Foleshill Police Sighting: Three White Lights over Nuneaton

Late February, 1971. Coventry was still part of Warwickshire, and PC Brian Hewitt was based at Foleshill Police station. The case is usually filed under Nuneaton. That is a little misleading. The officers were standing in Lythalls Lane, off Foleshill Road in Foleshill, Coventry. Nuneaton lay about 9 to 10 kilometres to the north. It was over Nuneaton that the lights appeared.

It was 0615 hours, before dawn. Four uniformed officers were on duty, attending a job in Lythalls Lane. Then they looked up. In Hewitt's words, there were "three white lights in the sky over Nuneaton which were moving at great speed heading in a westerly direction towards Birmingham."

The lights did not behave like parts of one object. "The lights were independent of each other and appeared to be traveling in formation," Hewitt said. Three separate points. Holding station. Crossing the northern sky fast. Hewitt was clear about what he had not seen. "It was not a meteorite or anything like that."

The officers went looking for an ordinary answer. Hewitt checked with Air Traffic at Birmingham Airport. He drew a blank. No sound was recorded, nor how long the lights were visible, nor any shape behind them. No photographs were taken. Nothing landed.

The account survives in the PRUFOS Police Database, a collection of on duty police sightings compiled by Gary Heseltine, a former British Transport Police detective. PRUFOS cites Flying Saucer Review, Vol 17 No 2, the March/April 1971 issue, as its source, and classifies the case as "NL (NOCTURNAL LIGHT)."

Only Hewitt is named. The other three officers remain anonymous. No Ministry of Defence or police file on the sighting has been found, and nothing beyond that call to the airport is on record as an inquiry.

No one has ever alleged a hoax. No explanation for this specific sighting has been published either. The familiar candidates are easy to list. A meteor fireball breaking into pieces, or space debris re-entering, would fit lights moving at great speed and apparently in formation. Hewitt, though, ruled out a meteorite on the spot.

Aircraft lights are another possibility. Flights passing high overhead on the airways would not necessarily count as Birmingham Airport traffic, so a blank from air traffic control does not settle the matter on its own.

The Foleshill lights sit among other British police sightings from the same year. In August 1971, at Aldridge, Les Leek and three colleagues were involved in a West Midlands police sighting that came with photographs. On 27 October 1971, at Banbury, PC Perry Jackson and Cadet William Bryon saw an orange UFO near "Bratch Hill."

The Foleshill case is quieter than those. Four officers. Three lights. One call to the airport that turned up nothing. It remains a short entry in the British police record, and the question it raised was never answered.