Post by Laurance on Nov 12, 2010 4:13:08 GMT 1
Artist's impression of the flying platform witnessed in 1916.
Mr AE Whiteland described the unusual sight witnessed by his mother around 1916 or 1917, when she lived in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. One day she had gone upstairs, looked out the window, when “at a height of about 30ft [9m], eight to twelve men appeared, on what seemed to be a round platform with a handrail around it… They were wearing blue uniforms and little round hats, not unlike sailors’ hats. She heard no sound from the machine as it came off the nearby marshes. It turned a bit, and went over the railway yard, to dis*appear behind some houses.”
When she first saw the platform, it was about 100 yards away and “came straight along the road, and then when she thought it was going to pass her house (one of a terr*aced block of six) it suddenly turned away at right angles from her and went between the Railway Hotel and the sheds on either side of the railway yard. The shed opposite the house was maybe 23 to 25ft [7–8m] high; it was two-storeyed, and hay was stored in the upper part, and the thing just cleared its roof, from what Mother said.”
The men were holding tightly on to the handrail, which was “brass, and a second rail, also of brass, was at the height of the men’s knees. As she was trying so hard to take it all in, she cannot say of what mat*erial the platform seemed to be made… Mother says that she kept wondering what was making the thing move, and looked up in the sky and then at the men and then in between their legs to see if there was an engine there in the middle, but she could see nothing there. There was nothing in the middle, just a hollow, with the men around the sides.”
The platform was totally silent and moved at about the speed of a running man. It was visible for at least several minutes. Mr Whiteland’s mother never heard of any other witnesses to this strange sight, but she didn’t speak about it much until after the war. Also, the street had been empty of pedestrians at the time of her sighting, which was at midday during the working week.
Researcher Charles Grove wrote to Charles H Gibbs-Smith of the Victoria & Albert Museum asking about the possibility that the platform had been an observation platform hung below a German Zeppelin. Gibbs-Smith replied in the negative, pointing out that such platforms were tiny and carr*ied only one man in a prone position (rather than a group, which would have made an easy target for British troops), were never low to the ground and would have swung out when making a sharp turn – not to mention the fact that the noise of any Zeppelin’s engine’s would have been easily heard.
The abrupt 90-degree turn down another street that was executed by the platform is also particularly puzzling – it’s a manœuvre commonly reported in connection with UFOs, which appear to perform it at high speeds.
The same, or a very similar, floating platform was seen again nearly 40 years later on the afternoon of 18 October 1955. The Reverend Pitt-Kethly was travelling on the Uxbridge train line to East Harrow, London. When the train had stopped at the West Hampstead viaduct, he noticed a reddish-brown and grey platform the size of a small bus. It was silent and travelled at a height of about 120ft (37m).
There were approximately 20 helmeted men dressed in khaki uniforms standing on the platform, which moved at about 20mph (32km/h) and was in sight for three or four minutes. The Reverend did “not doubt the evidence of his own optics”.