As Ray is now talking publicly on TV about the investigation that is going on behind the scenes, I can say that this does appear to be one of the most interesting - and so far, inexplicable - UFO sightings made in the last decade.

Ray Bowyer has agreed to work with a small group of investigators including myself, Martin Shough, Paul Fuller and several others both in the UK and France, to reconstruct the Channel sighting using a collection of detailed evidence.

This includes video replays of the radar picture and audio recordings of the conversations between the pilots and air traffic control, all of which have been - perhaps uniquely in this case - preserved for use in our investigation. The video picture does appear to show two definate unidentified tracks corresponding with the position and timing of the visual sightings  reported by Bowyer and another pilot in an aircraft flying in a different direction.

At the weekend I discussed the case with Jacques Patenet of the French government UFO agency GEIPAN, as both of us were guest speakers at the IUFO group CISU’s  congress at Saint Vincent in the Italian Alps. Patenet - who appeared most open-minded and happy to work with serious investigators - expressed an interest in the case which our UK MOD have dismissed as being of any interest as it occurred “within French airspace.” Thankfully, the French are a little more open minded and if all goes to plan we should be able to draw upon GEIPAN’s pool of expertise in the ongoing investigation.

More to follow in due course.

The Sun (June 22, 2007)

Here’s the x-large terrestrial

By CHARLES RAE and JOHN COLES
JUNE 22, 2007

THE world’s biggest UFOs have been seen hovering off the south coast by an airline pilot and his passengers.

Aurigny Airlines captain Ray Bowyer, 50, reported two cigar-shaped objects each up to a MILE wide in the sky near Guernsey. Both were yellow and were also seen by a second pilot. An official report was made to the Civil Aviation Authority which issued an air incident report.

And air industry sources say a copy was also secretly sent to the US Air Force Space Agency, which monitors such incidents around the world. Capt Bowyer, who has flown commercial planes for 20 years, saw the first UFO 40 miles west of Alderney. He said: “It was a sharp, thin yellow object. It was 2,000ft up, stationary, and about 40 miles from us. It could have been as much as a mile wide.”

As he continued his approach to Alderney in the BN2a Trislander plane, he saw a second identical object. He said: “I can’t explain it. It was visual for nine minutes. I’m not saying it was from another world. All I’m saying is I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years flying.”

Passengers John and Kate Russell also saw one of the objects. John, 74, said: “I saw an orange light, It was like an elongated oval.” The objects were also reported by an unnamed pilot with the Blue Islands airline.

John Spencer, deputy chairman of the British UFO Research Association, said it was not clear that the sightings were of extra-terrestrial spaceships. He said: “These types of sightings have been reported by pilots since the 1940s. “They are often thought to be aliens but many believe they more likely represent natural, atmospheric, phenomena not fully understood by science.”

It’s just one big mystery. SUN Spaceman Paul Sutherland said last night: “These mystery objects were clearly UFOs in the real sense — because they were Unidentified
and seem to have been Flying. But that is a long way from saying that they were flying saucers or alien spacecraft. It is notoriously difficult to estimate the size of
objects in the sky because it is usually so hard to tell how far away they are. But sightings previously mistaken for UFOs have included the planet
Venus, weather balloons and cloud formations.”

David Clarke