Did a flying saucer land at RAF Cosford?
As the flying saucer came in to land at Cosford, the two RAF trainees didn't hang around to roll out the red carpet.
Instead, they shot off to tell the duty officer.
Now the story of that night in December 1963 is being researched by Cannock historian Richard Pursehouse.
"I have got the documents from the National Archives at Kew," said Richard.
It came to public notice through a story in the Express & Star on January 7, 1964, which told how two boy entrants and a railway signalman were thought to have seen the UFO two weeks before Christmas. After flashing green lights around the airfield, the flying saucer had taken off again.
However, the signalman concerned, Cecil Evans, of Pitchford Road, Albrighton, was quoted as saying he had seen nothing unusual, and he thought the boys may have seen reflections of lights in the clothing stores windows.
"Had a flying saucer landed I would certainly have known about it," he said.
And Flight Lieutenant Stevens, station officer at RAF Cosford, said that Wing Commander Wolsey, who was in charge of boy entrants, had investigated the matter and found no substance to it.
Nevertheless Richard's researches have turned up an article in a publication called the Flying Saucer and printed by the appropriately named Jupiter Press.
It carried a letter which amplified the report, saying "A bright dome-shaped object came down out of the sky and went behind a hangar... From the object came a green beam which swept around, searchlight fashion. The two watched it for perhaps two minutes and shot off to tell the duty officer, but by that time the thing had gone.
"The two were interrogated at length by the Camp Commandant and fellow officers."
The article said the Flying Saucer Review got on the case, causing inquiries to be made, and the Air Ministry's first reply was that two young students, not altogether sober, had been up to some pre-Christmas prank.
There was an aftermath, revealed by the documents in the National Archives.
Wilf Daniels, from Stafford, a member of the British Flying Saucer Movement and the British Unidentified Flying Objects Association, drove over to investigate and bumped into the station chaplain in Albrighton, and asked him about the incident.
Essentially there was a subsequent dispute, with the padre saying he did not say what he was said to have said. The exchange of high level letters in the RAF recommended that his best course was to do nothing as the controversy would then go away.
