The photo of an unidentified flying object seen in Scotland in 1990 was discovered by journalist David Clarke. An important find because these shots seemed lost forever but which leaves many questions unanswered.
It’s an almost legendary photo in the history of ufology, a snapshot taken 32 years ago that no one but a few authorized eyes had ever seen. On August 4, 1990 around 9 p.m., in Calvine, a small village 70 kilometers north of Perth, Scotland, two men reportedly observed an imposing diamond-shaped object in the sky. The object remaining motionless for nearly ten minutes, they would have had time to take six photos before the object rose vertically and disappeared. The witnesses also say they noticed Royal Air Force planes making several passes at low altitude but without being able to specify whether they were watching the object or whether they were carrying out an aerial sortie, frequent in this region.
The photo of Calvine’s UFO to discover in high definition on the David Clarke website
Very intrigued by this spectacle, the two men reported their testimony to the base of the RAF of Pitreavie and their account preserved by the national archives was made public, 18 years later, in 2008. But they reserved their photos for the press and supplied the negatives to the Daily Record, one of Scotland’s leading tabloids. And this is where things go wrong.
Read also: Calvine’s UFO: the endless secret
The newspaper contacted the Department of Defense for a comment from the military on the sighting. In return, the ministry politely requested that the daily lend them the photos and their negatives for analysis. The journalist accepted, without thinking of making advance copies. And neither the newspaper nor the witnesses have ever seen their pictures again.
It was finally Nick Pope, then in charge of the UFO file at the Ministry of Defence, who in 1996 mentioned the incident and the missing photos in his first book “Open Skies, Closed Minds”. This story caught the attention of a parliamentarian, Martin Redmond, who asked the government for details about the missing photos. But the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, Nicholas Soames, limited himself to replying that “these images do not contain anything significant for National Defence, they have not been preserved.”
Later, a drawing supposed to reproduce Calvine’s UFO will be found in the archives and a digital reconstruction will be made as part of a British television documentary. But the entire Ministry of Defense file devoted to this affair, and in particular the identity of the two witnesses, which was to be disclosed in 2021, will not finally be revealed until 2076, reviving all speculation on the nature of the object they photographed.
However, you should never despair. And the English journalist and ufologist David Clarke managed to get his hands on this Arles woman. He obtained a print of one of the six photos through a former Royal Air Force press officer, Craig Lindsay. In 1990, he was responsible for liaising between the Daily Record and the Ministry of Defence. This is how they came into possession of one of the original prints as well as the postal envelope that contained them.
“When retired RAF officer Craig Lindsay showed me the only surviving copy of Calvine’s UFO photo which he had kept safe for over three decades, I knew I I was watching something exceptional,” says David Clarke on his site, who worked on this case for thirteen years.
Calvine’s UFO photo discussed by David Clarke and others on the YouTube channel, Disclosure Team.
© YouTube Screenshot
A case which in many aspects still remains very mysterious: why, for example, has the identity of the witnesses never been revealed? However, specifies David Clarke, in 1990, the man who had taken the photos provided the journalist of the Daily Record with all his personal information without requesting anonymity. The ufologist therefore does not exclude the possibility that the Ministry of Defense also decided to hide this information from the public. However, thanks to investigations carried out on the spot, David Clarke was able to determine that the two witnesses worked in hotels in Pitlochry, a tourist town near Calvine. But it was impossible for him to learn more.
As for Craig Lindsay, it is with a very British phlegm that he welcomed David Clarke’s questions: “I have been waiting for more than 30 years for someone to call me about this story… and you are the first person to do it,” he told her during their first telephone conversation. But he too has hardly any revelations in store: “Either it’s a very elaborate hoax, or it’s ‘the Real thing’, the real thing” he simply commented.
But what thing? David Clarke submitted the photo to an expert, Andrew Robinson, a lecturer in photography at Sheffield Hallam University. According to him, “the object is actually in front of the camera, that is to say, it is not an added afterthought and its placement in the scene seems to be about halfway. distance between the fence in the foreground and the [jet Harrier] in the background.”
However, this expertise, necessarily superficial in the absence of negatives, says nothing about the nature of the object: “Is it a kite or a radio-controlled model? It is possible but in this case, it should be large, at least 20 to 30 meters long” adds Andrew Robinson.
Very skeptical about a possible extraterrestrial origin of the unidentified aerial phenomena, David Clarke considers that the photographed object has every chance of being a secret military prototype or, more tortuous hypothesis, a fake UFO intended to divert attention from very real gear tests.
Finally, Nick Pope, the former head of the UFO department at the Ministry of Defence, commented on Twitter on the unexpected appearance of this photo: “Although I have already given my point of view on the Calvine incident in As a former civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, I have not commented on the provenance of the photo provided by former RAF press officer Craig Lindsay and have neither confirmed nor denied that it is This is indeed an authentic print.”
While I’ve given an insider, MoD perspective on the Calvine UFO incident, I haven’t commented on the provenance of the photo provided by former RAF press officer Craig Lindsay, and have neither confirmed nor denied that it’s an authentic copy. The image below is a recreation. pic.twitter.com/fiLc7K9GPJ
— Nick Pope (@nickpopemod) August 14, 2022
Ultimately, if the unexpected appearance of this mythical photo delights UFO enthusiasts, it brings more questions than answers.