Nov 22 2008
A POLICE helicopter had a close encounter of the alien kind in the skies over Birmingham, it has been revealed.
The near miss between the West Midlands police chopper and the UFO happened at 1,500ft above West Bromwich in May. The police aircraft was carrying out surveillance over the area when the attention suddenly switched from ground to sky.
Beside it was a small aircraft beaming out continuous blue-green lights. It came within 300ft, forcing the pilot to swerve out of its path, and appeared to circle the helicopter before flying off.
Initially, the pilot and two police observers dismissed the near miss as a close encounter with a model plane. But despite searching the area with a thermal camera, the pilot was unable to find any signs of radio-controlled activity. Details of the incident, which happened at about 9.50pm on May 2, were revealed in a document compiled by experts from the Airprox Board. The report describes the strange other aircraft only as ‘small and probably non-metallic’ and its intent as possibly ‘sinister’.
Nick Pope, who worked for the Ministry of Defence’s UFO desk and is nicknamed the British Fox Mulder after the science-fiction character in The X-Files, said: “A helicopter was nearly blown out of the sky.
“This is a disturbing incident which needs to be thoroughly investigated.”