Flt Lt James Salandin's Meteor near-miss over Southend

Autumn 1954. Flight Lieutenant James R. Salandin flew with No. 604 (County of Middlesex) Squadron of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. He was a weekend flyer who had flown many aircraft types. By his own account, he was "the biggest sceptic in the squadron where flying saucers were concerned." On Thursday, 14 October 1954, he took off from RAF North Weald in Essex at 4:15 p.m. His aircraft was a Gloster Meteor F Mk 8, a single-seat twin-jet fighter. The sky was blue and cloudless.

At around 16:30 he was climbing through 16,000 feet over the outlying districts of Southend. Two other Meteors flew in formation high above. Across the Thames Estuary, over the North Foreland, he saw a whole lot of contrails. "Through the middle of the trails I saw three objects which I thought were airplanes, but they weren't trailing."

Two circular objects passed between the higher Meteors, travelling the opposite way. One silver. One gold. The Daily Sketch later put their speed at about 1,100 m.p.h. Both went off to his port side. The third object came straight toward him.

It closed to within a few hundred yards. Silvery and metallic. "The thing had a bun-shaped top, a flange like two saucers in the middle and a bun underneath." No portholes. No flames. No visible markings. "It could not have been very far off for it more than filled my windscreen." Then it swerved away past his port side at tremendous speed. The near-miss lasted seconds. "The thing was right in my sights." His gun camera was loaded. There was not enough time to trigger it.

Badly shaken, Salandin flew around for a few minutes to recover. He had already radioed North Weald. On the ground he gave more detail to Derek Dempster, 604 Squadron's intelligence officer and a former RAF pilot. Then he prepared a detailed report for the special flying saucer section of Air Ministry Intelligence.

Nothing further was heard about it. In June 1956, D. Wightman wrote in Uranus that the Air Ministry official he spoke to had no information on what the investigation found. The next year NICAP director Donald Keyhoe wrote to the Air Ministry about several cases. On 14 May 1957, A. Giffen Peacock of the Air Ministry Information Division replied. "We can not release any information on the B.O.A.C. or the Flt. Lt. Salindin sightings."

No official conclusion was ever published. Salandin's report has not turned up in the released UFO files at The National Archives. The squadron kept its distance too. In 1983 another 604 Squadron member told Gordon Creighton the pilots were "always warned that we must keep away from" Flying Saucer Review.

No hoax claim has ever been made. No conventional explanation is on record. The record does have loose threads. The Daily Sketch has Salandin say it happened on a Sunday afternoon, but 14 October 1954 was a Thursday. In 1967, TRUE Report on Flying Saucers gave the date as 4 October, apparently a copying error. Salandin never wavered. Speaking to Timothy Good in 1985, he said: "I haven't found a satisfactory explanation for what I saw, but I know what I saw."

The story reached a wide audience in the Daily Sketch on 2 February 1955, told to air correspondent Len Smith. That spring, Derek Dempster became the first editor of Flying Saucer Review, and its debut issue carried the case. Timothy Good retold it in Above Top Secret in 1987. A trained pilot. A clear sky. An object that filled the windscreen.