Since the 1940’s when the UFO phenomenon really took off, so to speak, there have been regular news stories reporting weird and wonderful UFO’s landing and taking off nearby secret US military facilities. This was a wonderful era for conspiracy theories.

First there was the infamous Roswell incident, four small aliens were found dead at the crash site in Roswell, New Mexico. The nearby airforce base was the only site in the USA at the time where nuclear bombs were stored. The local undertaker was even called in according to reports, to provide little coffins for the visitors, who came down during an electrical storm. Then a conspiracy was hatched to make reporters look ridiculous by saying, officially, that the whole thing was down to a weather balloon.

Many UFO reports, related by police, air force pilots and even former President Jimmy Carter infiltrated their way into newspapers and TV news bulletins during the latter half of the 1900’s. One well documented case is the Zamora sighting, where a police officer came across a landed UFO with humanoids running about, upon sighting officer Zamora the aliens ran back into their spaceship and flew off over his head. Evidence was found of ground disturbance where the landing feet of the UFO had touched down.

This was either another amazing UFO report or just a test conducted at a nearby US Air Force facility. Critics cite video evidence of the USA testing flying saucer shaped craft at the time, but the performance of these was dire, the program was stopped because the jet propulsion of the UFO was crude and the craft unnavigable. 

The UK has its own cause celebres, the Rendlesham air force base incident was witnessed by senior US military personal, but that took place at Christmas and could have been a prank. Warminster had its own UFO wave in the 1960’s, but photographic evidence is poor.

Why has there been such a dearth of such news items in recent years? 

This article published by The Football and Politics Blog ©2008.