UFO. Ireland

London, England, TIMES, 22 January 1966, page 9

FLYING SAUCERS

Sir, - My friend Dr. Hynek is rightly playing it safe today; but it should be said for the record that he does not receive more than a very small proportion of the world's sightings to assess; and in his article on Unidentified Flying Objects he does not mention radar or photographic evidence.

I have recently had placed in my hands a most remarkable piece of photographic evidence, allied with reliable evidence from witnesses. What this is evidence of, I am not going to hazard a guess. Historians do not like sticking their necks out either.

A colleague of mine, Miss Jacqueline Wingfield, was driving a young Danish friend (Miss Mortensen) along a road near Cappoquin, Ireland, on December 26, 1965. It was a perfect day, with a clear blue sky, and the time was between 3.15 and 3.30. Miss Mortensen suddenly caught sight of a strange object moving steadily across the sky in front of them; Miss Wingfield immediately stopped the car (and the engine) and they both got out with their cameras. Miss Mortensen had time to take one shot.

It was a solid-looking rounded object, flying in complete silence from right to left, with a trailing plume of flame-like brightness at its stern; but there was no smoke trail, or any other trace behind the "plume". When they brought the film back, I was at a loss to know how to get the job reliably done.

But another friend, Mr. Percy Hennell - a photographer of world repute - came into my office shortly after, and generously offered to handle the whole business personally in his own studio.

It will be seen from the photograph reproduced here that the U.F.O. itself is disc-shaped, and that it seems to be emitting a huge semi-elliptical efflux.

Mr. Hennell's report - which I will make available to anyone interested - includes the following: there is a pronounced granular effect seen in the efflux of the U.F.O. which is radically dissimilar to the grain of the photographic emulsion, which must therefore have been inherent in the image which entered the camera, and be part of the U.F.O. ensemble.

Mr. Hennell tells me that he has never seen such a phenomenon before, and that it can have nothing to do with any part of the photographic material, or process. He also says that the similarity to a cloud is fortuitous. No cloud, when blown along, preserves its configuration for more than a second; it is continually changing.

More important, the granulation within the efflux could not be that of a cloud captured on the emulsion; if it had been a cloud, the granulation of the emulsion would have been constant throughout the area, and its surroundings to the edge of the negative.

May I close by saying that, after having been shown many photographs of U.F.O.s I have never until now been able personally to vouch for every stage of the process. There is no possibility of faking, either before or after the take; and Mr. Hennell would invite any authority on photographic chemistry to examine the negative, where he will find no trace of treatment after processing.

Yours faithfully,
CHARLES H. GIBBS-SMITH
The Royal Aero Club, 9 Fitzmaurice
Place, W.I. Jan. 20.