to terms with the events that followed. "My immediate
reaction was to race upstairs and make sure my family were okay. I've never heard anything like it. I honestly expected
to open my front door and find corpses in the street."
Bob went on to say that although, during his military days, he had seen "one or two things he could not explain," the possible
existence of extraterrestrial intelligence had never really crossed his mind until he began seriously to investigate this
particular case some years later. Even so, he is still not convinced of ET's existence, and thus is still not certain whether
or not the crashed object was "an alien one." But he is convinced that something crashed just south of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire,
on the night of the 12th/13th of October 1987, that the facts surrounding the crash have been deliberately obscured by government
agencies, and that what happened that night has thus far escaped any rational and/or satisfactory explanation. Indeed, Bob
is of the opinion that the "freak thunderbolt" theory is even more ludicrous than the Roswell "weather balloon" story of 1947.
And I have to say I concur.
File 31: Appendix 01
Case Report: Cosmic Top-X39 Eyes Only
In an effort to gain more information about this incident I contacted local UFO researchers Andrew Emerson and Dominic Beglin.
A decade after the event both Andrew and Dominic remain convinced that the incident provoked one of Britain's biggest ever
military UFO cover-ups. Their story follows.
On the night of 12th/13th October 1987, residents reported seeing an object travelling very slowly in a zigzag manner over
Mansfield in Nottinghamshire. It was said to be making a "strange whiny noise, as though it was in some sort of trouble."
Some short while later two more objects were observed coming from the direction of Blidworth, near Sherwood Forest. This
was confirmed by some of the insurance claims, which reported objects coming from three different directions and "colliding
in midair" just south of Mansfield.
According to several witness reports, the objects were seen heading towards Kirkby-in-Ashfield when one of them seemed to
encounter some kind of difficulty. The UFO then lost power and came down in a large wood near Blidworth. The downed craft
appeared to "bounce" on impact, it was said, creating a violent shock wave that virtually destroyed an entire wood. One report
even said that, of the three UFOs, one resembled some kind of craft in difficulty while the other two "could have been missiles."
Indeed, further investigation found that several eyewitnesses observed a number of "balls of white light" converging on the
UFO as it came down, reminding one of similar eyewitness statements concerning the fate of the TWA 800 transatlantic flight
that "blew up” in midair off Long Island, USA in 1996. And then again of the film footage shot from the STS-48 NASA
Space Shuttle of a UFO inside Earth's orbit forced to take evasive action against what appears to have been a missile fired
at it from Earth. (In this respect one has to ask: Could these "balls of white light” have been "missiles?" And if
so: Who fired them? )
The unidentified craft then "disappeared into the wood," "exploded" on impact, and seemingly "bounced” to a second site
where the wreckage finally came to rest at a place known as The Warren, a large wooded area near the privately owned Annesley
Hall in Nottinghamshire. Within hours the entire area had been sealed off by police and the military.
At 2:15 a.m shortly after the "explosion," seven military helicopters came on the scene. A number of eyewitnesses then watched
"a troop-carrying helicopter [probably a Chinook] surrounded by Gazelles and Lynxes, flying at low speed and scanning the
area with powerful searchlights." These were spotted flying over Normanton, Sutton-in-Ashfield and Kirkby-in-Ashfield. Soon
after this, police cordoned off the first site (where the craft had first impacted and "bounced") erecting road blocks which
remained in place for a number of days. It was reported that the Army remained at the second site (th