By Nick Pope

60 years ago a pilot saw something he couldn't explain and the term "flying saucer" was born. Then, just a few weeks later, something unidentified crashed in a place called Roswell. But what exactly happened all those years ago? And why, 60 years later, does the subject still fascinate us?

On 24 June 1947 a light aircraft pilot called Kenneth Arnold was flying over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, at a height of around 10,000 feet. Suddenly, a brilliant flash of light illuminated his aircraft. Visibility was good and as he scanned the sky to locate the source of the light, he saw a formation of nine shiny metallic objects flying in formation. He estimated their speed as being around 1600 miles per hour - nearly three times faster than the top speed of any jet aircraft at the time. He described the craft as delta-shaped and said they moved in a jerky motion. When describing this motion to a reporter, he said the objects moved "liked a saucer would if you skipped it across the water".

The reporter seized on this phrase and in his story described the objects as "flying saucers". The label stuck. Once the story appeared in the newspapers, similar reports began to come in from all over America. Flying saucer fever swept the country and the story became national, then international news. This wasn't just the world's first UFO sighting - this was the birth of a phenomenon.

Just two weeks after Kenneth Arnold's sighting, something happened that was to eclipse his story and lead to arguably the biggest conspiracy theory of all time. On or around 2 July 1947, something crashed in the desert near a military base at Roswell, New Mexico. Military authorities at the base issued an extraordinary press release, which began "The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc". "Flying Disc captured by Air Force", screamed the headlines. Yet, just 24 hours later, the military changed their story and claimed that the object they'd first thought was a "flying disc" was just a weather balloon that had crashed on a nearby ranch, before being discovered by a puzzled local.

Amazingly, the media and the public accepted the explanation without question, in a way that would never happen now, in an age when we seem obsessed with conspiracy theories. In fact, Roswell all but disappeared from the news until the late Seventies, when some of the military personnel involved began to speak out about what happened. The key witness was Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer who had gone to the ranch to recover the wreckage. He described the metal as being wafer thin but incredibly tough. It was as light as balsa wood, but couldn't be cut, or burned. Some witnesses described seeing strange inscriptions on the wreckage.

Recently there has been a fresh twist to the Roswell mystery. One of the last surviving participants in the events was Lieutenant Walter Haut, the public relations officer at the base at the time of the incident. He issued the press release about the flying disc on the orders of the base commander, Colonel William Blanchard. Haut died last year but in a sworn affidavit that he said should only be opened after his death, the text of which has recently been released, he revealed that the weather balloon claim was a cover story, and that the real object had been recovered by the military and stored in a hangar. He described seeing not just the craft, but alien bodies.

Walter Haut wasn't the first Roswell witness to talk about alien bodies. Local undertaker Glenn Dennis had long claimed that he was contacted by authorities at Roswell shortly after the crash, and asked to provide a number of child-sized coffins. When he arrived at the base he was apparently warned off by a nurse (who subsequently disappeared) who told him a UFO had crashed and that small humanoid extraterrestrials had been recovered. But Haut is the only one of the original and verifiable military participants to claim to have seen alien bodies.

Haut's affidavit talks about a high-level meeting that he attended with base commander Colonel William Blanchard and the Commander of the Eighth Army Air Force, General Roger Ramey. Haut states that at this meeting, pieces of the wreckage were handed around for participants to touch, with nobody able to identify the material. He went on to state that the press release was issued because locals were already aware of the crash site, but that there was in fact a second crash site, so the plan was to make an announcement acknowledging the first site, which had been discovered by a rancher, thus diverting attention from the second and more important location.

Haut also spoke about what he described as a clean-up operation, where for months afterwards military personnel scoured both crash sites searching for all remaining pieces of debris, removing them and erasing all signs that anything unusual had occurred. This ties in with claims made by some of the local population that debris collected as souvenirs was subsequently seized by the military.

Haut then describes how Colonel Blanchard took him to "Building 84" - one of the hangars at Roswell - and showed him the craft itself. He describes a metallic egg-shaped object around 12 - 15 feet in length and around 6 feet wide. He said he saw no windows, wings, tail, landing gear or any other feature. He went on to say that he then saw two bodies on the floor, partially covered by a tarpaulin. He said they were humanoid, about four feet in height, with disproportionately large heads. Towards the end of the affidavit Haut concludes "I am convinced that what I personally observed was some kind of craft and its crew from outer space".

What's particularly interesting about Walter Haut is that in the many interviews he gave prior to his death, he often downplayed his role and claimed to have been out of the loop. Had he been seeking publicity he would surely have spoken about the craft and the bodies, and yet in his interviews he denied having seen them. Did he fear ridicule, or was the affidavit a sort of deathbed confession from someone who had been part of a cover-up, but who had stayed loyal to the end? Until and unless further information emerges, we shall probably never know.

Skeptics, of course, will dismiss the story. After all, fascinating though Haut's testimony is, it's just a story. There's no proof. But if nothing else, this latest revelation shows that 60 years on, this mystery still endures.

Another military witness who claimed to know that the Roswell incident had indeed involved the crash of an alien spacecraft is Colonel Philip J.Corso. Corso was a former Pentagon official who claimed that his job was to pass technology from the craft recovered at Roswell to American companies. He claims that discoveries such as Kevlar body armor, stealth technology, night vision goggles, lasers and the integrated circuit chip all have their roots in alien technology from the Roswell crash. Corso died of a heart attack shortly after making these claims, prompting a fresh round of conspiracy theories. As bizarre as Corso's story sounds, it has support from a number of unlikely sources, including former Canadian Minister of Defence Paul Hellyer, who spoke out recently to say that he'd checked the story with a senior figure in the US military who confirmed it was true.

The United States government came under huge pressure on Roswell in the Nineties. In July 1994, in response to an inquiry from the General Accounting Office, the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force published a report, The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert. The report concluded that the Roswell incident had been attributable to something called Project Mogul, a top secret project using high-altitude balloons to carry sensor equipment into the upper atmosphere, listening for evidence of Soviet nuclear tests. The statements concerning a crashed weather balloon had been a cover story, they admitted, but not one to hide the truth about extraterrestrials.

A second United States Air Force report, The Roswell Report: Case Closed, was published in 1997 and focused on allegations that alien bodies were recovered. It concluded that any claims that weren't entirely fraudulent were probably generated by people having seen humanoid crash test dummies that were dropped from balloons from high altitude as part of Project High Dive - a study aimed at developing safe procedures for pilots or astronauts having to jump from extreme altitudes. These tests ran from 1954 to 1959 in New Mexico, and the US government suggested that sightings of these dummies might have been the root of stories about humanoid aliens, with people mistaking the dates after so many years, and erroneously linking what they'd seen with the 1947 story of a UFO crash.

UFO enthusiasts plan to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Roswell incident with a series of sky watches and other events. In Roswell itself there will be a conference partly sponsored by the city authorities. Thousands are predicted to attend. Roswell has become not just big news, but big business. Tourists come to Roswell in part because of the UFO story and there's even a museum devoted to the subject.

After Kenneth Arnold's sighting and the Roswell incident, UFO sightings continued to be made and some of them came from military personnel. This caused the US Government to set up an official study into the UFO phenomenon. Codenamed Project Blue Book, the research effort ran until 1969, in which time over 12,000 UFO reports were investigated. Most cases turned out to be misidentifications of ordinary objects such as aircraft lights, meteors and weather balloons, but around 700 reports remained unexplained.

UFOs were not exclusively an American phenomenon. They were being seen in increasing numbers all around the world. In the UK, in 1950, the Ministry of Defence's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Henry Tizard, said that UFO sightings shouldn't be dismissed without some form of proper, scientific investigation. The MoD set up arguably the most wonderfully named body in the history of the Civil Service, the Flying Saucer Working Party. Its conclusions were sceptical. It believed UFO sightings were attributable to misidentifications, hoaxes or psychological delusions. Its final report, dated June 1951, recommended that no further resources should be devoted to investigating UFOs. But in 1952 a high-profile series of UFO sightings occurred in which objects were tracked on radar and seen by RAF pilots. The MoD was forced to think again and has had been investigating the subject ever since. To date, the MoD has received over 10,000 reports.

Britain has had its fair share of truly spectacular UFO incidents, the best-known of which occurred in December 1980 in Rendlesham Forest, in Suffolk. In the early hours of 26 December personnel at RAF Bentwaters (a base leased to the United States Air Force) reported seeing strange lights in the forest. Thinking an aircraft had crashed, they went to investigate.

What they found, in a clearing, was a landed UFO. They took photographs (which they were later told hadn't come out properly) of the brightly illuminated craft and one of the men got close enough to touch the UFO. The object then took off and flew away. The stunned men briefed their bosses, including the Deputy Base Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt. Halt ordered the men to make official witness statements, including sketches of the craft. The following night Halt was attending a social function when a flustered airman burst in, saluted and said "Sir, it's back". Halt looked confused and said "What's back?". "The UFO, sir. The UFO is back", the airman replied. Halt threw together a small team and went to investigate. His intention, as he later reported, was to "debunk this nonsense". As they went out into the forest, their radios began to malfunction and powerful mobile searchlights cut out. Suddenly, Halt and his team saw the UFO and attempted to get closer. At one point it was directly overhead, shining a bright beam of light down on them.

After these events, Halt ordered an examination of the area where the UFO had been seen on the first night. Three indentations, forming the shape of a triangle, were found in the ground where the craft had landed. A Geiger counter was used and radiation readings were taken, which peaked in the three holes. Halt reported the matter to the MoD and an investigation began. This was inconclusive, but the Defence Intelligence Staff assessed that the radiation readings taken at the landing site were "significantly higher than the average background". The MoD's case file on the incident has now been released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Another spectacular UFO incident occurred in March 1993. Over a period of around 6 hours a total of around 60 witnesses in different parts of the UK reported a series of spectacular UFO sightings. Many of the witnesses were police officers and the UFO also flew over two military bases in the Midlands, RAF Cosford and RAF Shawbury. The Meteorological Officer at RAF Shawbury described the UFO as being a vast triangular-shaped craft that moved from a virtual hover to a speed several times faster than an RAF jet in a matter of seconds. He estimated that the UFO was midway in size between a Hercules transport aircraft and a Boeing 747 and said that at one point the craft had been as low as 400 feet above the ground. He also said that it had been firing a narrow beam of light down at the ground and emitting an unpleasant low frequency humming sound. The MoD investigation lasted several weeks and the case file, recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, runs to over 100 pages. The final briefing submitted to the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff stated "In summary, there would seem to be some evidence on this occasion that an unidentified object (or objects) of unknown origin was operating over the UK". That is about the most frank admission on UFOs that the MoD has ever made.

60 years after Kenneth Arnold's "flying saucer" sighting, pilots are still seeing UFOs. One such incident was reported recently by the Daily Mail and involved Captain Ray Bowyer, a pilot based in Alderney who saw two bright yellow UFOs on 23 April in the vicinity of the Channel Islands and described them as being possibly as much as a mile long. Some of his passengers saw the same thing, another pilot in the area made a similar report and some unusual readings were seen on air traffic control radar. Both the MoD and the Civil Aviation Authority investigated the incident and no explanation has been found.

On occasion, however, UFO sightings are not what they first appear. Nothing illustrates this better than the case of Alex Birch, a 14 year old schoolboy who made news headlines in 1962 when he produced a photograph that appeared to show five saucer-shaped UFOs. The MoD investigated the case and both Alex and his father were quizzed by RAF officers. Ten years later Alex Birch revealed that he'd made the whole thing up. He'd simply cut out pieces of paper in the shape of flying saucers, pasted them onto a pane of glass and taken a photo of it in front of some trees.

Despite such hoaxes, interest and belief in UFOs remains strong. Under the Freedom of Information Act the MoD receives more requests relating to UFOs than on any other subject, including the war in Iraq. Many of the government's old UFO files have been declassified and are stored at the National Archives in Kew. Many more documents have been scanned onto the MoD's website, but still the requests come in. The burden on staff is enormous and officials are currently considering releasing the entire archive of UFO files. Such a move will be welcome, but is not without pitfalls. When the French Government released its UFO files earlier this year, the interest was so great that the website crashed.

So what is it about UFOs that continues to excite our imaginations after 60 years of sightings? To some people, the subject has become almost a religion and perhaps that gets to the heart of it. Those who study the subject are on a quest not just for the truth, but for meaning. It's a search for the answer to one of the most fundamental questions we can ask - are we alone? So UFO enthusiasts scan the skies with binoculars, while astronomers use radio telescopes to listen for signals. Both of them want to believe. They want to believe that in the vastness of the Universe, we're not alone.

Nick Pope used to run the Ministry of Defence's UFO project. His website is www.nickpope.net

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