Sighting record / 1967
Friday, 28 April 1967. Late morning on the Devon coast. At the HM Coastguard station on Berry Head, trained observers raised their binoculars toward something hanging in the sky above Brixham. It was huge. A cone, some said. A dome, said others. It turned slowly, and as it turned a door-like structure came into view on its side. For more than an hour it barely moved. Then an aircraft trailing a thick vapour trail came in close. Seven coastguards watched. Dozens of townspeople phoned the police. The station commander later called the official explanation simply laughable.
Berry Head is a headland on Tor Bay, just outside the Devon fishing town of Brixham. In 1967 HM Coastguard kept a lookout in the headland's Northern Fort, an 18th-century artillery magazine converted to a coastguard station in 1906. It was a busy year for British sightings. There were 362 UK reports in 1967, against 95 the year before.