Winston Churchill and the UFO He Covered Up (Or Did He)

The UK government just released many UFO related files that had been classified until today.  Chief among the many documents is a story that has been making the rounds about Winston Churchill and a UFO sighting he decided to cover up.  I wanted to look at the records for myself, and here's what I found.

There are two sets of letters - both can be read in this lengthy pdf file.  (All of these RAF files can be found here.)  The first few letters (pages 205-209) involve an inquiry into this matter made in the 1990s.  Apparently, someone's grandfather remembered this and the grandson was asking questions.  The Royal Air Force quoted the original documents, including claims that an aircraft had matched the speed of an airplane in a way that no craft of that era could.  But the RAF officer ended the letter by stating that he didn't believe in UFOs, even though the physics of it was interesting.  (Note to government officials: saying things like that is how cover-up conspiracy theories get started.)

The second set of letters (pages 273-277) gives us more detail.  According to the man's grandfather, an RAF airplane taking pictures was returning to England when an unidentified craft came near to it and began matching its speed.  The pilots took pictures of it before it cruised away without making a sound.  This was supposedly a point of intense discussion between Churchill and Eisenhower before Churchill decided to put the thing under lock and key for fifty years.

But what we can subtly glean from all of this is that the grandson did not hear this from his grandfather - it appears that after the grandfather passed away the man's grandmother told him about that she had been carrying this secret since the war and that her husband had told no one but her about the UFO.  So, what we really have is some third hand reports that only emerged when the person who supposedly reported them had died.  This story is far less credible than the press will have you believe.  (I'm not trying to be a party pooper, here, but we have to analyze these things thoroughly if we're going to learn the truth.)

There are, however, two loose ends that we can chase.  First of all, the documents do confirm that Winston Churchill did indeed order an investigation of sorts into the UFO phenomenon, but that's all we know of it.  Second, the RAF correspondent told the grandson to personally check out some other government files that were available to the public that were likely to be the only place where records of this sort could exist - if this search yielded any evidence we have never heard of it.