The Welsh UFO Flap of 1977

In November 2017 I launched an online magazine called Shadows Of Your Mind dedicated the world of Ufology, the paranormal, the unexplained and alternative thinking.

Published, edited, designed and mostly written by myself what follows is one the articles that featured in the launch issue.

David Davies was just your average pupil at Broad Haven Primary School, but on 4th February 1977, while out playing football in the school field, a glint of silver in the nearby trees caught his eye and caused him to stop and watch. He described seeing a cigar shaped craft rising then descending behind some nearby trees. He wasn’t the only one either, other play mates also saw the object but by the time one of them had run in to the school to fetch a teacher, it had gone. The headmaster at the time, Ralph Llewellyn, sat the children down inside and under exam conditions, asked them to draw what they had seen. Each picture showed a variation of a semi-elliptical craft with a red flashing light on top of a small raised dome, while some pictures even had a silver-suited occupant descending from the craft. Estimates of the size averaged around 45ft long. The story made the national news and even the famous John Craven’s Newsround a popular children’s television programme. Hugh Turnbull of the local Western Telegraph was first on the scene to talk to the pupils along with local vet Randall James Pugh who knew some of the children. They also took a look at the area where the children had said the craft had landed but the ground was extremely muddy and there was no way of distinguishing if anything had landed. They did notice however that a nearby telegraph pole had been damaged near the top, the metal cross-T-piece bent out of shape. Sceptics claimed that the children had just seen a helicopter or a chrome tanker from the local sewage plant not far from the school, however upon checking the plant said no tankers arrived that day. Turnbull then justified that by remarking that “these are children from a farming background, they know what a tanker looks like.” One of the school teachers, Mrs Morgan, disclosed that she too had seen the craft out of the window followed by a little whirlwind of dust that came across the playground as it ascended.

The Broad Haven pupils with the drawings of what they saw that day © WesternTelegraph

We got in touch with Peter Paget, author of the book The Welsh Triangle, who spent a lot of time in the area following the incident for further information. He spoke to children at the school in the playing field, 200 yards from where the craft had been spotted. David Davies, Michael Webb, Tudor Jones, Paul Williams, David Ward, Philip Rees and Shaun Garrison all recalled seeing a silvery coloured disc with an occupant holding some sort of camera-sized object. Headmaster Llewellyn told Peter that although personally he was sceptical of such craft himself there was no reason to believe that the children had conspired to produce a “sustained, sophisticated hoax”. As it transpired it wasn’t the only sighting in the area as Peter soon found out.

DOWN ON THE FARM

Peter had been told of an incident at Ripperston Farm, near to the Atlantic coast, which was owned by the Coombs family. Pauline Coombs claimed she had been chased by a football-sized object while driving back home one night. A few nights later her and her husband Billy were watching a late night Western on the television when Pauline noticed a silvery glow outside in the dark. At that point the television started to suffer from interference and Billy leapt up from his chair as he saw something outside the window. As the pair stood clinging to each other, both of them were now staring at a huge spacesuited individual a few feet beyond through the window. They described the ‘man’ to Peter as over 7ft tall, clad completely in a one-piece silver aluminium-looking suit, capped by a square, solid-looking helmet fronted by an opaque, black square visor. Coming from the helmet was a thick, dark-coloured pipe which went back over his shoulder. As Pauline and Billy stood there too terrified to move, their farm dog Blackie, who would refuse to go out of the house after the incident, circled his tail and whimpered in a corner of the room.

A few weeks later in May 1977, Pauline related to Peter a further incident. From her kitchen window she had seen a landed UFO in a field towards the coast. It was 400–500 yards away and was resting on a tripod configuration. She estimated the silvery craft size to be about 14–20ft diameter with an antenna sticking out of the top. She reitereated that given her experience with different types of farm vehicles she couldn’t possibly have made a misidentification. A little while after the craft had left and flown out towards the Atlantic, Pauline and her husband inspected the field and discovered a burnt circular mark in the grass. The couples children also had their own experiences in a field near to the beach. On one occasion a large silver-suited figure walked past within 12 feet seemingly unconcerned with their presence. The other instance involved the sighting of three hovering UFOs, the lowest of which dropped a metal ladder, which a figure descended, and a bright red fluorescent ‘box’. After they had flown off the Coombs’ children ran into the field to locate the box without success. The next day blotchy red patches appeared on the arms and legs of the children who had never suffered from alllergies, and often played in the long grassy fields that surrounded their farm.

DUDE, WHERE’S MY COWS?

These incidents also had an effect on the Coombs’ livestock. The two fields where the UFO’s had been sighted were now off limits as far as their herd of Fresians were concerned with the anxious bovine refusing to enter either field and their milk yield was down 15%. One night something truly bizarre occurred at the farm. Billy Coombs was tending to a couple of heifers in the milking complex where the cattle were housed for the night, when he decided to pop back to the house for a quick cup of tea. Around midnight, leaving the shed locked and secure with the gates bolted, Billy made his way up to the farmhouse. As soon as he approached the door he heard the phone ringing and went to answer it. On the other end of the line was an irate neighbouring farmer who was insisting that Billy come down to his farm and retrieve his cows who were eating his crops. Amazed at the accusation Billy informed his neighbour that he’d left the cows all locked and secure in the milking shed less than a minute ago so there was no way they were his cows. His neighbour was equally insistent though so Billy told him to wait while he checked on his herd. When he got there, to his utter amazement, all 158 head of cattle, which he’d left contentedly munching hay, had disappeared! The shed was completely devoid of any signs of life. According to Coombs there is no way, in the time it took him to walk from the shed to the farmhouse, that a whole herd of cows could have negotiated not only a locked gate but also walked to a farm a mile away while negotiating hedges and more shut gates. Returning to the phone, a stunned Billy apologised profusely to his neighbour and rallied his sons to help him herd the cattle back to Ripperston Farm.
Ripperston Farm continued to be a hive of unexplained activity throughout the year but they weren’t the only family experiencing something mysterious. Between Broad Haven and Little Haven lies the Haven Fort Hotel which at the time was owned and run by Rose Granville and her family. Their experiences first started in April 1977 when husband Hayden noticed a strange procession of lights over St Brides Bay with some of the hotel guests. “It was just like watching a train in the sky.” he later told Peter Paget.

UFO HAVEN

A few nights later Rose had finished doing her late night checks in the hotel before going to bed around 2.30am. As she walked down the long corridor to the rear of the hotel, the passage was suddenly lit up as day. Rushing to a nearby window Rose was shocked to see a strange craft hovering about 200 yards away lit up underneath by a brilliant white-blue flame. She described the machine as dome-shaped and watched in terrified silence as two huge silver-suited figures emerged wearing a similar dark-tinted visor that the Coombs family had witnessed. These two figures walked a short distance away from the craft and seperated before they both bent down as if looking for something on the ground. Moments later one of them stood and looked in Rose’s direction who then ran to her bedroom to wake her husband. When the couple returned to the window, the craft had gone. A few nights after Rose again witnessed a strange light having locked up for the night. This time she watched as it moved up and down the coast and to and from the nearby Stack Rocks for forty-five minutes or more. The Granvilles experienced many more sightings with one particularly extraordinary event seen concurrently by Pauline Coombs.

Stack Rocks (not be confused with the formation south of Castlemartin about 20 miles away) is a rugged island, owned by Rose Granville at the time, situated half a mile offshore. It’s uninhabited except for local seabirds and the strong currents and heavy swell around the rocks dissuade anyone from venturing out for recreation or exploration. On October 30th, 1977, Pauline Coombs was driving an alternative route back to Ripperston Farm with her mother and other family members so they could appreciate the view across St Brides Bay on the clear autumn afternoon. Without warning a disc-shaped craft, between 40–50 feet, flew over the car and out toward the rocks. In Pauline’s words, after the craft went behind the rocks, “…we saw it reappear, circle the rock and it vanished into the rock between two doors that seemed to slide open!” she continued “We couldn’t believe our eyes. We saw it fly straight into those rocks. We winced, expecting an enormous explosion, but nothing happened.” Pauline later related to Peter Paget how they parked at a vantage point on the clifftop where they all saw the ‘door’ again but this time two silvery figures appeared walking along the edge of the rock, down what appeared to be steps, to examine something near the shoreline before returning back ‘inside’. The craft was no longer visible and Pauline confirmed that these figures were similar to the one that had stood outside of her window. The family were stunned and on their return to Ripperston Farm, Pauline had a telephone call from none other than Rose Granville. Rose told Pauline that she’d been sitting in the lounge at the hotel when her attention had been drawn to sunlight glinting off what happened to be the same craft as it headed to Stack Rocks. Rose had fetched her binoculars and had seen the same figures emerge and make their way down to the water’s edge. Her daughter Francine and husband Hayden also witnessed the pair, amazed as the figures retreated deep into the rocks.
So what exactly was happening out in that remote corner of Wales in the late 1970’s? We’ll never know for sure but the witness testimonies of the Broad Haven Primary School pupils, the Coombs and Granville families as well as host of other credible and respectable residents of the area who were interviewed by Peter Paget and his wife Jane, will ensure that the mystery will always be well recorded. Earlier this year, former pupil David Davies appeared at a 40th Anniversary conference organised by the Swansea UFO Network to talk about that day in the school field. Davies has never sought to make money out of his story and neither have the other children, after all they came from a simple country background and as their headmaster related, had no reason to construct such a complex hoax.

The Welsh Triangle is certainly one of the most intriguing UFO cases from the UK and we asked former MoD UFO investigator Nick Pope whether the Ministry had any information on the Broad Haven sightings. He informed us “I’m aware of the various Broad Haven UFO sightings, and indeed the wider series of sightings and other odd events that occurred at the time in the area — dubbed the Dyfed Triangle. I suspect that multiple factors were at work here and — as a result — there isn’t a single, neat solution to the mystery. Some of the incidents were probably caused by a combination of pranksters and mass hysteria. I know that was the suspicion of my predecessors on the MoD’s UFO project, as can be seen from some of the original MoD documentation, now declassified and released to The National Archives. But some of these documents show that behind the scenes, despite putting out the usual “no defence significance” line, the MoD took this seriously enough to order the military police to undertake a discreet investigation. So I keep an open mind, and don’t entirely rule out other more exotic explanations.”

Shadows Of Your Mind is available on issuu.com