Summary
According to British historian David Clarke, throughout the 1950s, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence tried to debunk UAP sightings as weather balloons, or meteors to help ease the fears of the public, despite taking the issue seriously behind closed doors. This was around a time of heightened tension due to the threats of the Cold War.
The Flying Saucer Working Party (FSWP) was the name of the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence’s secretive first study of UAPs. The existence of the FSWP was remained secret until it was discovered by Clarke when researching the book, Out of the Shadows in 2001.
In October 1950, Ministry of Defence Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Henry Tizard set up the FSWP due to his belief that UAP studies needed serious research associated with them before being dismissed. Tizard believed the saucer sightings could not be dismissed as delusions that easily. There was a pro-saucer newspaper campaign backed by the respected Lord Louis Mountbatten that helped influence public opinion. The “flying saucer movement” also had support from other high ranking officials like Battle of Britain mastermind Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding. Dowding allegedly had privately noted that the flying saucers came from outer space and were advanced aircrafts.
Tizard was also a longtime scientific advisor to Winston Churchill. Tizard set up a team to look into multiple “X-Files” like UAP reports and sightings. The FSWP had five members that represented the technical intelligence branches of the Air Ministry, Admiralty, War Office and Ministry of Defence. The team asked for personnel serving with the RAF and Royal Navy to submit sighting reports for investigation.
The group spent 8 months sorting through reports from all over the world, and decided three cases were credible enough to be investigated. The cases were from experienced test pilots. They alleged seeing a “bright circular metallic object” and “ a flat disc-shaped object spinning through a series of S-turns at speeds of up to 1,000 miles” not far from military bases.¹
A group of five witnessed the second sighting from the ground, and the pilot and witnesses were interrogated by the MOD team and warned not to discuss what they had seen in public.
In June 1951, the team published its final report. The document “DSI/JTIC Report No. 7,” was marked with the security grade “SECRET,” and was titled “Unidentified Flying Objects.” The title of this six-page report was to reflect the American acronym UFO coined by the USAF in 1950-51.²
The report wasn’t released publicly until 2001 to UAP researchers Clarke and Andy Roberts by the MoD. The report was requested under the United Kingdom's Code of Practice on Access to Government Information.
The team came to the conclusion that the reports and sightings they studied could be explained. The report cited misidentification of aircrafts, astronomical phenomena, balloons, birds, meteorological phenomena, optical illusions, witness delusions and simple hoaxes.³
The report ended with:
“We accordingly recommend very strongly that no further investigation of reported mysterious aerial phenomena be undertaken, unless and until some material evidence becomes available.”⁴
