1967 British flying saucer hoax
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Contents 7
| Type | Case (hoax) |
|---|---|
| Also known as | 1967 saucer hoax, the great saucer invasion |
| Date | Monday 4 September 1967 |
| Place | Six sites from the Isle of Sheppey to Clevedon, southern England |
| Made by | Apprentices of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough |
| Organisers | Christopher Southall and Roger Palmer |
The 1967 British flying saucer hoax took place on Monday 4 September 1967, when six silver "flying saucers" were found in a straight line across southern England, from the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames Estuary to Clevedon on the Bristol Channel. For a few hours members of the public, the police and the Army took them for alien craft, and the discovery set off a large police and military response.[1][2]
The saucers had been made and planted by aircraft engineering apprentices from the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough as a publicity stunt for their charity Rag Week. The organisers, Christopher Southall and Roger Palmer, both 21, owned up the same day. No action was taken against them, and the stunt raised about £2,000 for charity.[1][2]
Planning and building the saucers
The apprentices began planning the hoax in January 1967 as part of their coming Rag Week. Engineer Chris Southall later said the group was determined from the start that the saucers should be convincing. All of them were science-fiction fans, and they set out to design something that could not be recognised as man-made: there were to be no giveaway features such as portholes or aerials, and nothing that might be seen on an aircraft or a boat.[1][2]
Each saucer was moulded in two halves in plaster moulds, using glass-fibre-reinforced polyester resin with an outer gel coat mixed with aluminium powder. Once the halves were joined and polished, the saucer looked like a single piece of dull aluminium, with no joints, holes or protruding parts. Each measured 54 inches (1.4 metres) long, 30 inches (0.76 m) wide and 20 inches (0.51 m) deep and weighed about 100 pounds (45 kilograms).[1][2]
Before the halves were sealed, the lower half of each saucer was partly filled with a paste of flour and water, which fermented into a foul-smelling slime. An electronic oscillator with a loudspeaker, run from a battery, was fitted in the upper dome. Turning a saucer upside down flicked a switch that set it making an eerie sound. Southall said the aim was to make something that looked truly alien.[1][2]
Placing the saucers
Roger Palmer, also on the Rag committee, organised the apprentices into teams of two or three to take a saucer to each site. He briefed each group on what to do, including what to say if stopped by the police — that they had been out late at a party — and in each delivery party one member had a believable reason for being in the area. The teams drove out in the middle of the night to chosen spots on open ground that the public could easily reach.[1][2]
The six sites were spaced roughly evenly along a line close to 51.5 degrees north, running east to west between the Thames Estuary and the Bristol Channel:[1][2]
- a new housing estate near Queenborough on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent;
- Bromley golf course in south London;
- a horse paddock in the village of Winkfield, near Ascot;
- the village of Welford, near Newbury, in Berkshire;
- Chippenham in Wiltshire;
- Dial Hill in Clevedon, Somerset.
Some saucers were left silent; others were turned over as the teams left so that they began to give off their sound. None of the apprentices was challenged or identified. By the time the first saucers were found, the hoaxers were back at their hostel — home to 500 apprentices — eating breakfast after a night without sleep.[1][2]
Discovery
On the Isle of Sheppey the saucer was found by children playing outside. One of them, Ray Seager, later recalled running over to see a classic flying-saucer shape — a big silver dome with a rim around it. The children were excited, but there was real fear too when police arrived and waved them away; he thought the officers were as frightened as the children.[2]
Through the day, according to newspaper reports, the saucers were watched, listened to and weighed at police stations and at an RAF base. At the Berkshire site, satellite experts were called in amid reports that the object was bleeping and hissing and full of a mysterious liquid. Doubts began to grow after batteries were found inside one of the saucers.[2]
Response from the authorities
As each saucer was reported, the police cordoned it off. The British Army's Southern Command, several police forces, Army bomb disposal units and RAF helicopters were mobilised, and the Ministry of Defence was informed.[1]
The Army blew up the saucer found at Chippenham. The Sheppey saucer was lifted away by an RAF helicopter. One saucer was sent to the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston and another to the guided weapons division of the British Aircraft Corporation. When one was drilled open, the fermented paste inside burst out and covered the police officers in stinking slime.[1][2]
David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University, a consultant and curator for the UK National Archives' UFO files project, has argued that the response was flawed: if the material that sprayed over the officers had been a radiation hazard, he said, it would have been a disaster, yet it was simply washed down the drains.[2]
The reveal
The hoax's purpose was to win publicity for the RAE apprentices' Rag Week and boost its fundraising. The apprentices revealed the hoax on the same day the saucers were found. They had not expected the storm of media attention that followed, which included coverage abroad and double-page newspaper spreads; Southall said it was more than they had hoped for. He remembered going to a television studio that evening, and several of the apprentices were later interviewed on television.[1][2]
By the time the newspapers went to press, journalists had been told about the prank, but according to Southall that did not stop some of them from reporting it as an alien invasion. Press cuttings from the time suggest that official sources were curt when asked about it. The police confirmed that no action would be taken against the hoaxers; one officer in Bromley was quoted as saying that they were taking it "like gentlemen". The stunt raised £2,000 for charity.[1][2]
Context and legacy
The hoax came at a time of intense public interest in UFOs and space: Southall pointed to the era of Sputnik and space exploration, and Clarke noted that the Ministry of Defence was then receiving reports of UFO sightings almost every day. Southall said the point of the hoax was for it to be taken seriously; the apprentices felt the government ought to have a plan in case aliens did land, and wanted to give it a chance to try that plan out — but, he said, it did not have one.[2]
Speaking at the hoax's 50th anniversary in 2017, when he was 72 and an environmental campaigner running an eco-house in Clacton, Essex, Southall said people had been kinder to the apprentices because of who they were, and that the times were different. Today, he said, the saucers would be treated as explosive devices and blown up, and the hoaxers could end up in prison. The anniversary was marked by the BBC programme Inside Out.[2]
References
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “1967 British flying saucer hoax”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 31 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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