RAF West Malling Vampire Sighting

Autumn 1953. RAF West Malling in Kent was home to night-fighter crews flying the de Havilland Vampire. Britain had already looked hard at flying saucers, through the Ministry of Defence's Flying Saucer Working Party of 1950 and 1951. Only weeks earlier, a BEA Ambassador crew flying from London to Paris had reported a circular object, and Northolt radar reportedly tracked something hovering at about 55,000 feet for two hours.

Tuesday, 3 November 1953. About 10 am. Flight Lieutenant Terry Johnson and his navigator and radar operator, Flying Officer Geoffrey Smythe, took off from West Malling. The sky was bright, with little cloud.

Directly ahead of the aircraft, they saw it. A bright circular object, glowing more around its perimeter than its centre. They judged it about a mile away. Then it moved rapidly to the right, heading east of the plane. Press reports at the time said it passed overhead at a tremendous speed and in level flight. The encounter lasted about thirty seconds. The Vampire's own radar never caught an echo.

On the ground, intelligence questioned the crew for about ninety minutes. The results went to Group Captain Peter Hamley, a man known to have encountered foo fighters during the war.

The same day, an Army heavy anti-aircraft unit in south-east London, placed by one account at Lee Green near Greenwich, picked up a signal on its radar. The operators followed the track of an object that appeared "circular or spherical white in colour." Men of the same unit watched it through a telescope. The soldiers, a French paper reported, were convinced it was a flying saucer.

The Daily Express led with "Mystery at 60,000 feet." Abroad, the War Office was reported to have officially recognised the sighting. Then the Air Ministry gave its answer. The "Thing" may have been nothing more than a meteorological observation balloon, about 12 ft across, with a radar reflector able to return an echo as strong as a four-engined bomber.

On 24 November the House of Commons took it up. Lt-Col Wentworth Schofield asked about the objects seen by airmen, and Mr Bellenger about the one reported by Anti-Aircraft Command. Nigel Birch, Secretary of State for Air, said two experimental meteorological balloons had been observed at different times that day, let off at an unusual time. Mr Isaacs asked whether the saucer story was all "balloony." Birch said that was very nearly correct. The House laughed.

Decades later, historian David Clarke found a sharper answer in a declassified US Air Force history from 1958. Project Moby Dick balloon 175 was launched from Holloman AFB, New Mexico, on 27 October 1953. Its cut-down device failed, and it never dropped into the Atlantic. Six days later, Clarke writes, it was cruising at 60,000 feet over Kent. Moby Dick balloons rode the jet stream with camera gondolas aimed at Soviet sites, which is why, Clarke argues, Birch could not say where it came from.

Loose ends remain. Birch spoke of two balloons, while Clarke ties both sightings to one. Early reports put the object at 23,000 feet. Flight records give balloon 175 a diameter of 116 ft, and Clarke describes Moby Dick balloons as more than 200 ft, far from the Air Ministry's 12 ft.

In 1996 Terry Johnson spoke to the Kent Messenger. He was adamant that what he and Smythe saw was not a weather balloon. The speed of its movement, he said, made it obvious that it was something strange. The Air Ministry had its balloon. The pilot had what he saw. Decades on, the West Malling case still sits between the two.