Welsh UFO sightings from 1972, compiled from the SUFON database and various contemporary journals; for sightings from other years please click HERE.
PRESS
February
The Liverpool Echo of February 18th 1972 reported:
Police from three counties are among the scores of people who have reported seeing unidentified flying objects in recent days. A senior Gwynedd police officer confirmed last night that patrol cars as far apart as Cheshire and Abergele had reported sightings of a brightly lit object flashing across the sky. The versions of the UFO vary from a white light with a tail to a dazzling green flare.
Residents in Rhyl and Prestatyn have also reported spotting mystery lights at night while similar reports have been received from Wrexham, Mostyn, Broughton and Birkenhead as well as from police stations on the M6 linking Birmingham and Preston. Commented the police spokesman: "There seems to be no explanation for these sightings except the possibility of meteorites."
PRESS
June 11th
Ogmore Valley
Late evening near midnight in the Ogmore Vallley. Off duty police officer PC David Harris was out with his father-in-law walking his dog when they observed a tubular object some feet in length moving slowly across Llangeinor Mountain before disappearing over treetops. The altitude of the UFO was described as 100 feet from the ground. There were lights at each end of the object but no wings were observed. Weather conditions at the time were clear and no noise was heard at any time. The duration of the sighting was one minute.
Flying Saucer Review V18/N4 (July /August 1972) reported:
Policeman Spots Ogmore UFO
"Mr. J. Eveleigh of Rumney, Cardiff, drew our attention to a report in the South Wales Echo of June 12, 1972, and a few days later we obtained a more detailed report of the incident from the Western Mail of June 13, 1972. In both reports the date is quoted as "last night" which, we can only assume, was June 11."
The mystery of an unidentified flying Object was seen drifting over a Glamorgan valley village and which frightened sheep and birds was still unsolved last night. Police checks with RAF and airport authorities failed to throw any light on the incident which was reported late on Sunday night.The sighting was made over the Ogmore Valley by Blackmill village constable David Harris and his father-in-law, Mr. Alexander Anderson, aged 57, a retired miner from Maesteg. They were out walking Constable Harris's brown spaniel Judy shortly before midnight when they saw the object "floating" across Llangeinor Mountain and then disappear over the treetops.It was travelling from west to east. They described it as being about 30 feet long and tubular in shape. There were white lights at the front and back but no wings. It was less than 100 feet from the ground.Mr Anderson said, "It was a beautiful, clear night and no noise. There was no traffic about. Suddenly we looked up, and there it was. At first we thought it might be a shooting star. We watched it in silence for about a minute before it disappeared behind the trees. We just couldn't make it out. There was this dark, tubular shape with lights at both ends."Meanwhile, a few hundred yards away on the other side of the village a smallholder, Mr. Chris John, was awakened by bleating sheep and bird cries."I am a very light sleeper, and, just before midnight, I was woken up by sheep bleating in a field behind the house. I first thought it was the dogs and I dashed to the window. It was a beautiful night, and I saw the sheep tearing up the field and into their shed. They were very frightened but there were no dogs about. Then the birds started up. It was all very queer whatever it was."
SUFON
Summer 1972 or 1973
Llansamlet, Swansea
Cath Phillips, aged about 16/17 had finished work at the DVLC (now DVLA), and had been home for a short time where she lived with her invalid mother at 10 Frederick Place, Llansamlet. The house is located on the south side of the road at its western end, not far from the junction with Bethel Road, It was after 5 pm she knows this because she finished work at 4 pm.It was a summer's day with a clear blue sky and she was inside the house when she noticed it suddenly getting very dark. She went out the front of the house into the garden to find out why and saw her auntie Hilary and cousin Rebecca Griffiths (Hilary's daughter) - both now deceased, standing there looking up at a round object which had been the cause of the sudden dimming of light.It was dark grey in colour and huge, covering the road and extending to the north well over the main railway line near Peniel Green and so would have had a diameter of hundreds of metres. Cath described it as like the sherbet flying saucer sweets, a thick disc with a rim around the centre. The craft was completely motionless and hovering over them, not very high. There were no flashing lights or sound. People driving past were stopping to look. It stayed in the same place for about two minutes when it suddenly vanished and it became light again. She tried to talk about it with her auntie and cousin but they did not want to discuss it. She remembers her auntie telling her, 'It didn't happen'.Cath went to the nearby Primrose Park a few days later and talked with friends about the sighting. She learned that people had seen it from the park, including those playing bowls at the time.She cannot remember it being reported in the local paper.
Source: SUFON Files; witness interviewed by Steve Drewson and Emlyn Williams on April 3rd 2017.
FSR
Early August, Evening
Wolf's Castle, Pembrokeshire
Michael Browning was fishing on the Western Cleddau River between Wolf's Castle and Treffgarne. He was having trouble with his casting and in consequence was glancing at the tip of his rod as it went up above his head. Suddenly he became aware of an object in the sky overhead. At first he paid little attention, being absorbed in the fishing, until he glanced a second time and saw it was still there. It appeared to be cylindrical, and was a dark grey or dark brown in colour. At one end it seemed to have an orange spot and, while he watched it, it suddenly started to move. It accelerated and moved away rapidly in a south-westerly direction. The orange end was in the trailing position as it started to depart. Michael stressed the fact that the object was stationary and that the acceleration began slowly and increased rapidly. He described the object as "something not normal" and said he had never seen anything like it before. He heard no sound of any sort from the object. He said he found it hard to estimate the length of the cylinder because its altitude was unknown and there was no point of reference. Even so, he felt it was not very high and he was able to follow the first part of its departure over the landscape before it flashed out of view. He had no subjective sensation of being watched or observed.
The witness was a personal friend of the author of the report (F. W. Holiday).
Source: 'Some Recent Welsh Cases' by F. W. Holiday - 'Flying Saucer Review' Vol. 20 No. 2 - 1974.
PRESS
Thursday September 14th, 20:30
Crumlin
Late evening a disc was sighted above the lower shoulder of a hill, Cefn Manmoel parallel to the Oakdale-Crumlin Road. It was watched by several witness, one of whom was Robert Philips who viewed the object through a telescope. He said it looked like an 'inverted soup bowl with dark rings underneath it which appeared to be spinning.' He called the police and several uniformed officers attended the scene, who confirmed the sighting. Sgt. Clive Williams described the object as an orange circle in the sky that changed its shape to a cone, and moved away rapidly when an aircraft flew overhead. The duration of the sighting was 60 minutes.
Source: The Dragon and the Disc F. W. Holiday 1973 page 216.
The Western Mail of Saturday September 16th 1972 wrote:
"Soupbowl" in the Sky"Three policemen called in after villagers claimed they had seen an object in the sky like a flying saucer said last night there was no doubt the sightings were genuine. Police were called after the object was reported by at least 20 people on a housing estate at Croespenmaen, Crumlin, in Monmouthshire. The bright orange object appeared in the sky on Thursday night (September 14th) in the North-West in the direction of the Brecon Beacons and changed rapidly in colour and size, said the witnesses.It was in the sky for about two hours, finally disappearing when an aircraft flew overhead.A spokesman at Glamorgan (Rhoose) Airport said last night that two Cambrian Airways Viscounts had landed at the airport at about the same time and could have passed over the area where the object was sighted. But as far as he was aware nothing unusual was spotted on the airport's radar. The Crumlin area lies directly beneath Green One - the corridor for aircraft flying between Britain and America - but a Civil Aviation spokesman said pilots in the area at the time had not reported anything strange.
The object was first spotted at 8:30 by Mr. Robert Phillips, aged 24, a plumber, of Meadow Walk, Croespenmaen, who was on his way home from Oakdale. He watched it for about 30 minutes through a telescope borrowed from a neighbour, and then phoned the police. He said the object looked like an 'inverted soupbowl with dark rings underneath it which appeared to be spinning.' Three times it disappeared at the approach of an aircraft, but on the third occasion it did not return.One of the policemen called to the scene, Sergeant Clive Williams, of Blackwood, said he saw an orange red circle in the sky which seemed to turn over to a cone-shape. "Its colour changed from red to white and green and it moved rapidly," he said. "I revisited the site in the morning and it must have been something in the sky as there are no mountains obstructing the view."
Flying Saucer Review V18/N6 (Nov/Dec 1972) commented: credit to F.W. Holiday who lives in Pembrokeshire and who observes - "The witnesses seem to have watched the object from the B4261 road between Oakdale and Crumlin. If one takes this approximate position and plots the area in the north-west at the lower shoulder of Cefn Manmoel - where presumably the object was visible - we then find that Tenby, Aberfan and the new location form a near straight line."
October, 11:30
Swansea
The witness recounted his sighting to Paul Fuller during the 1989 Open University Graduates' Research into Anomalous Phenomena conference held in Port Talbot. Jimmy Goddard wrote in Amskaya #16:
He had kept [it] to himself (except for telling his wife) since October 1972. He was driving through Swansea when a UFO came over his car and the now familiar cone of silence" or "Oz effect" came into action. He seemed to see three shadowy "entities" within the object who he felt sure were observing him. Though the road was busy, it was deserted while the UFO was there, but immediately it went things returned to normal and two cars came round the corner. It was suggested that some time-warping effect might have come into play here and in previous "Oz" happenings. The person concerned took Mr. Fuller to the place he had seen the object.
