THE BERWYN INCIDENT

Most people who are interested in UFOs will know about the Roswell Incident, in which an alien spacecraft allegedly crashed in New Mexico in 1947. But there have been many other well-documented cases of alleged UFO crashes, and one of these cases is known as the Berwyn Mountains UFO crash, which took place in Wales in January 1974.

At 8.30 PM on 23 January, 1974, a large object was seen to fall from the skies over Clwyd in Wales. Dozens of witnesses across Lancashire and Cheshire had phoned the police earlier that evening after seeing a strange formation of green lights flying erratically over the skies of the north-west. At exactly 8.38 PM, something impacted into the Berwyn Mountains in Clwyd, and the resulting tremor - which measured 4.5 on the Richter Scale - was felt in Wrexham, Chester, Liverpool, Southport, and even in some areas of Greater Manchester.

Police immediately converged on the Berwyn Mountains, expecting to find a crashed passenger jet, but just what they did find has never been divulged. A convoy of army trucks passed through Chester that night and made their way to the epicentre of the crash site, then the army threw a cordon around the area. Even the police and crash investigators were warned off.

A nurse who lived near the scene of the impact told a local newspaper that something huge had smashed into a mountain, throwing debris for over a mile. There are allegations that she actually witnessed some form of craft crashing into the area, she also reported bodies of the occupants. She said she walked up to one of the bodies, and realised it wasn't human, but before she could describe what she had seen, the military intervened, and two Ministry of Defence officials ordered her to remain silent about the UFO because her comments 'would constitute a threat to national security and the defence of the realm'.

This however the nurse has never actually come forward to back the claims. Was this actually a created witness to make the UFO theory more substantial? The newspaper reporter has never discussed the claims either.

In 1980, an electronics engineer named Arthur Adams, who had worked on Concorde, visited the Berwyn UFO crash-site and found strange green coloured pieces of metal embedded in the rocks there. He took samples of the metal to his laboratory and discovered that a sample the size of a 1-inch cube gave off two kilowatts of electricity, when wired up to a volt meter. Mr Adams contacted the Daily Express, and they published a series of articles about the strange find. This sample may of course have belonged to a meteorite, many ores have scientifically been found in previous samples of other meteorites.

Today, no one knows what crashed in the Welsh Mountains on that winter night in 1974; some think it was an experimental man-made top secret military aircraft (possibly a prototype Stealth bomber), others think it was an alien craft from another world. If so, what happened to the bodies that were seen scattered all over the mountain after the crash? There are also reports of a meteorite hitting the mountainside, but UFO folklore has grabbed the incident with both hands and turned into the UK's own Roswell incident.

Recently UPIA have recieved a report regarding a UFO sighting in Cheshire, during the interview with the witness he claims to have witnessed the 1974 object flying across Cheshire towards Berwyn. The witness, 35 at the time, works as a farmer near Congleton claims the object was definately a meteor, this since witnessing a similar reported incident, with 5 other seperate persons in 1996 again in Cheshire, he thinks the two incidents similarities were very close, although the 1974 case was of course much larger.

In 2002, UPIA were contacted regarding the incident by a former member of the mountain rescue team based at RAF Valley in Anglesey.

At RAF Valley throughout the 1970's and 80's and still to this day is a training unit, where operational fighter pilots use to shoot live missiles at target drone aircraft in the irish sea. The training exersise see's a target dragged behind a larger aircraft, and air to air missiles fired at the target, at the time these drones were stationed at the Royal Air Establishment at Llanbedr near Harlech.

The Raf used two types of missile until recently the Sparrow and the Sidewinder, only rarely do they use live war heads during training exercises.

One night the witnesses told of an urgent call out to the Berywn mountain range, an aeroplane was reported downed and there had been a huge explosion, off the teams trucks and landrovers went to the site location.

Because of the speeds and roads to the site, added to the nightime incident, the team took a fair while to arrive at the crash site. When they arrived they were called by the MOD to one side and told in actual fact the crashed object was a missile. This i was told had inadvertantly been released from a fighter and at several times the speed of sound, had slammed into the mountain.

The teams role here was to collect all debris from the site, giving no impression as to the actuallity of the event.

The RAF of course let the story of a UFO come to fruition, knowing public uproar from live missiles being fired and detonated over the UK.

The witness told of in the future, how he laughed at the stories he heard about UFO's, and one day contacted one of the countries foremost UFOlogists to discuss the event, and he supposed " come clean "

The UFOlogist in question was issued with his story and credentials to back his claims, but was sarcastically laughed at and called a liar. Therefore he returned to his state of quietness before again telling the tale nearly thirty years later.

Many ideas have been formulated about the events at Cader Bronwen. It is known military persons WERE at the site, a 4.5 tremor on the Richter Scale WAS recorded and a training exercise in the Irish sea WAS taking place. But the event was a long time ago, chinese whispers have added to the event, irrational UFOlogists have also played their part.

If incorrect the two reports discussed, are rational and worthy of furthur research, some of the alledged accounts are quite far fetched, mythology and folklore have come to Berwyn and left an as yet unexplained event.

This case was discussed at the Wrexham Science Festival in 2004