Did Winston Churchill Order a UFO Cover-Up?
Released documents claim Churchill said to classify UFO incident for 50 years.
Aug. 5, 2010— -- New files released by the U.K.'s Ministry of Defense suggest that Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered a UFO cover-up during World War II.
As part of an ongoing project to declassify government reports related to unidentified flying objects, the Ministry of Defense and The National Archives Wednesday released about 5,000 pages of correspondence between the public and British authorities on UFO sightings.
One of the letters was from a man claiming his grandfather was present at a wartime meeting with Churchill and U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The declassified letter from 1999 redacts the names of the sender and his grandfather, but says the two leaders were briefed on a UFO incident reported by a Royal Air Force (RAF) bomber crew.
While returning to Britain from a mission in Germany, the crew was reportedly approached by a metallic UFO on the English coast. The crew even took photographs of the UFO, the letter said.
The writer said that the UFO appeared to "hover noiselelessly" and then suddenly disappeared.
Upon hearing the story, Churchill allegedly ordered that it be kept secret for 50 years or more.
"This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic amongst the general population and destroy one's faith in the Church," the letter claims he said.
The writer asked the Ministry of Defense if it could confirm the incident and if the event was still classified.
In response, the Ministry of Defense said it could not find any written record of the incident. But it also said that before 1967, all UFO files were destroyed after five years, so any UFO documents from World War II era would most likely have been destroyed.
The trove of documents, which totals 18 files from 1995 to 2003, also discloses details on a few other famous UFO sightings in the U.K.
One of the reports contains a drawing of a UFO "20 times the size of a football field" that was spotted by a member of the public near the Manchester Airport on Jan. 6, 1995. The captain and first officer of a 737 en route to the airport allegedly reported a "near miss" with an unidentified object the very same day, the report said.
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