The Pentyrch Incident: a pyramid of light and military helicopters over a Welsh village

Pentyrch is a village on the western edge of Cardiff, in Wales. Friday 26 February 2016. The early hours. Residents across the area reported helicopters and loud bangs that shook buildings. A nurse at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital reportedly heard explosions just after 2 a.m.

Caz Clarke, a security worker from Pentyrch, says aircraft had been overhead long before. "The military knew they were coming and had a spotter plane in the air for two days waiting for 'the event'."

She was drawn to the fields behind her house. Above them was "a huge pyramid of light taking up the night sky." "It was enormous, majestic, no way you could be mistaken." "The first red-light was high above the trees, thousands of feet up. As it neared the ground it ejected a hand of lightning, not thin lightning, but thick like fingers, fire coloured fingers."

"Several red spheres hovered silently above the fields until the helicopters came." She described "approximately six red oval objects, which formed a pyramid shape," while "four planes chased the 'green' object." A fleet of RAF helicopters arrived. "We believe the military aircraft shot them down."

She and a neighbour say two smaller barrel-shaped craft came within 20 feet of them. They changed colour. Then they flew away silently, in different directions.

Mike Henbury saw a red pulsating light, then two more lights that converged into a triangle, descending from the cloud cover. "It looked very large indeed. I don't think it touched down totally but about 10 to 12 feet from the ground it lit up fully." Black, red and green orbs emerged, "as if they were dancing and moulding into one pulsing from red to green slowly." In Betws and Port Talbot, people reported barrel-shaped objects that night.

Later that morning Caz Clarke found what she believed was the crash site, and filmed it. Military personnel, she says, camped in the fields. A bald patch remained, and Gari Jones of the Swansea UFO Network measured EMF there: "after that night they have been as high as 1.2, over three times the safety strength." Emlyn Williams of the network reported "a strong EM residue in the core location." Later claims added 40-foot trees snapped halfway up in Smilog Woods.

The Ministry of Defence said the activity was a routine training exercise, Exercise Chameleon, run by the Army and RAF on 25 and 26 February around Llantrisant. Troops carried blank simulated ammunition, and "no targets were fired on." Questions about military searches for metal on Llantrisant Common were withheld under section 26 of the Freedom of Information Act. Caz Clarke insists it was "no drill, that was the exercise the week before."

On Metabunk, users found notices to airmen for that night. Up to 7 helicopters flying without lights near Llantrisant, between 0001 and 0400. A parachute jumping exercise up to 18,000 ft. One user, Flarkey, proposed that the orange lights were military parachute flares and the red and green orbs drop-zone markers. Another suggested she "was seeing three lines of troops dropped from the transport planes."

In 2021 Caz Clarke and Gari Jones self-published The Pentyrch Incident: The Greatest UFO Cover-up of Modern Times. In January 2022 History UK opened Craig Charles: UFO Conspiracies with an episode called "Wales," featuring astrophysicist Sarah Cruddas. The Why Files and a string of podcasts followed. With its helicopters and its talk of cover-up, the case is often set beside Rendlesham.