On September 4, 1967, the United Kingdom woke up to a bizarre phenomenon. Over the course of the morning, six identical metal disks were found across southern England, from Clevedon, a seaside town on the west coast, to Rushenden, on the Isle of Sheppey, off the east coast. The silvery objects, which had perfectly smooth, domed tops and beeped when turned over, each measured around 4.5 feet (1.4 m) across and weighed 100 pounds (45 kg).
When these sites were mapped out, it became clear that the disks had “landed” at equidistant locations around 30 miles apart on a straight line bisecting southern England: Clevedon, Chippenham, Welford, Winkfield, Bromley, and Rushenden.
Soon, police, fire, and military authorities were called out to inspect the objects, with suspicions about them ranging from alien spacecraft to Soviet surveillance equipment to crashed satellites to unexploded bombs. Some suspected all along that it was nothing more than a prank.
The officers who arrived at each site adopted somewhat different approaches. In Rushenden, an RAF crew, attempting to move the disk into a helicopter, accidentally dropped it and found that it contained a thick, foul-smelling, off-white liquid. Perhaps the most bizarre scene unfolded in Clevedon, where local engineers attempted to open the disk with a hacksaw and chisel, eventually making a small hole and discovering the same putrid gloop inside, which one of the men then proceeded to taste. In Chippenham, the saucer was blown apart by a bomb disposal unit, unleashing the same mixture.
It soon became clear that the saucers were not alien spaceships but part of an elaborate hoax. Inside, along with the goop, they each contained a small compartment with a loudspeaker, transistor, and an Exide battery.
The mastermind behind the hoax was 22-year-old aircraft engineering apprentice Chris Southalll. Along with around a dozen of his fellow students from the Royal Aircraft Establishment, a Ministry of Defense college in Farnborough, Hampshire, Southall had gone out in the very early hours of September 4th to plant the saucers in locations where they would be easily found.
In addition to their curiosity about how the authorities would react to the sudden appearance of the unidentified objects, the students’ goal was to raise money for Rag Week, an annual tradition of donating to charity (Rag comes from “raise and give”) by putting on events, contests, and challenges. The saucers had been created in the students’ dorms out of fiberglass and coated with an aluminum gel. Inside, the goop was a flour and water paste that had gone rancid, and the beeping came from a simple battery-operated device.
The flying saucer hoax wasn’t the first time that Southall and his friends had put on a headline-grabbing stunt. In 1965, they had placed a replica Gemini space capsule in the River Thames in central London, and in 1966, Southall had built a mechanical robot named Rodnee that was supposed to walk from Franborough to London in another fundraising effort.
Due to the students’ reputation for pranks and mischief, it only took about 12 hours for a reporter to contact their college and ask whether they were behind the flying saucers. They admitted they were and were met with a flood of international publicity, which they directed towards their charity fundraising goals. They successfully raised £2,000 (equivalent to £31,000 or $40,000 in today’s money) for Rag Week.
Despite the embarrassment they caused to multiple police forces and the Ministry of Defense, the students were never prosecuted, though some officials made it clear that they were not impressed at how the hoax had wasted police time and had the potential to cause a panic. Others, however, praised their ingenuity and noted that the bumbling response to the UFO “invasion” had led them to reconsider how they would deal with a real UFO crisis.
The Great British UFO Hoax:
- UFOs were already on the minds of many Britons in 1967, and not just because of the popularity of science fiction movies, books, and TV shows. In 1965, the Wiltshire village of Warminster had experienced a series of unexplained events that later became known as the “Warminster Thing.” Over 200 people reported that they had heard strange noises or saw unusual objects in the sky, including glowing lights and booming and droning sounds. Even stranger, birds had fallen from the sky, and the area had experienced multiple power failures. During the 1967 hoax, the Chippenham disk was found just 20 miles away from Warminster, initially raising questions about whether the events might be related.
- The flying saucers in the prank were placed along a “ley line” just above the 51st parallel, potentially giving credibility to their extraterrestrial origin. According to believers, ley lines are imaginary lines connecting ancient sites that hold a magnetic or spiritual power. Some believe that they might serve as navigational markers for extraterrestrial visitors.
- After completing his apprenticeship, Chris Southall became an environmental activist. He specializes in building geodesic domes that promote eco-friendly self-sufficiency. Looking back on the incident, he has said that he thought officials would take the sudden appearance of the saucers more seriously, especially given the slimy substance that emerged from them.
