Report by Ash Ellis
On the 22nd April 2021, there were eight UFO sightings across the UK either reported to MUFON, local newspapers or posted on YouTube.
Although four of these seem unrelated, the other four do have some striking similarities to each other and it is these that we are going to be examining further in this report. A huge thanks to Twitter user Charlotte Hubbard (@Thunder46216520) for bringing these to my attention.
The four sightings we are looking at are:
Further Reports
05:00 Nottingham – Bright white oval shaped light
13:50 Foxholes – Large square bell shaped object
18:35 Broseley – 4 lights, 1 rectangular
21:00 Leicester – Star moving one way, suddenly faded and shot away
I don’t believe any of these are related to the four sightings above.
Brief Details of Sightings (Further info and footage can be found at the bottom of this report)
15:01 Hamilton, Scotland – Filmed from a ‘Morrisons’ car park in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, the 17 second clip on Youtube channel ‘davytriumph’ shows a dark, possibly spherical, object moving seemingly at speed across the clear sky, glinting regularly as it reflects the bright afternoon sun.
15:20 Grimsby, England – This clip was recorded by Malcolm Claxton, who was in his garden when he first noticed the object hovering in the sky at 15:20. After around 40 minutes he looked again and saw that it was still visible, this time with a plane nearby and at this point started videoing the object. In the clip the object appears to be hovering, occasionally glinting as the sun hits it. After the video ends, the object shoots off at speed.
17:15 Rochdale, England – Dave Watkins was parked nearby to Rochdale Infirmary in Manchester when an object directly in front of him in the sky caught his eye. The 73 second clip he recorded shows, for the most part, a dark object seemingly hovering in place, possibly rotating and regularly reflecting the sun.
18:00 London, England – A 3 minute video clip posted to YouTube channel ‘ViralVideoUK’ shows an object moving slowly across the sky above a park in London before picking up speed and appearing to tumble towards the ground, rotating and reflecting the bright sun as in the cases above.
Initial Opinion
On the face of it, and viewed independently, my immediate thoughts were that these were simply Mylar balloons. Most of the time I would simply move on and look at the next case but we cannot ignore witness testimony in these instances as well as the clear similarities, especially between the Grimsby and Rochdale objects.
Of course, these are generally poor quality videos recorded on mobile phones and I don’t need to repeat the problems we have with these types of recordings, so my next step was to reach out and speak to the witnesses in each case.
Thankfully I was able to get in touch with both the Grimsby and Rochdale witnesses, the more compelling of the four sightings. Attempts to locate the remaining two witnesses have been unsuccessful thus far, although the caption accompanying the London video on YouTube carried the following statement:
”The object was much lower and more visible is really quite mind boggling as it seems to show what looks like a multi faced solid object, almost pyramidical in shape or multi sided and the object appears to then come apart and then reform and looks like some strange ball of energy.”
Investigation
Due to the limited information for the Hamilton and London sightings, my report from hereon in will concentrate mostly on the Grimsby and Rochdale sightings.
According to the historic data(1), the weather across the UK during the afternoon of the 22nd April was clear, mostly cloudless skies, with cool temperatures and a wind speed of no more than 3-4mph, classed as a ‘light breeze’ on the Beaufort Scale(2).
April 22nd is also Earth Day, which marks the anniversary of the modern environmental movement in 1970 and pledges support for environment protection around the world, raising awareness of pollution and ways to maintain a clean habitat. There are events which are traditionally celebrated with the releasing of balloons, however Earth Day is not one of these as balloons do return to Earth where they are now litter, and have also caused injuries and death to many animals and caused dangerous power outages, directly contradicting the message that Earth Day tries to impart.
I could find no other event for this date which may explain balloons being released across different areas of the country. If they are balloons, they are not the SAME balloon, and any similarities must be purely coincidental as there is no chance that it could have travelled the distances involved in the time periods described, especially with low winds that day.
Grimsby
After speaking with the witness to this case, Malcolm Claxton, I was able to gain further information about what was seen to aid in helping identify the objects:
- The object was first seen at 15:20 when out in his garden playing with his young son. He started recording at 15:55 when he noticed the object was still visible and there was also a plane nearby (fig. 2);
- Although reported as being above Grimsby and published in the Grimsby Telegraph online, the witness was actually in Market Rasen, some 15 miles away from Grimsby and the object was viewed to the south-east, away from Grimsby and more towards the direction of Skegness (highlighted in Fig. 3, provided by the witness). The blue arrow shows the direction of sight, with the black line indicating the path of travel of the object from the coast heading inland travelling over Lincoln;
- The witness stopped filming the object as the sun was too bright, after which the object ‘notched up a few gears and shot off and disappeared’;
- 10 minutes after the object disappeared, an AWACS plane from RAF Waddington was seen flying over the area, this is confirmed by FlightRadar24 data (Fig. 4).
As stated above, I can confirm that there was indeed an ‘AWACS’ military plane from RAF Waddington in the area, evidently for sometime, in the period immediately following the sighting. NAT031, an RAF Boeing E-3D Sentry aircraft is clearly visible flying around the area for a period of around 25 minutes. These AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) planes “monitor airspace to provide threat detection of adversary aircraft and situational awareness on friendly assets.”(3)
Was this plane deployed to the area in response to the object seen by the witness or was this a pre-planned or routine deployment? As well as reaching out to RAF Waddington, a Freedom Of Information request has also been made to the MOD in relation to this flight and flightpath. There has been no reply so far as of the published date of this article. However, you can see from the flight data here that on the face of it, the flightpath looks fairly erratic and that it was clearly flying around the area that this object was seen.
Raw data gained from the original footage recorded by the witness shows the video was shot at 15:55 and lasts for 38 seconds. Information given by the witness has been evidenced by this data above and I have no reason to doubt any of his testimony.
Rochdale
Sitting in the north-east of the Greater Manchester area, the town of Rochdale is not far from the border with West Yorkshire, and close to the popular UFO ‘hotspot’ village of Todmorden.
The witness in this case, Dave Watkins, was in his car parked outside Rochdale Infirmary waiting for family members to finish their appointment in the hospital. Initially thinking the object was a reflection on his windscreen, he exited the vehicle to get a better look at it.
I spoke to Dave to both confirm the details as reported in the Manchester Evening News and for any extra information that he could provide:
- The object was opposite him in a due south direction looking towards Oldham and the more built-up Manchester city area;
- The object appeared completely stationary for the best part of ten minutes, before beginning to ‘drift’ eastwards, almost imperceptibly whilst keeping perpendicular to the horizon with no apparent upwards or downwards movement;
- After five minutes or so the object stopped and moved vertically upwards at a slightly faster speed. After a couple more minutes it changed direction, heading in a north-westerly trajectory towards the setting sun. There appeared to be an aircraft following the same trajectory but at a much higher altitude (Fig. 5) This is the point he started to record the object on his mobile phone;
- The whole sighting lasted around 30 minutes, and he stopped recording when his family called to tell him that they were ready to be picked up. Dave recalls seeing somebody else in the car park holding their phone outside of their car window, although he can’t say if they were also filming the object or just trying to get a signal.
Dave supplied me with two different videos of the object, both showing the object behaving as described above. Upon looking at the raw data from the videos, one was filmed at 17:35 lasting 1 minute 13 seconds with the other filmed at 17:41 lasting 41 seconds. The location data confirms that they were recorded from outside Rochdale Infirmary as reported. This all confirms the details given by the witness and I have no reason to doubt any of the testimony given.
In the 30-40 minutes following the sighting there were a number of military aircraft that flew over the area, but all seemed to be on a pre-planned route following a regular flightpath and none flew over the location specifically.
Comparison of the two sightings
Despite the less-than-high quality standard of these stills, you can clearly see that the objects appear to be the same shape with the same reflective qualities, these similarities are even more noticeable when watching the recordings. What is more striking with these two cases is that both witnesses described the objects as being stationary for a long period of time. Therefore, the next part of this investigation will be answering the question “Can Mylar balloons remain stationary in place?” .
When looking into this, the science behind it became fairly complicated so I will attempt to keep it simple as the best way to explain the answer.
Helium balloons are pulled by gravity, as are all objects with mass. The reason they don’t fall is that there is another force acting on them, a buoyant force from air pressure that is equal to the weight of the air displaced by the balloon.(4) This causes the balloon to ‘rise’ upwards.
For a balloon to hover, or remain in place, the average density of the gas inside it would have to be equal to the air outside of it. This is fairly easy to achieve in a controlled setting such as indoors as you would know when the ‘equilibrium’ of air density was matched. There is no way of knowing the air density at higher altitudes, plus there are other factors to consider such as winds, humidity as well as the temperature, all of which would have an effect on the air density. Lets not forget that Mylar balloons are also losing their density as the helium molecules are smaller than the pores in the skin of the balloon, which is why balloons always deflate eventually.(5)
For these reasons it would be highly unlikely, and difficult, for a balloon to remain stationary in one place for any extended period of time. For this effect to be replicated in different areas, to be witnessed and captured on video, to look as similar to each other as they do, and happening within a few hours of each other on the same day, makes this explanation even more unlikely.
Based on the witness testimony, as well as this evidence, I am, for now, ruling out that this is simply a balloon. I will also consider what else it definitely isn’t:
- It’s not a drone (not one commercially available at least)
- It’s not a bird or other animal
- It isn’t any conventional aircraft
- It’s not a cloud or other meteorological object
- It’s not a star/planet or other astronomical body
So where does this leave us?
- A High Altitude Balloon(6) (also known as a weather balloon) – A possibility, albeit a small one. These are usually at a much higher altitude and wouldn’t be in the vicinity of other aircraft due to the chance of a collision. High Altitude Balloons are released both officially by the likes of The Met Office and by hobbyists who have permission from the Civil Aviation Authority to launch a balloon. For one of these balloons to be in this position would be down to a malfunction or failure, and again we are looking at this to be replicated in one or possibly more locations at around the same time, making this explanation highly unlikely.
- Military Device – Could this be a new device or technology being tested by our Military and/or our Government? We can’t rule this out, especially with the AWACS plane seemingly scouting the area very soon after the Grimsby sighting. As our Military becomes more and more technologically advanced(7), who knows what devices or drones could be in the development or testing phase right now?
- UFO/UAP – as always, UFO doesn’t mean alien craft, although the extraterrestrial hypothesis could possibly apply to these cases.
Conclusion
As I’ve mentioned, on the face of it, these look like balloons. For me, that is where the similarity ends. After speaking to the two witnesses and based on the other evidence listed above, I do not believe that these are balloons.
For the first time this year, I am preliminarily closing this case with the sightings remaining Unidentified. If further evidence, or indeed further sightings, come to light I will happily reopen and reassess this case
If you have any information or thoughts to assist with this case please get in touch with me using the contact form.
References
Hamilton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_4wR7m74po
Grimbsy https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/grimsby-news/nothing-earth-could-gone-fast-5342097
London https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU-LepROADk
1 https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/uk/manchester/historic?month=4&year=2021
2 https://www.rmets.org/resource/beaufort-scale
3 https://www.raf.mod.uk/aircraft/sentry-aew1-e3d/
5 https://www.thoughtco.com/why-do-helium-balloons-deflate-4101553
6 A high-altitude/weather balloon
