Berwyn Mountain UFO incident

The Berwyn Mountain Incident, widely referred to as the "Welsh Roswell" is, next to the Rendlesham Forest Incident of 1980, (referred to as the British Roswell) the most well known British "UFO crash" story to date. The incident took place on the Berwyn Mountains in Llandrillo, Merionethshire, North Wales. Scientific evidence shows it to have been a result of the combined misinterpretation of a bright meteor widely observed over Wales and Northern England, a small earthquake, and the activity of poachers.

Berwyn Mountain Incident

The event took place on the 23rd of January 1974. It has been alleged that a UFO crashed, and that non-human bodies (EBEs) were found and that the British Government covered up the event. There was considerable uncertainty at the time as to exactly what had happened. First reactions were that a plane had crashed, or a meteorite had landed.

Police were alerted and set up a search team; within an hour about ten officers were searching the Berwyn Mountains; they were joined later by an RAF mountain rescue team from Valley (Anglesey). Nothing was found, and all searches were called off at just after 2 P.M. the following day. Searches for meteorite impact craters were also made by a couple of astronomers, equally without result.

By this time, it was clear from data gathered by the then Institute of Geological Sciences (IGS), now British Geological Survey that an earthquake had occurred. The magnitude of the shock was such that, if it had been due to impact, the resulting crater would have been so large as to be easily visible.

There were later claims that the area was cordoned off by the military while wreckage was recovered. Also, there were reports that the villages in the vicinity were visited by "Men in Black".

cientific Explanations

Scientists attribute the reports to a mixture of an earthquake, a brilliant meteor, and the activities of poachers. [ [http://www.uk-ufo.org/condign/berwart.htm The Berwyn Mountain UFO Crash - A British Roswell? by Andy Roberts] ]

At 8.38 P.M. on 23 January, 1974, an earthquake of magnitude 3.5 was felt over a wide area of North Wales and as far as Liverpool. Since earthquakes are uncommon in the UK, it was not generally recognized for what it was, and since a number of unusual lights in the sky had been observed the same evening, it was considered possible that an aircraft had crashed, or a meteorite had impacted. Further confusion was caused by lights seen on the Berwyn Mountains, which subsequently turned out to have belonged to poachers. This confusion was later mythologized into the account of the UFO crash.

The claim that the area was cordoned off by the military have been shown by researcher Andy Roberts [http://www.uk-ufo.org/condign/bioar.htm] to relate to a later event in 1982 when an RAF Harrier jet crashed in the area, and the mountain was indeed cordoned off. The two events were subsequently merged in folk memory. Similarly the reports of the Men in Black figures were actually folk memories of four seismologists from IGS who were collecting felt reports of the earthquake.

References

Official Government Sources

* [http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/2AE8E020-BC06-47F2-AFE6-28DA88F84B46/0/uforeq4.pdf MOD response to this incident]
* [http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/browser.asp?CATLN=3&CATID=452&POSCATLN=6&POSCATID=88571700 Listing National Archive records AIR 2/18873 and AIR 2/18874 relating ot this event]

Articles

*Musson, R.M.W., 2006. The enigmatic Bala earthquake of 1974, [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006A%26G....47e..11M Astronomy & Geophysics, vol 47 no 5, pp 11-15.]
*McBeath, A., 2006. Meteor, not shower, over Bala, Astronomy & Geophysics, vol 47 no 6, p 8.
*Maddison, R., 2006. The 'astronomer from Keele' writes, Astronomy & Geophysics, vol 47 no 6, p 8.
* [http://www.thewhyfiles.net/berwyn_mountain_Incident.html Whyfiles; The Berwyn Mountains Incident]
* [http://www.cseti.org/crashes/047.htm CSETI article on the Brwyn Mountain Incident]
* [http://www.rense.com/ufo5/wales.htm Alien Bodies Recovered After UFO Crash In Wales?] Daily Mirror of London for October 22, 1999, "How Alien's My Valley?")
* [http://www.uk-ufo.org/condign/berwart.htm "The Berwyn Mountain UFO Crash - A British Roswell?"] by Andy J. Roberts (Debunking the Berwyn Incident)
*"Fire on the Mountain: The Berwyn UFO Case - a British Roswell?", updated version of Roberts "The Berwyn Mountain UFO Crash - A British Roswell?" (re-printed in "The UFOs That Never Were" by Jenny Randles, Andy J. Roberts and Dr. David Clarke - ISBN [http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1902809351 1902809351] (Extensive research into the reality of this event, concluding it was not an alien craft.)
* [http://www.ufocasebook.com/wales1974.html Article on the UFO Crash; Llandrillo, Wales, UK, 1974]
* [http://ufos.about.com/od/bestufocrashcases/p/wales1974.htm Breakdown of events]
* [http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0671033069 Cosmic Crashes] by Nick Redfern
* [http://play.com/play247.asp?pa=search&searchtype=allproducts&searchstring=a+covert+agenda&page=search&Go.x=0&Go.y=0 A Covert Agenda: The British Government's UFO Top Secrets Exposed] by Nick Redfern [http://www.thelosthaven.co.uk/ACovert.htm Review]
* [http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0713724935 UFO Retrievals by Jenny Randles]

External links

* [http://www.conwyufogroup.piczo.com CONWY UFO GROUP & INFORMATION EXCHANGE.] - Continually updated research showing that various agencies have covered up the event and that the version of events debunking the Incident in January 1974 by sceptical UFO researcher Andy Roberts is based on false and genuine documents to create the debunking picture.