Yorkshire UFO mystery solved 60 years after '˜flying saucer' found on moors

Sixty years after a crash wreckage of what people thought was a small UFO was found on the moors, an answer to the mystery may have been found.
People believed the object was a flying saucerPeople believed the object was a flying saucer
People believed the object was a flying saucer

Three men found a metal object on the North York Moors that was shaped like a flying saucer one night in 1957.

The apparent UFO, which was discovered on Silpho Moor, near Scarborough, just weeks after the Sputnik was launched into the Earth’s orbit by Russia.

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But what became known as the Silpho Saucer vanished without trace soon after the finders cut it open in the town.

Photographs show the copper base of the object was inscribed with hieroglyphs that one of the men compared with Russian lettering.

Hieroglyphics were also found on the wreckage of the UFO that allegedly crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in June 1947.

Covered in hieroglyphics When the Yorkshire object was opened a tiny book made of 17 thin copper sheets was found inside, held in place by a coil of copper wire.

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The sheets were covered in more hieroglyphics and these were deciphered by a Scarborough café owner, Philip Longbottom.

He claimed they contained a bizarre 2,000-word message allegedly sent to Earth by an alien called Ullo who wanted to warn us about atomic warfare.

It contained the warning: ‘You will improve or disappear’.

For decades afterwards UFO enthusiasts drew a blank in their quest for the missing saucer – although some claimed it ended up in a scrapyard or had been on display in a fish’n chip shop in Scarborough.

But for half a century the missing pieces of the puzzle have been sitting inside a tin cigarette box at the Science Museum Group’s archive, more than 200 miles away from the wild moorland where they were found at the height of the Cold War.

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Papers in the museum archives reveal the remains of the ‘Silpho Moor Object’ were sent to London for examination by experts in 1963.

The specimens included a fused section of the metal and plastic from the outer casing, a length of hollow copper tubing and tiny pieces of foil from the booklet that was discovered inside.

The Science Museum passed them to Gordon Claringbull of the Natural History Museum, who specialised in meteorites and explosives.

He said he could find “nothing unusual” in the samples. In a memo to the Science Museum, Claringbull said that he was “prepared to wager anything” that the pieces of metal were made on Earth.

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Tests carried out at Manchester University revealed the object’s shell contained lead and the copper parts were of unusual high purity.

But a metallurgist concluded it could not have arrived on Earth from space as there was no evidence it had been exposed to high temperatures.

UFO expert Jenny Randles, who read the report produced in Manchester, said she believes “it is the most costly and well organised hoax that has ever taken place in Britain”. “The hoaxers never seemed to gain from it and whoever had it built spent considerably more than the £10 the finders reportedly paid for it”.