The Art of Secrecy (Part 1)

The dictionary defines the word "Secret" as "Knowledge kept from others" nowhere more so could this definition be applied so aptly than to the subject of UFO's. The bone of contention here, being that for those who subscribe to the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis and acknowledge that such Visitations do indeed occur are faced with what as to be a remarkable success rate in concealment in particular those aspects of the phenomenon which involve alleged evidence in the form of... Crash/Retrieval sites.


The Secrecy aspect of the Penkridge Incident is one that I sometimes have difficulty with in the sense that while the evidence available to date suggests nothing out of the ordinary happened
back in 1964. On this basis should we allow ourselves to really believe that the series of events described by the late Leonard Stringfield and later elaborated on by the alleged eyewitness testimony of Harold South did actually occur? And then quite successfully be removed from the pages of history?

History V Conspiracy

On January 24th 1978 the Soviet Nuclear powered Satellite Cosmos 954 re-entered the Earths atmosphere impacting across the Northwest Territories of Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada. While this high profile event occurred fourteen years after the alleged recovery of an object from a field near Penkridge in Staffordshire 1964 the event itself offers us a useful insight into the problems of recovering a downed spacecraft and offers some interesting parallels.


The Cosmos 954 was already deemed to be a troubled satellite a month prior to its fiery descent into the Earths Atmosphere having been tracked from its initial launch by NORAD. This advanced notification of the satellite's unscheduled re-entry had already been pr emptied by talks between the two superpowers when it became obvious that attempts to prevent the satellite's disintegrating orbit had failed; prior to public knowledge of the satellite's demise both nations had addressed (in secret) the issue of how best to allay public fears over what could be a potential disaster.


With this in mind if we look back at Stringfield's source (S M Brannigan) its unclear how long the Soviets had been tracking the unidentified object before its malfunction, would it therefore be unreasonable to assume that had there been sufficient time in the interests of Safety and International Diplomacy to forewarn the British Government of the impending crash of a Foreign Object on not only mainland UK but also West Germany?

The issues here are two fold. If the object was indeed manufactured by the USSR then its a fairly safe bet that the object was tracked from its initial launch until its final descent. therefore the answer should be yes there would have been sufficient time as clearly was the case with Cosmos 954 for dialogue to take place between the two Governments. Likewise the scenario would be the same if the object had been manufactured in the United States.

If we consider the other possibility that the object was indeed unidentified and its detection was at a late stage with insufficient or very little time to react or issue a warning. The Soviet's would undoubtedly have been little more than observers whilst the United States on the other hand would according to Brannigan's testimony play a more active role, Possibly by other means of detection (NORAD) or as a direct result of the intercepted communication. There are, however a number of other similarities between the two incidents, Cosmos 954 showed that the Americans have a capability to operate search and retrieval operations within the sphere of friendly nations. Furthermore while the Cosmos affair itself was very much in the public eye, the nature of the satellite's power source was primarily the reasoning behind the intense publicity. Although recognised as major concern there is a element of secrecy within this episode namely that of the intelligence aspect. While the USSR had perhaps begrudgingly admitted the loss of their satellite, all three nations nevertheless worked together responsibly The United States and Canada for their part very much playing down the affair and the true nature of satellite's purpose.

In the second part of this blog a more in depth look is taken into the similarities between these two incidents. While sceptics would no doubt place the Penkridge Incident into the realms of Science fiction, further asserting that as the Cosmos 954 satellite showed, Secrecy could not be maintained in a real life situation.