those [laughter].

VM: Rocket fin coming in, all those sort of things are there.

DC: She [Joyce Bowles] mentioned the silver suited spaceman, but her story is exactly as you described it with the lights and the car ignition stalling...but then she sees a landed object and a man approaches the car. He's dressed in a spacesuit and as he walks away the car starts up. It made all the newspapers at the time so you probably read about it.

VM: Yes I probably would have been aware of it at the time.

DC: So that was the only time that you actually had direct contact with a member of the public who had reported a UFO?

VM: Yes.

DC: Do you remember any other specific incidents that were unusual?

VM: I can't recall after all this time. If I was to sit down and look at the files from the time my notes would be on there. Obviously from time to time you do see things [in the files] and think, that's bloody strange, I do remember that. But unless you are authorised to go and spend time, because it does take time, because just doing what we are doing now it takes an awful lot of time up doesn't it. And you have to get the right people anyway

DC: Did you have any reference materials to work from in this office?

VM: No.

DC: There was no files you could refer to about what people had done before you?

VM: Oh no no. There was a statement of the responsibilities of each member in our little group. There was Jack Badcock's responsibilities with respect to Fylingdales, which was to ensure the operational etc etc etc, and we all had little secondary duties to do. We had our primary duty, and a secondary duty in my case was to look at and maintain the UFO records. Not to look at them in any depth, shape or form. Do nothing with them, but if anyone asks a question you are it. You answer the question. Question answered, pass through the politico boys and back up the line. Now, I felt it was a very very unsatisfactory job, I really did. For the simple reason that you really need, with anything like that you really need to get down and ask questions and find out more about it. And if you can't do it you tend to loose interest. If they say no way, forget about it.

DC: Do you remember specifically answering questions about the House of Lords debate, because that was around the time you were in this job.

VM: I remember...Lord Clancarty was the chap that I can recall as being someone who was very interested in UFOs and kept asking questions as to what capabilities the MoD had and what were they doing about it, were they talking with the Americans and Blue Book and that sort of thing. I can't be precise about it, it was a generalisation. Specific questions that I had to answer was how many unidentified flying objects have entered the UK airspace in the last few months. So you would get the files out and you would tot up how many there were, the reported incidents. And you would then say 'these were reports of objects for which no known distinguishing tag could be placed.' Now you can because you can say 10 of those were bits off a Soyuz that went into spin and we know what those were. Now if you start getting into that sort of area you give away capability, so all you say is they are items that appeared in the atmosphere which gave a presence. People reported them, and that's all you can do about them. Until you are given the go ahead to start looking at things and then you have a different, you got a whole new ball game.

DC: But you were never allowed to do that?

VM: No. I was patted on the head and smacked on the bottom. Off you go.

DC: I know it's difficult for you to say, given your limited responsibilities, but what do you really think was going on then? What was the policy? Or was there even a policy of any sort?

VM: My gut feeling was that they didn\rquote t want to spend time on something which could bring the MoD into disrepute. By going around and asking questions of people and seeking information you could well turn over a whole bag full of worms. The press would be all over it. You would then have questions like 'why are our armed forces going off in spurious directions looking for things which don't exist.' And then people would then have to stand up and justify why it had been done, and obviously many of the senior guys are politically minded. They don't want to lose their knighthoods and all the various other bits by churning up this sort of information. So I would feel that they may well have been restricted by instruction or innuendo, but they chose not to go further. I think the question should also be asked of the other departments. Why didn't they do more, you see. So your question goes right the way up the line to who in MoD would be instructing?

DC: Who would it be?

VM: Well it would be your friend Lord Hill-Norton. He's been Chief of the Defence Staff, hasn't he? So your question should more properly be put to him, or his successors. Because the job that I do, that I did, I was a minion, a functionary. You did various things that were required of you. It wasn't a real job, I mean the real job I had was within the Norwegian Air Force, and I spent three and a half years in the Norwegian Air Force evaluating their operational capability. Now we didn't have any problems with UFOs out there! They weren't interested.

DC: So did they not have a department dealing with UFOs, was the subject ever raised with you in Norway?

VM: They were not interested. It was never raised while I was in Norway.

DC: I think what people will find the most surprising is that there were these three departments in the MoD that dealt with UFOs, but who never spoke to one another.

VM: Well, it probably isn't strange when you think about it. There was another department just across the well from us, over there, that was involved in AWACS. AWACS being the airborne version of our lot on the ground. They wouldn't even speak to us about how you commanded and controlled the aircraft because they could see us doing it another way you see. It was absolutely ludicrous. Now why does that happen? I can tell you why I think that happens. It is because if you are given a job to do, you are going to make sure that you are going to be in control of that and you are not going to bring other people in unless you actually have to because your future is dependant upon that job. If you are seen to be bringing in other chaps from other departments, it can be looked at in two ways, can't it. Either he can't hack the job, and he is bringing all these other chaps in, or he is just too lazy. So you have got to be very careful, it's a political thing, it's not like the artisan type chaps, where can I get a chap to help me on this, that's the way the normal fellow would work. No, it's a sensitive, sensitive subject.

DC: Have you ever come across a place called Rudloe Manor in connection with this subject?

VM: Yes. Yes it was. Rudloe Manor as far as I was concerned was an RAF Police, provost and security, area. They would have been involved. They could well have been partners to receiving messages, signals about it. Obviously they would need to be, if anyone was doing anything, there would need to be someone on the ground to do things, but I can't really comment on that. But I have certainly heard of it, yes.

DC: You do recall them having some kind of UFO function then? Even if it was just passing messages on...

VM: I can't say that I can. But I have heard of Rudloe Manor. But I would have heard of it as a police organisation. It would be of interest to get hold of the list of departments MoD wise and what their responsibilities were. Because you could then follow it through like a flow diagram. This lot was responsible for, blah blah blah. So that would be a useful exercise. But the wider question that you are asking: who did we report to, who did we operate with, really the answer is: No one. You might want to ask the question to the next level up, the Wing Commanders. Did they co-operate with anyone about these things. Or go really up to the top and ask it. But I think you are going to be met with a wall of silence. On the basis of the fact that if there was co-operation they are not going to want to disclose it now, and in any case they are well past their sell-by date and they want to maintain their nice little pensions and things. And that is basically it. No one wants to start stirring up when you get to 67, 68, 70...you want to live a happy life.

DC: So if you were asked was there a cover-up of UFOs, what would your answer be, even if it is an opinion based upon experience?

VM: The only thing that I would say in answer to your question is: were I to have been responsible for looking at UFO reports that came across my desk, I would have been far more active in seeking out information about the people, what they saw, how they saw it. The fact that I was not allowed to do that may well have been down to 'we don' t want this nosy bastard going out and doing this, he's got other jobs to do anyway' or they may genuinely not have wanted me to do it. I do recall a time when Pete Chisert, who was one of the Wing Commanders there, said: 'Leave it alone,' he said, 'or they will ship you out. We don't want you getting involved in that because there are other jobs to do.' Now he might have been saying that because we were short handed, and he could see this was another subject area that would take up an awful lot of time, we don't want you doing that, we want you doing your primary job.

DC: It seems to me that they were worried that any contact you had with outside people could leak out to the newspapers and then come back to cause them trouble - ie as evidence that some 'secret investigation' was going on...

VM: Absolutely. Absolutely right! It was a bounce back problem. And I still think, as I said earlier, that if you start getting involved in talking to civilians they immediately say 'we have had a man from the Ministry down here we have talked to him about this that and the other.' Its all over the press, and then the more serious journalists are going to get asking why are the Ministry doing this? Is there something in it? And then the whole thing is Parliamentary questions etc...

AR: And what answer the Government gives is always going to be the wrong answer...

VM: Oh absolutely, you can't win. Trying to perfectly honest with you. I think that there have been incidents where you cannot place a realistical, rational interpretation of it. You can't back these incidents up with anything because you haven't got the where-with-all other than people's memory which has dimmed after 30 or 50 years, you have not got the technology to recover information which would have been available to you to have done a rational analysis. If it is something that is important for the future, then I believe that we have to reassess what we are doing air defence wise. If you are saying that you want to defend the United Kingdom against aerial attack you have got to look at aerial attack in its broadest context and you have certainly got to start looking at whether or not vehicles travelling at very high speed would form a threat and if so can we deal with it? It may well be that the Americans style Spade-out system where we look very quickly, or maybe we should have inertial scan radars where radar direction is patrolled electronically...

DC: Did you have any contact with or co-operation with the Americans in your branch?

VM: No. The only contact I had with Americans in the UK would be that the guys from Bentwaters used to come across to the mess on occasions and have a few games and beers and things. The only time I did have contact with the Americans was when I was sent to represent the UK at the last CENTO conference in Iran, just before the Ayatollah came back...there was a whisper in MoD that I caused it! [laughter]

DC: You have just reminded me there was a very famous UFO incident in Iran around that time, the late 70s...

VM: Do you think they followed me? [laughter] .... I am open-minded about the whole subject. If there is a cover-up going on it has been going on for a very long time. I personally am of the opinion that the system doesn't want to get involved because there are too many ifs and buts...there are all sorts of positions to be retained, and its a bit to iffy. Going back to 1945 for example, there was talk of flying objects making loud buzzing noises in the sky, and I can remember my late mother dragging me outside in late 45 and she said: 'now you listen to this, I've been hearing this all day' and there was a definite humming in the air, nothing to be seen. Now that's going back to that time, and that' s stuck with me, because it was almost like standing next to a power station...

AR: That's well known, it's called the hummadruz . . .

DC: You mentioned the New Zealand incident, that happened while you were serving in this post. Were you asked for an expert advice on that?

VM: No. It was a purely administrative job, it wasn't an operational, investigative job that I had. I looked after the reports that came in, and I answered any questions, I filed them, I looked at them. I made little comments on them because at the time it was something to do and you just can't look at files, page after page, and not comment on them. But there was no requirement for me to co-ordinate or co-operate with anyone else.

DC: So you wouldn't have day to day contact with anyone from this other department where Nick Pope worked - DS8 or Sec(AS)2?

VM: No.

DCL The impression that Nick Pope gave in his book from the time he worked there was that he got all these reports which you say were copied to the likes of yourself, but that he was the one that did all the co-ordination. He was the one who would pick the phone up and contact the radar people, or...

VM: No he didn't. No he didn't. I don't know what his job was.

AR: He said he received, he was the central point where all this information came in.

VM: No he wasn't. This is the whole point, no he wasn't. There were three elements in MoD. We were one, he was one, and there was somebody else - defence intelligence. If he rang around, he would have been required to speak to our department. But I never received a phone call from them.

Transcript Copyright © David Clarke/Andy Roberts & BBC Radio Manchester 2002.