“Make no mistake, Roswell happened,” he says. “I’ve seen secret files which show the government knew about it but decided not to tell the public. There were very good security reasons for not informing the public about Roswell.

“Quite simply, we wouldn’t have known how to deal with the tech­nology of intelligent beings advanced enough to send a craft to Earth. The world would have panicked if we’d known aliens were visiting us.”

Predictably, Nasa was quick to pour scorn on Mitchell’s views, stating: “We do not track UFOs. Nasa is not involved in any sort of cover-up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe. Dr Mitchell is a great American but we do not share his opinions on this issue.”

CLAIM: Edgar Mitchell says aliens have visited Earth

However, UFO watchers believe that his comments are highly significant. Nick Pope, Britain’s foremost expert on the subject, says: “Before Ed Mitchell went to Nasa he rose through the military. We are dealing with a deep insider who is steeped in government intelligence. For him to be so certain has to make you wonder.

“Mitchell is a trusted all-American hero who had decades of involvement in a secret world. He’s highly credible.”

For three years Pope was the MoD official responsible for researching UFOs. He says: “It has to be a defence issue if you are receiving credible reports of unidentified objects that appear to have a higher speed and greater manoeuvrability than our most advanced aircraft.”

Visitors to the UFO museum in Roswell, new Mexico examine a prop used in the movie

In the UK, UFO sightings are still officially recorded. For the past decade the number has steadily declined, prompting the demise of the British Flying Saucer Bureau, which closed in 2003.

But it seems the trend is being reversed. Although latest figures remain classified, Pope says there has been an increase this year in credible sightings. “It is shaping up to be the summer of the saucer,” he says.

Last month the pilot of a police helicopter was forced to bank sharply to avoid being hit by a mystery aircraft in the skies above St Athan, near Cardiff. The three crewmen, who described the UFO as “saucer-shaped”, then gave chase, getting as far as the North Devon coast before they ran low on fuel. The police helicopter was hovering at 500ft and awaiting clearance to land on June 7 when the pilot spotted the other craft hurtling towards him from below.

A spokesman for South Wales Police said: “We can confirm the air support unit sighted an unusual
aircraft. This was reported to the relevant authorities for their investigation.” A police source added: “The crew are convinced it was a UFO. It sounds far-fetched but they know what they saw.”

On the same night, 80 miles away, a soldier used his mobile phone to film a UFO above Tern Hill barracks near Market Drayton, Shropshire, and reported the sighting to Army officials.

Corporal Mark Proctor, 38, of the First Battalion of the Irish Regiment, and two colleagues saw the craft, which he described as “rotating cubes” in the sky, just after 11pm.

He said later: “I was on duty in the guard room when the other boys outside began shouting. I went out to see what the commotion was about and could see 13 craft in the skies. They were zig-zagging but I filmed two before they disappeared. They were like rotating cubes with multiple colours.” Witnesses in Liverpool also alerted the authorities to the UFOs.

Pope says the reports should be taken seriously, although admitting he still sits on the fence. “I remain open-minded,” he says. “Although many sightings are mistaken identification, there are also many cases that remain unexplained. I am convinced there is other intelligent life out there in the universe but I am undecided whether any of it has visited us.”

Malcolm Robinson, from Hastings, who studies the phenomenon, has recorded a surge in UFO activity this year. Experts refer to clusters of UFO sightings over a short period as “a wave”.

“Something very bizarre is happening in the skies over the UK,” says Robinson. “There has been an unu­sual number of sightings recently. We are dealing with something very real: 95 per cent have natural, identifiable explanations but that leaves us with the other five per cent.”

Over the years Robinson has also noted the emergence of UFO “hot- spots”, where sightings are higher than average. They include Bonny­bridge in Stirlingshire and the Rossendale Valley in Lancashire.

Earlier this year, the Government caused great excitement when it released historical UFO files following a Freedom of Information request. Its existence was denied for many years but UFO reports were collated by a shadowy unit called D155.

One of the more colourful excerpts from the “British X Files” was the case of one man who claimed to have been in contact with aliens since he was seven. He said he had visited alien bases in Wirral and Cheshire and had observed a UFO being shot down next to Wallasey town hall. He claimed: “As I was watching, the front end of the UFO hit the water, then the whole UFO disappeared, leaving the water to splash, as if done by an invisible entity.”

He said he later tried to arrange a meeting between an alien called Algar and the British government but said Algar had been killed by other aliens before the meeting could take place.

There were, however, more credible reports, including several sightings by police officers. The MoD said the release of formerly secret documents proved there was no cover-up. And over the next three or four years, more UFO files will be handed over to the National Archives.

In the past 30 years about 7,000 UFOs have been reported over the UK, although interest has often been fuelled by popular culture. The number of British sightings almost doubled after the release of the blockbuster Close Encounters Of The Third Kind in 1977.

Britain’s equivalent of Roswell is the Rendlesham Forest incident, in 1980, when a UFO was reported to have crashed near an air base. Servicemen initially thought they were dealing with an air crash but later reported seeing a series of unexplained lights moving around the forest in Suffolk.

Some airmen also claimed to have seen a conical metallic object, suspended in a yellow mist, hovering over a clearing in the trees, with a pulsating blue and red circle of light above.

The UFO files showed that the MoD never took Rendlesham seriously. According to Nick Pope that was a mistake, just as it would be to overlook the current UFO wave.

He says: “At best it would be foolish, at worst negligent, to ignore any unexplained sighting in British air space.”


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