Case · C-058

Cosford 1993: lights over western England, largely a Russian rocket

RAF Cosford and RAF Shawbury (Shropshire) and other locations in western England · United Kingdom · Mar 31, 1993

In flight Mixed witness types

What happened

In the early hours of March 31, 1993, dozens of people in western Britain and in Ireland reported two or three bright lights with luminous trails; the witnesses included a Ministry of Defence police patrol at RAF Cosford and a weather service observer at RAF Shawbury, who described a large object with a beam of light toward the ground. The ministry's UFO desk had the radar tapes re-examined without finding anything, and the official Nick Pope wrote to his superiors that an unknown object seemed to have operated without being detected. The file (DEFE 24/2086) has been available at the National Archives since 2009.

Proposed explanation

The main reports, clustered around 1:10 a.m., coincide with the atmospheric reentry of the stage of the rocket that had launched the Russian satellite Cosmos 2238, as reconstructed by the BUFORA association and indicated in the National Archives guide; the then ministry official Nick Pope maintains that some sightings, like the one at Shawbury, have not received a satisfactory explanation.

Official investigation

British Ministry of Defence (Sec(AS)2 office, the so-called “UFO desk”)

Words of the document

majority of sightings were caused by the Russian rocket that launched the Cosmos 2238 satellite

Official documents

1. UFO files – Highlights Guide (rilascio dell'agosto 2009) · The National Archives (United Kingdom) · Aug 2009
2. Script for National Archives UFO files – August 2009 podcast · The National Archives (United Kingdom) · Aug 2009

Sources

1. David Clarke, “Case Closed: 30th anniversary of the Cosford UFO flap” (2023) (analysis, skeptical)
2. David Clarke, “National Archives UFO Files #3” (background on the Ministry of Defence and the Cosford case) (analysis)

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