At 8:30 pm on January 23, 1974, a number of people living near the Berwyn mountains in the north of Wales reported seeing a UFO. A fireball streaked across the sky, appearing to crash into the mountains. This was immediately followed by a loud boom and shaking of the earth, leading witnesses to reasonably assume the sound had come from the fireball that, only seconds earlier, looked like it was about to cause a very loud noise in the Welsh countryside. An RAF team was dispatched to investigate and official reports indicate that they found no crash site of any sort—in stark contrast to the Gwynedd police department whose recorded logs mention “a large explosion in the area and a large fire in the mountainside.”
In 2010, official Ministry of Defense documents were released that many news outlets claimed disproved any claims of UFO sightings. The official explanation: a meteorite burning up in the atmosphere happening, coincidentally, at the exact same time as a probable earthquake or landslide. That’s a doozy of a coincidence. Also, the “large fire” was actually just the flashlights of poachers in the mountains.
Unsurprisingly, many were unconvinced of this official explanation, and a new piece of the mystery has reportedly just surfaced. UFO researcher Russ Kellet has just released a map he says was given to him by five witnesses on which they recorded the flight path of the “flying saucer” and the subsequent flight path of RAF jets chasing after it.
Meteors are common. Meteors happening at the same time as unreported earthquakes are less common.
According to Russ Kellett, the five friends, four of whom served together in World War Two, jumped into a car and raced to the mountains after the UFO came down:
“The five saw a strange object and got out to have a look, but the military were there and told them to leave. They moved to a better position and started to take photos.”
It’s unclear if Kellett means that they photographed the “strange object” or if they were taking photographs to accurately mark the area on the map where the UFO came down. So far no photographs have been released alongside the flight path map.
Kellett says he was given the map after a talk he gave on the Berwyn mountain UFO incident “around the late 1990’s, or early 2000’s.” According to Kellet:
It was very strange and I was a little bit spooked. I’ve carried the map around for a long time as part of my research. ‘I’m getting older now and just wanted to put it out there to see what people make of it and if there was anybody else who could shed light on what happened.
The Berwyn mountain range where the alleged UFO crash took place.
The Berwyn mountain incident has not gotten less mysterious with age. The strange thing about the “Welsh Roswell” UFO sighting is the sheer number of inconsistencies between the official report and witness reports, including the official logs of the Gwynedd police. According to the Ministry of Defense, the RAF search and rescue team that was scrambled in response found no sign of wreckage and concluded that no impact ever occurred. Strange then, that multiple witnesses and a police log reported a fire on the mountainside at the exact time and location of the nonexistent impact. If Kellett is to be believed, too, the five responsible for the map witnessed a much more in depth investigation of the mountain, including seeing a “strange object.”
Also odd is the conclusion that, although none was recorded, the sound and shaking reported was definitely due to an earth tremor or landslide that happened at the exact same time as the UFO came down. Ministry of Defense investigations also report five other UFO sightings around 10pm that same night.
Without jumping to conclusions—if the MoD is, indeed, being shady about this, it could easily have been a crashed military plane and not necessarily an alien spacecraft—it seems safe to say, that despite the best efforts to curb public speculation, the Berwyn Mountains incident remains a mystery 45 years later.