The Welsh Bermuda Triangle: UFOs and Extraterrestrial Phenomena in 1970s Pembrokeshire

Bright lights in the sky, flying saucers and gigantic, faceless humanoids; none of which are usually associated with the rural villages of west Wales. Though in 1977, Broad Haven and its inhabitants found themselves at the centre of such phenomena. Over the course of one year, 450 paranormal occurrences were reported to the local authorities – witnessed by children and pensioners alike. What The Sun newspaper originally deemed ‘The Terror Triangle’ soon became ‘The Dyfed Triangle’ and ‘The Welsh Bermuda Triangle’ due to the parallels drawn between these incidents and those in the North Atlantic.

Having defined a generation, still relevant across social consciousness today, of interest here is not necessarily what happened but what this chapter in Welsh history tells us about the socio-political conditions of the time and the people in which they affected. In the face of nuclear warfare, rising global tensions and The Cold War; alien invaders provided the ideal distraction from the very real threat of those in the East.

Supernatural sightings

On the 4th of February 1977, fourteen children claimed to have seen something extraordinary. According to them, a dome-topped spaceship had appeared in the field adjacent to their schoolyard. Having fled in terror, they promptly alerted their teachers who initially dismissed their claims as products of vivid imaginations. Upon further insistence, the pupils were then asked to draw what they had seen; all producing similar images, despite having been separated to ensure a genuine outcome. Their conviction inspired many to listen; including investigators from the British Unidentified Flying Objects Research Association (BUFORA). The otherwise quiet village was now abuzz with news of a UFO, quickly deemed ‘The Thing’ by locals.

Michael Webb (10), Philip Reece (10), Jeremy Passmore (9), David George (9) and Tudor Owen Lloyd Jones (10) on what they had witnessed that day.

Other encounters soon followed.

Rosa Granville, owner of the Haven Fort Hotel, claimed a UFO had passed near her establishment; leaving scorch marks on the ground where it later landed. She reported that two giant figures, with very long limbs and blank facial features, emerged from the craft – while another family in town, the Coombes, argued they had also encountered these aliens in April of the same year.

Every day, locals reported seeing strange and mysterious objects in the sky; some even insisted they had come face-to-face with extraterrestrials from another planet.

“It was a good 7ft tall, it had a silver suit with a motorbike visor as a face. I thought, ‘that’s not a man, no way is that a man.’”

By the summer of 1977, the once ordinary village had become infamous as a hub for the paranormal and unexplained.

(...)

Source: https://walessince1945.wordpress.com/2023/11/25/the-welsh-bermuda-triangle-ufos-and-extraterrestrial-phenomena-in-1970s-pembrokeshire/

The Uninvited is the story of an ordinary family living in South Wales who found themselves entangled in a series of unearthly encounters in 1977.Dubbed “The British Roswell” and “The Welsh Triangle” by many publications, the story of the events surrounding the Coombs family and Ripperston Farmhouse live on to this very day.BookRefine Publishing is aware of previous copies of this book that had formatting issues due to bad quality control. If you were affected by this problem we deeply apologise and would like to offer you a replacement. We are a small company but we pride ourselves on rectifying any disappointment. Please contact us at our website.

It should be pointed out that the UFO activity around the farm was not a one-off event, but a series of experiences that occurred between mid January and mid December 1977.

Although the Ripperston farm is situated in a rather isolated area of South Wales, there were (are) a number of high security (perhaps top secret) military bases close by. According to the records, UFO’s were reported over these bases and the military were involved in some “unusual” activities and searches.

The Ripperston Farmhouse story began on the 14th of January 1977, when Pauline Coomb saw a “great ball of incandescent light, hanging motionless over the field near the cliff top”. It was not unusual to see strange lights in the sky (because of the military activity), but this was different.

After approximately twenty minutes the light started to move, swinging from side to side (much like a pendulum), as it got nearer to the ground and disappearing below the cliff.

Pauline woke up her husband (who was sleeping in a chair at the time) and he went to the cliff top path to search for whatever the object was. Unfortunately, he found nothing.

The following day newspapers were carrying the story of UFO sightings. Although Billy didn’t really believe that his wife’s “light” was a “flying saucer”, he did admit that there were some strange things going on. He was quoted as saying “There were as many as fifty frogmen below the cliff. Unmarked army trucks, soldiers in camouflage. The Navy was there too…building some sort of path beneath the water. This doesn’t make sense!”

Clinton, Pauline’s eldest son, commented on a strange humming noise coming from outside the bathroom window which would enter and fill the whole room.

Two schoolboys claimed to have seen a dome shaped UFO with “pulsating green and yellow lights” hovering over a building in Haverfordwest. They also approached a blue light in a field near their school, which flew off at speed when they got nearer.

Fourteen other schoolboys also saw a landed UFO near their school and a “silver” figure near the craft. They described the craft as having ten or eleven windows and a kind of ramp leading from a door.

One Friday evening, as Pauline and Billy were watching a movie on television, Pauline was distracted by a flickering light in the window, and the whining of their dog Blackie. The light was still there after an hour, and Billy (who had fallen asleep) was woken by what he thought was car headlights. He then noticed a “shimmering figure” of a man at the window.

The figure was wearing a silver suit and apparently seven foot tall. It didn’t move and just seemed to be staring inside. Billy commented that there was only blackness where the face should have been, and it sounded as if the man at the window was wearing a helmet with a shaded visor (much like astronauts would use).

A little while later the figure at the window raised a gloved hand to the glass, which started to rattle. At the same time the lights dimmed and the television stopped working.

Billy managed to call his neighbour and the police, and when the police siren could be heard approaching the farm, the figure vanished.

The following morning Pauline discovered “a scorched rose bush in the flower bed and huge footprints beneath the window”.

A newspaper reported a sighting involving a “Jelly Mould” shaped UFO in a garden near the farm, which was said to be fifteen feet high and fifty feet wide.

Shortly after reading this in the newspaper, Pauline’s friend, Rosa, telephoned to say that she had seen a dome shaped UFO in a field near the hotel where she worked. It produced a light and two tall, human like, figures got out and appeared to be searching for something on the ground.

The description of the figures seemed to match the one seen at Pauline and Billy’s window. Rosa said the figures returned to the craft after about twenty minutes and it flew off at great speed, in the direction of the farm.

Sightings of dome shaped UFO’s and figures in silver suits continued, and on one occasion the Coomb’s son, Keiron, claimed to see a “tall dark, fluid-like shape” in the front room of their farmhouse.

However, a sighting on the 12th of November was perhaps the most bizarre of all. After seeing a UFO (in the daytime) perform some spectacular maneuvers, it suddenly plunged into the sea by the famous Stack Rocks.

Pauline took her kids with her to investigate this further from the cliff tops, and on the rocks below she saw two figures in silver suits, who she estimated to be between eight to twelve feet tall. She noticed a “door” in the rocks, where one of the figures emerged and they moved around the base of the rock. After the figures returned through the door, it faded away and could no longer be seen.

On returning home, Pauline received a call from her friend Rosa. Apparently, she had been looking at Stack Rocks with her binoculars and saw a “silvery” UFO fly into an entrance on the Rock. Sometime later silver-suited figures came out of the opening in the Rock and climbed down to the sea and back again several times.

After one more sighting on the 19th of December 1977, the UFO activity came to an end at the Ripperston Farmhouse.

Did these events really happen? It would certainly seem so, but whether this involved Aliens or advanced military equipment and personnel we cannot say for sure.

Considering these events happened more than 32 years ago, and not that long after the moon landing, it seems unlikely that the military would have such crafts. We can only assume that a more advanced race was responsible for these sightings, and were working with the knowledge of the military.

If this is true, it supports the belief of a cover-up and indicates how long this has been going on. It also asks the question of why this is being kept a secret. Do aliens want to keep their presence a secret from the general public, or do some of our leaders insist on this (for personal gain)?

The fact that people are still reporting UFO sightings might suggest that if aliens are involved, they are not that worried about being spotted. However, the authorities take a much more defensive role and make every effort to keep information from us.

It would be nice to think the authorities have our interests at heart in keeping this information secret, but knowing the government and politicians as we do, that is very unlikely.

There is a growing feeling on the internet that something “major” is about to break shortly on the subject of UFO’s and Aliens, and my personal view is that this will be good news, although maybe not for everyone.

This is a UFO case I recall from the mid 1970s as a young boy which featured on BBC’s John Craven’s Newsround ( a popular children’s news show that tackled some serious subjects in the day such as the troubles in Northern Ireland). It rapidly spread to the national news in the UK and even received international coverage. It has eerie similarities to the Westall case in Australia in 1966. However to this day it remains somewhat low key despite it being one of the few UFO cases that was investigated by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) as part of a number of sightings in the area during 1977 that were commonly dubbed “The Broad Haven Triangle”. 

Although there are brief mentions of it on this site (if there is more detail I couldn’t find it) and on other websites around the net, the information is fairly sparse and rarely goes into more detail than a brief synopsis. So here goes my first attempt at a full thread on here and I hope you find it informative and worth the effort (this did take hours of investigation). 

The story begins on the 4th February 1977. According to the regional newspaper the Western Telegraph of Feb 7th 1977, fourteen children at Broad Haven junior school near Haverfordwest, South Wales, had witnessed a landed UFO in a field close to the school but it was somewhat obscured by shrubbery. The report also confirms that 6 of the youngsters reported seeing a humanoid figure. 

A local BUFORA (British UFO Research Association) co-ordinator, Randall Jones Pugh, was telephoned at 4:50pm on the day by one of the children’s parents. Apparently the sighting had frightened the pupils and they were adamant they had something out of the ordinary. The pupil concerned, David Davies described a silver, cigar shaped object the size of a bus, hovering up above the trees as if trying to take off. It seemed to stop for a few seconds and disappeared back behind the tree line again. Davies agreed to accompany Pugh to show him the area where the sighting occurred. However it was now around 6pm, it was raining heavily and the light had all but faded. Given that the alleged landing site was obstructed by a fence bordering a fast flowing stream, Pugh noted the location and decided to make further investigations the following day. 

A local BUFORA (British UFO Research Association) co-ordinator, Randall Jones Pugh, was telephoned at 4:50pm on the day by one of the children’s parents. Apparently the sighting had frightened the pupils and they were adamant they had something out of the ordinary. The pupil concerned, David Davies described a silver, cigar shaped object the size of a bus, hovering up above the trees as if trying to take off. It seemed to stop for a few seconds and disappeared back behind the tree line again. Davies agreed to accompany Pugh to show him the area where the sighting occurred. However it was now around 6pm, it was raining heavily and the light had all but faded. Given that the alleged landing site was obstructed by a fence bordering a fast flowing stream, Pugh noted the location and decided to make further investigations the following day. 

On the Saturday morning (5th Feb 1977) Pugh phoned Hugh Turnbull of the Western Telegraph. Both men accompanied 10 year old David Davies to what was considered to be the landing site. However the search proved fruitless and no tyre marks, tracks or other evidence of anything large being in the area was found. There did, however, appear to be damage to a nearby telegraph pole with the support beam left at an angle. Pugh considered that the heavy rain may have accounted for washing away some traces of evidence but found it implausible that he found nothing at all in the area. 

The headmaster, Ralph Llewellyn, and his staff had at first been sceptical of the children’s excited verbal reports and did not make the effort to go outside and investigate. They were eventually convinced the pupils had been shocked by something they had seen. So Llewellyn asked the pupils to sketch and report what they had seen under examination like conditions so they could not compare notes. 

Here are some of the descriptions given by the pupils at the time when asked to recount their stories: 

David John Davies (10) : said that they were standing at the top end of the school playing field watching a bush where the object was sighted. Philip (Rees) was trying to get a close look when up from the bush popped a cigar-shaped object. It was silvery, bright and humming. It seemed to be tugging . Then we all ran. The time was around 3.35pm as they had just finished school. 

2015 on ATS:

The object was pearlescent silvery-grey, approximately 40 feet long, torpedo/cigar-shaped with an upper domed section that covered the central third of the vehicle and which was topped with a red pulsating light. I was the last of a dozen or so children to see the object on that day. 

Our sighting was not the last visit to the school though and unbeknown to the children and most of the small community the craft returned a few days later and was on this occasion seen by a teacher and three of the canteen staff. 

I have never in the last 38 years exaggerated or sensationalised the account of what I saw and have never suggested that what we saw was of extra-terrestrial origin. 

Many suggestions have been made that what we saw was either an agricultural vehicle or an aircraft from nearby RAF Brawdy. I'd like to state categorically that this is definitely not the case as the majority of the children at the school, myself included, came from farming backgrounds and would have been able to identify any agricultural vehicle in use and besides agricultural vehicles and implements aren't known for their ability to fly and because of Brawdy's proximity we were also familiar with almost every RAF aircraft in the skies. 

It was also independently verified that no vehicle was at the location of the sighting on that day and that because of the boggy ground it was impossible for any vehicle to be there. 

I suffered years of bullying and abuse during my secondary school years,some of which was truly horrific but however much I was beaten I would never recant on my account. Even at the age of 11 I refused to abandon my principles. These days I'm quite defensive over the matter having spent the best part of four decades trying to get to the truth regarding what we saw.

Philip James Rees (10) stated that he saw silvery object at ground level around 1.30pm after school dinner and was still there when he went back into school at 2.00pm. “My friends and I asked the headmaster to have a look at the object, but he refused. A couple of my friends saw movement of a figure, but I did not. I was frightened. Two friends, Tudor and David, were very frightened.” 

Micheal Mathieson Webb (11) : “It was silver and a cigar shape with a big dome and a red light flashing on top.” 

David R. George (9) saw both the object and the humanoid. Initially after 1.00pm and the and then at 3.35pm. He stated that the object was huge and silver-coloured. It was shining and humming, and looked like a saucer with a point. He saw the occupant who was silver suited, and whose features were not seen apart from “odd long” ears. He also said that one boy was so frightened that he cried. 

Tudor Owen Lloyd Jones (10): Reported an object at ground level and behind a bush and stated that he saw a “man” and admitted to becoming very scared. 

Schoolmaster -Llewellyn later said that the children were quite adamant they had seen something unusual and he felt confident that they had not colluded in fabricating a story. 

Hugh Turnbull decided to run with the story in the Western Telegraph on the 7th of Feb 1977 

Excerpt below: 

“…the flying saucer was first seen at lunchtime on Friday (Feb 4th 1977), behind a bush about 300 yards from the school. Most of the children give the object a classical saucer shape, though other s have drawn it looking more like a pudding, or even a cigar. Some accounts give it a dome and windows; others say it had a flashing light. 

The children say it disappeared and re-appeared from time to time. It was seen by other pupils during the afternoon break and immediately after school. Six of the youngsters say they saw a spaceman with the saucer. He was dressed in the same silvery grey colour as his saucer and – according to some witnesses – had pointed ears like Mr. Spock. 

Ten-year old David Ward said “He wasn’t a very tall person, and he didn’t look very nice either.” 

RAF Officer, Squadron Leader Timothy Webb was convinced that his son Michael had witnessed a genuine UFO. 

On the 17th Feb. one of the teachers, who wished to remain anonymous, stated to BUFORA researcher Pugh, that she had left the school by the side entrance (facing the east) on the day . Something shining had caught her eye. She stopped and could see a large oval shaped object with a slight dome, the colour of shining metal. She also heard a humming noise and the object glided away to the left. 

In direct contrast to these fantastic stories, Liz Philpott , one of the administrative staff at the school believed she knew what had happened and it was something much more mundane. She believed the children and other witnesses had seen a tanker of some sort in the adjoining fields. 

She wandered down to the nearby Sewerage depot and contacted the site manager. She asked him in confidence to confirm if any of his men had driven a tanker down into the field. His answer was a simple “Absolutely not. No way could we get down there”. They too looked for tracks and tyre marks but could find no evidence of a vehicle or machinery in the field. 

Pugh noted that the terrain had a gentle slope but then became very steep in the alleged area of the landing site. A large vehicle would struggle to get into the field and would almost certainly be unable to get out. He also records that the vantage point from where the children saw the alleged UFO they were looking up a rising slop of sparse shrubbery between the trunks of two trees that were growing together. 

A later BBC news programme suggested that the children had seen the rotating arm of a sewerage macerating machine. Pugh dismisses this entirely as the machinery was below eye level from the point of observation. His 1977 report for Flying Saucer Review was summed up with his assertion that the story was factually correct and that if fear was added as a criterion of such an incident being real that one pupil had became hysterical and fled so quickly that he’d fell and bruised his leg. 

Taken alone this story could be dismissed as the furtive imaginations of young schoolboys watching too much Doctor Who and Star Trek. (Star Wars and Close Encounters had not yet arrived in Britain in early 1977). 

However this was only the beginning of strange sightings in the area. Far too many too note but here are a few. 

A farmer’s wife Pauline Coombs reported a number of unearthly things to the Western Telegraph in a story appearing on April 28th 1977. She reported her car had been chased by a “flying football”, and then on the Saturday (23rd) in the early hours of the morning she and her husband, Billy, were watching a late night movie when the saw a large faceless spaceman at the window to their farmhouse. While later investigators were sceptical of some of the more sensational claims, others were impressed by the genuine terror displayed by the couple at the time. A policeman who responded to their emergency call said (in 1996) that in all his 26 years service “that was the most frightened family I have ever been to see.” There was no doubt the couple had seen something unusual, but what?” 

Also In April 1977 Rosa Granville, who ran the Haven Fort Hotel in nearby Little Haven, was in bed at around 2.30am. She was agitated and awoken by strange noise and lights. She peered outside into the darkness and described seeing an object like an "upside-down saucer" in the field next to the hotel. If that wasn’t odd enough she also states she saw two 'faceless humanoid' creatures with pointed heads. Grenville told an interviewer in "There was so much heat - I was by the window - my face felt burned. There was light coming from it and flames of all colours. Then creatures came out of these flames, that are what I don't understand. I shouted 'Hello, what are you doing there' - they looked faceless. I couldn't see their features." 

There were many other tales of UFOs and humanoid figures from the area in 1977. One came from a Stephen Taylor (17) from Upper Lethyr, Penycwm a few miles north of Broad Haven .He reported encountering a humanoid over six feet tall wearing a sort of semi-transparent suit on March 13, 1977. So close to the being was he that he said “I was so frightened…I just took a swing at it and ran”. Earlier in the evening about 9pm he had spotted “a pear drop shape, glowing orange”. Eventually he arrived scared out of his wits at his friend’s home to be met with disbelief. 

In 1996, it seemed the mystery was solved. The Western Mail carried a report from a local businessman Glyn Edwards claiming he had wandered around the area in a silver suit in 1977 as a prank."Alien sightings were all the rage, so I took a stroll around for a bit of fun," he is reported as saying. However, Mrs Granville remains insistent that she had not been the subject of a hoax. 

Not to be outdone in 2007 James Carlson from Albuquerque, New Mexico, wrote into the Fortean Times. He was stationed at the US Naval Facility in Brawdy (which was also an RAF base) in the 1980s. In his letter Carlson tells how one of his colleagues, who was identified only by the name Steve, saw him reading a book about paranormal incidents. The book quotes an RAF officer, who states the descriptions of "alien" suits were in no way similar to military uniforms at the time. However Carlson was told by Steve that the fire fighting gear used by American military personnel on the base was very similar. He said, "Steve told me that while serving on the fire team of his division, he would often don the asbestos suit and oxygen breathing apparatus provided. 

"Fire preparation drills, even those conducted at night would require members of the fire team to search the areas around the base, and Steve claimed that during these drills he became responsible for two of the alien sightings." Steve had never came forward however. Perhaps he shared suits with Glyn Edwards? 

During the summer of 1977 the MP for Pembrokeshire Nicholas Edwards was inundated with letters about UFOs in the area and requested a discreet enquiry from the MoD. Dr. John Gilbert the Minister of Defence, unusually, ordered the enquiry. The investigation was carried out by one Flt. Lt .Cowan who spoke to Mrs. Granville at the Haven Fort Hotel. He examined the landing site but "could find no evidence of a landing" and could offer no further explanation. His report quoted that the area was over flown by many civilian and military craft and that perhaps a prankster was at work as there had been speculation in the neighbourhood. 

He added finally that, "should a UFO arrive at RAF Brawdy we will charge normal landing fees and inform you immediately". 

The case was dismissed as not of defence significance. 

So there you have it. 

It’s not a blockbuster UFO story like a Roswell or a Rendlesham Forest. There are no tales of abduction , no little grey men, and no evidence other than eye witness testimony. Some of which may be exaggerated or even fabricated by people seeking attention. However something odd really was going on from late winter into the summer of 1977 around Broad Haven? 

The children at the school do seem to have seen something but the question has to be what? 

Could it have a simple mundane answer? Was it just a silly prankster (or number of them) wandering around during all times of the day and night in a silver suit? Could it perhaps have been some kind of secret military exercise in the area that we are still not aware of? Or did something stranger happen in South Wales in 1977? 

I can't really decide on this one. Does anyone else have any information about the case? 

Sources: 

• Flying Saucer Review Vol 23 No.1 1977 

• Western Telegraph Feb 7th 1977 

• Britain’s Closest Encounters (UK DVD) 

• Google Earth 

• National Archives document ref: defe-24-2043-1 

• news.bbc.co.uk... 

• www.uk-ufo.org... 

• www.12vn.net... 

• www.oocities.org... 

• www.walesonline.co.uk...

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-18798867

(...) One of them was the sighting at the Grade II listed former Haven Fort Hotel located on the headland between Broad Haven and Little Haven. At that time the hotel and home was owned and run by Rosa Granville and in 2016 her daughter Francine recalled what her mother had seen in 1977.

Francine said:

"My mum Rosa was a no-nonsense sort of woman – this was very much out of character. She was not the type of person who would believe in aliens. It was early morning and mum was woken by a buzzing noise and she thought she'd left the gas boiler on. Once downstairs she realised the noise was from outside. She looked out and saw about 100ft away an oval object she could only describe as a 'spacecraft' with lights slowly land and two figures emerge in silver suits. She was terrified because the figures, although reminiscent of men, had exceptionally long arms and legs. Their heads were covered by helmets. She called them creatures."

The West Wales flap of 1977 is second only to the Warminster “Thing” in British UFO history. Documents released in 2005 have revealed how a secret military investigation was launched into claims that alien craft and their tall humanoid occupants were taking a particular interest in the Welsh coastline. DAVID CLARKE investigates.

The death in 2003 of veteran Welsh UFOlogist Randall Jones Pugh passed without notice within the UK UFO community. But less than three decades ago Pugh, a retired vet, was a leading spokesman for the subject and the key promoter of Britain’s hottest new UFO “flap”. This was focussed upon a strip of rugged coastline within the Pembroke National Park near Pugh’s home which became, for a short time in 1977, the scene of strange encounters which made national headlines.

Earlier in the year Pugh, in an interview for a local paper, discussed sightings in 1976 and predicted there soon would be a spate of similar events in West Wales. But even he was not prepared for what happened next. During lunchtime on 4 February 15 schoolchildren at Broad Haven Primary School said they watched a silver cigar-shaped UFO in fields behind their school. Some of the group, aged from nine to 11 years, claimed they saw a silver man with pointed ears emerge from the craft. Their stories were dismissed as fantasy but the children were so adamant they had seen something unusual they handed in a petition to the police station. Their head teacher later asked them to draw the UFO and was amazed at how similar their pictures were.

Randall Pugh was instrumental in bringing the story to the attention of the media and it became an overnight sensation. Journalists and TV crews flocked to the Welsh coast from all corners of the UK. Flying saucers were soon the main topic of conversation in the principality. By May straightforward lights in the sky had been replaced by stories of giant humanoid figures in spacesuits, similar to those used by astronauts, seen prowling around remote countryside late at night.

A whole gamut of Fortean phenomena appeared to cluster around the Coombs family at Ripperston Farm. Here a dairyman, Billy Coombs, his wife Pauline and their five children told of repeated close encounters with UFOs and their occupants which left a trail of burned out cars and TV sets and spiralling electricity bills. Pauline had a sighting almost every month and one occasion the car she was using to drive her children along a country lane was pursued by a fiery object shaped like a rugby football. Later the couple claimed a herd of cows were inexplicably teleported from a locked field into to an adjacent farmyard. But the most terrifying incident of all happened in the early hours of 23 April as the couple watched a late movie. Suddenly they were terrified by the appearance of a 7ft tall figure in a spacesuit, whose blank face was framed in the window of their sitting room. While later investigators were sceptical of some of the more sensational claims, others were impressed by the genuine terror displayed by the couple at the time. Indeed the policeman who responded to their 999 call said in 1996 that in all his 26 years service “that was the most frightened family I have ever been to see.” There was no doubt the couple had seen something unusual, but what?

The weird events at Ripperston Farm were chronicled in three books one of which, The Welsh Triangle by Peter Paget had been partly inspired by The Sun headline “Spaceman Mystery of the Terror Triangle.” What exactly constituted the Welsh version of the Bermuda Triangle was never entirely clear, but it included most of the southeast corner of St Bride’s Bay along with the towns of Milford Haven and Haverfordwest. The third and last book to chronicle the Welsh weirdness was The Dyfed Enigma, produced by Pugh in collaboration with cryptozoologist Ted Holliday, which linked the UFO stories with Welsh fairy folklore and ley-lines.

Journalist Hugh Turnbull, who chronicled the events for the local weekly, Western Telegraph, told me his pet theory was that “something military” lay behind the sightings. A more extreme version, favoured by Paget, was that aliens had established an underground base beneath the Stack Rocks in St Bride’s Bay, where UFOs had been seen to hover and disappear. This form of speculation – shared by some local people - was founded on the fact that within a 20 mile radius of Broad Haven, where many of the reports were concentrated, there were a range of military bases. To the north was the top secret rocket testing station at Aberporth while Brawdy, near St David’s, trained pilots on Hawker Hunters and housed both a Tactical Weapons Unit and a US Navy underwater research station – in reality a unit which tracked the movements of Soviet submarines using a network of microphones. »

RAF Squadron Leader Tim Webb, who oversaw pilot training from the base, said the description of the suits worn by the “spacemen” did not match anything used by base personnel. By a curious coincidence Webb’s son Michael happened to be one of the youngsters who claimed they saw a UFO land behind the primary school at Broad Haven. “I believe him implicitly,” he told The Observer at the time. “I’ve yet to see a UFO but I think there has to be something supernatural or paranormal.” Heady words for an RAF spokesman who would normally be expected to debunk sightings of flying saucers!

Meanwhile, demands were increasing for an official inquiry into the West Wales UFOs. One witness, hotelier Rosa Granville, asked her MP Nicholas Edwards – later to become Welsh Secretary in Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet – to demand answers from the Ministry of Defence. Mrs Granville ran the Haven Fort Hotel which stands in a dramatic location overlooking St Bride’s Bay. Although she was aware of a legend about a ‘white lady’ ghost haunting the grounds this did not prepare her for the events of 19 April 1977. In the earlier hours of that morning Mrs Granville was disturbed by a strange buzzing noise and, on looking out, saw an oval-shaped brightly-lit UFO and two human-like figures in boiler suits that appeared to be measuring something. The following day, she found a flattened area of grass in the area which, it emerged, overlooked a field which contained a bunker used by the Royal Observer Corps.

Within days of the MP’s intervention a Squadron Leader from RAF Brawdy visited the hotel to interview the owners. According to their account, he told them there “absolutely nothing at RAF Brawdy” that could account for the UFO. And, Mrs Granville claimed “he asked me not to say anything about the incident to anyone, as he thought it was best not to alarm the general public.” However, in his reply to the MP the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Defence James Wellbeloved, said that apart from Mrs Granville’s report the MOD had “no record of unusual activity in the area.”

But behind the public platitudes it seems a discreet investigation was indeed going on, hidden even from the politicians. For on 14 June 1977 the head of S4 (Air), the MoD branch which dealt with UFOs, took the unusual step of asking the RAF Police, in the form of the Provost & Security Service (P&SS) to make a “discreet enquiry” into events in Wales. The P&SS are responsible for policing the RAF and have a section which investigates complaints about low-flying aircraft. Early in 1977 they moved to a secretive facility deep in the Wiltshire countryside called RAF Rudloe Manor. UFO authors Tim Good and Nick Redfern have claimed that Rudloe – rather than the UFO desk in Whitehall - has for many years been the real HQ for the British Government’s UFO taskforce.

The papers released this year throw new light on claims of a conspiracy involving Rudloe Manor. While they do support the claim that P&SS were involved in secret UFO work they suggest it was hardly a priority for them. In their letter to P&SS the MOD wrote: “We have not invoked the assistance of P&SS before on UFOs…and the last thing I want to do is involve you in extraneous problems which would divert you from your more immediate work on low flying complaints.” It goes on to ask them to assess “the volume of local interest and/or alarm and whether there is a readily discernable rational explanation, or whether there is prima facie evidence for a more serious specialist enquiry.” And the writer went to some length to emphasise his request must be treated in confidence, adding: “I have not even told the Minister I am consulting you.”

Due to the covert nature of the investigation, no final report on the P&SS investigation of events in the Welsh Triangle has survived. But in December 1977, in a secret briefing on UFO policy submitted to the MOD’s Defence Intelligence Staff, the head of S4 wrote: “There is always a steady public interest in UFOs and from time to time it tends to increase unaccountably…[in the summer] there was some concern in Wales, although the RAF Police thought this could have been the work of a practical joker.”

The fact that inquiries led the RAF Police to suspect a hoaxer may have been responsible for some of the Welsh UFOs fits with a strong local rumour which persists to this day. Hilary Evans, who debunked some of the more exaggerated stories in an article published in 1982, heard that two members of a round table club were responsible for the sightings of “spacemen” at the Haven Fort Hotel and Ripperston Farm. They came up with the idea after borrowing silver-lined asbestos suits worn by local oil refinery workers for a fancy dress evening in Broad Haven shortly after the children’s sighting.

In 1996 BBC presenter Ray Gosling tracked down one of the jokers for a Radio 4 documentary on the West Wales flap. Shortly afterwards Glyn Edwards, a member of Milford Haven’s Round Table confessed his part to the Western Mail. He described the spaceman outfit as having: “… a solid in-built helmet so I would have looked about 7ft tall. Alien sightings were all the rage, so I took a stroll around for a bit of fun. I remember when I visited the garden of a certain lady, who later called the police, that I had to dive into a hedge because she appeared to be aiming a rifle or a shotgun at me.”

But despite all Gosling’s attempts to persuade the witnesses from Broad Haven school to confess, the boys – now in their forties – stuck doggedly by their story. One of them, David Davies, told him: “I did see something unexplained that day and I will stick to that story for the rest of my life.” The Welsh Triangle may hold onto its secrets for some years to come.