Unidentified Flying Objects: Report by the Flying Saucer Working Party (June 1951)
The British Flying Saucer Working Party’s June 1951 report reviews Scandinavian and American reports, Project Sign and Project Grudge, and three British service sightings from 1950. It attributes the observations to conventional phenomena, misidentification, illusions, psychological effects or hoaxes and recommends no further investigation without material evidence. Its appendices propose radar interference at Wartling and recount Wing Commander Formby identifying an apparent disc as an ordinary aircraft. These are the committee’s historical judgments. The seven-page scan includes a distributor cover, the report cover, and five numbered report pages; the original SECRET marking does not describe the public scan’s current accessibility.
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Document Intel
Source status, provenance, and extraction context.
- Source / agency
- UK Ministry of Defence, Directorate of Scientific Intelligence and Joint Technical Intelligence Committee
- Type
- Report
- Classification
- Partially Declassified
- Reference #
- DEFE 44/119; D.S.I./J.T.I.C. Report No. 7
- Published
- June 1951
- Content Type
- application/pdf
- Pages
- 7
Structured Analysis
Claims and source material extracted from the document text. Timeline context is surfaced in document intel.
The report is dated June 1951 and identified as D.S.I./J.T.I.C. Report No. 7.
June 1951 D.S.I./J.T.I.C. REPORT No. 7
The working party says the observations submitted to it were almost exclusively visual and lacked tangible, material or objective evidence.
In no, case has any tangible, material, or objective evidence, been submitted.
The report says it reviewed Project Sign and Project Grudge investigations of incidents through early 1949.
We have been enabled to study two reports (Project “Sign” and Project “Grudge”) covering the investigation of incidents up to the beginning of 1949.
The report summarizes Grudge as satisfactorily explaining 164 of 228 incidents, excluding thirty for inadequate evidence, and assigning psychological or physiological explanations to the remaining thirty-four.
thirty must be disregarded for lack of workable evidence, while 164 can be satis- factorily explained. For the balance of thirty-four, containing some evidence, there is no apparent ready explanation
The working party states it did not systematically investigate all the British public reports it discussed.
We have not attempted any systematic investigation of all the evidence presented
The working party separates the June 1, 1950 pilot sighting from the Wartling radar response because the reported times differed by ten minutes.
It was established that there was in fact a discrepancy of ten minutes between the times of the two reports
The working party interpreted Hubbard’s August 14 sighting as an optical illusion or a misidentified normal aircraft.
We conclude, either that F/Lt. Hubbard was the victim of an: optical illusion, or that he, observed some quite normal type of aircraft
The working party concludes that natural phenomena, conventional objects, optical or psychological effects, and hoaxes account for the reported observations.
(1) Astronomical or meteorological phenomena of known types. (2) Mistaken identification of conventional aircraft, balloons, birds, or other normal or natural objects. (3) Optical illusions and psychological delusions. (4) Deliberate hoaxes.
The working party recommends stopping further investigation of mysterious aerial reports unless material evidence becomes available.
We accordingly recommend very strongly that no further investigation of reported mysterious aerial phenomena be undertaken, unless and until some material evidence becomes available.
Appendix A proposes interference from another radar transmitter as the explanation for the unusual Wartling response.
it is suggested that the signal observed was received directly from another radar transmitter, possibly ship-borne, in the Portsmouth-Isle of Wight area
Appendix B recounts Formby observing an apparent shining disc at Tipner until changing illumination revealed an ordinary aircraft.
it was identified as being a perfectly normal aircraft.
Chronology extracted from the document text.
Flying Saucer Working Party report issued
The report recommends no further investigation of mysterious aerial phenomena unless material evidence becomes available.
Farnborough officers report a distant object
The report discusses a second sighting involving Hubbard and five other officers, interpreting it as a conventional aircraft viewed at long range.
Hubbard reports a disc above Farnborough
The report records Hubbard’s visual account and interprets it as illusion or misidentification.
Pilot observation and Wartling radar response
The report reviews a Meteor pilot’s visual sighting and a radar response, then concludes they were ten minutes apart and unconnected.
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