Analysis of the 1990 UFO reports by British jet fighter pilots
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In the late 1990s, the UFO Working Group Netherlands (UWN) received an audio cassette with a recording of radio communications between three British RAF Tornado jet fighters and Dutch military air traffic control. The UWN released this recording on the previous version of this web page on December 17, 2005. In the recording, pilots of two Tornado jet fighters report to Dutch military air traffic control that they are observing a large unknown flying object. From the communications we gather that the aircrews (the Tornado is a two-seater) were unable to identify the object and that the military air traffic controller was unable to find it on radar.
Directly after publication of this webpage, investigators at home and abroad informed us that research into the cause of the British pilot observations had already been published before. The investigators did not have the sound recording of the radio communications at their disposal in their investigations.
Below, we give a summary of the previous version of this web page. After that, the results follow of old and new investigations into this case.
The radio communications
Recording and transcriptionThe transcription contains the verbatim text of the recorded radio communications. On that page you will also find a link to the download page for the sound recording.
Date and time
Airlift, a monthly publication of the now discontinued Dutch military aircraft communications monitoring group SC-MAC, reported in issue No. 24 of January 1996 that the communications took place on November 5, 1990. This date was confirmed by the maker of the recording, who contacted us right after the previous version of this web page went online. He stated that he knew for certain that he recorded the communications on November 5, 1990, at 19:00 hrs MET (Middle European Time). This time is equivalent to 18:00 UTC.
Military air traffic control
In the Netherlands, military air traffic control and fighter control are provided by Air Operations Control Station Nieuw Milligen (AOCS NM), a unit of the Royal Netherlands Air Force. In radio communications with aircraft, military air traffic control has the call sign Dutch Mil. This call sign is used in the recorded communications.
RAF Laarbruch
From the recording, we gather that two Tornado jets (637A & 637C) were just airborne from the British Royal Air Force base Laarbruch in Germany. These two Tornados must have entered Dutch airspace from the east shortly after take-off. RAF Laarbruch was located near the Dutch-German border. At that time it was homebase for three squadrons of Panavia Tornados. In 1999, RAF Laarbruch was closed and in 2003 reopened as Airport Weeze-Niederrhein.
Royal Netherlands Air Force
We have put the recording and the transcription to the Royal Netherlands Air Force. In November 2005, Pilot Officer of the AOCS NM Information Staff, Joost Kuipers, stated that he had not been able to find any investigation report on this incident. Kuipers said that the air force communications audiotapes from that period were not in their possession anymore.
Prior investigations
British ufologist Joe McGonagle brought us into contact with his colleagues Gary Anthony and David Clarke. They kindly sent us relevant material about this case, including a most interesting 'signal' from 1990, which had been sent to the British Ministry of Defence in London. It was released under the Code of Practice for Access to Government Information, a forerunner to the FOIA. Information from the signal in combination with the recorded communications enabled us to fix the positions of the Tornado jet fighters with reasonable certainty. For details on this, please view the Signal page.Ufologist Gary Anthony made an analysis of this case after an article had appeared in Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 26 No. 2 (May-June 1991). He found that a re-entering part from a Russian Proton rocket, which had been used for the launch of a Gorizont satellite, burned up in the atmosphere over Western Europe at the time of the observations by the British pilots. UFO Magazine, UK edition, of August 2002 featured The 1990 Tornado UFO Sighting by Richard Foxhall, which reported the release of the MoD signal (see above). In the October 2002 issue of UFO Magazine (UK), David Clarke and Andy Roberts published a response to the article which set out the explanation for the sighting: a re-entering Proton rocket part. The article was entitled: The 1990 Tornado UFO sighting: Re-entry by satellite booster cited as likely explanation.
Gary Anthony re-evaluated the Tornado case after Foxhall's article in the August 2002 edition of UFO Magazine. Anthony plotted all known civilian and military aircraft positions, projected lines of visibility to observed phenomena, calculated time zone differences and the space debris transit. Anthony stated that the resulting correlation identified that the Gorizont component was responsible for all the sightings, as previously thought. The spectacularly burning up part of the Proton rocket had travelled over South-west France heading towards Prague. The research by Clarke, Roberts and Anthony showed that the British pilots must have observed the burning up satellite debris, but that they had not recognized it as such. Anthony and Clarke reported as well that on November 5, 1990, at around 18:00 UTC (19:00 hrs MET) aircrews of at least four commercial airliners flying over different parts of Europe had also seen the bright lights in the sky caused by the satellite debris and had reported it.
 Trajectory of the re-entering Proton rocket part 1990-094C on Nov. 5, 1990. Tornado flight 603 over Ypenburg at 18:00 UTC. Design: © Gino Smeulders |
Independently of them, SEPRA, a branch of the French space flight organisation CNES, had reached the same conclusion in 1990, namely, that it concerned observations of a re-entering Russian rocket part [1].
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[1] Charente Libre, Nov. 10, 1990. Source: Univers OVNI.
[2] Source: Homepage Peter Smith.
Third Proton rocket stage
In December 2005 we put this case to the well-known Canadian satellite expert Ted Molczan. He informed us that on November 3, 1990, the Gorizont 21 communications satellite was launched with a Proton rocket from the Baikonur space flight facility in Russia. About ten minutes after lift-off, the third stage of the rocket was jettisoned. It was assigned the COSPAR identification number 1990-094C and NORAD identification number 20925. The Proton third stage is 6.40 meter long, 4.15 meter in diameter and has a mass (after the fuel has burned off) of 4,185 kg [3].The third stage is shown on the adjacent picture. After the staging, it entered a low orbit around the Earth and would burn up in the Earth's atmosphere within a few days. The RAE Table of Earth Satellites 1990 [4] mentioned that 1990-094C decayed on November 5.75, 1990. This equals November 5, 1990, at about 18:00 UTC (19:00 hrs MET).
The RAE Table of Earth Satellites 1990 also reported in a footnote: "Re-entry observed from British Midland Airways flight BD991 when approaching the Belgian coast and from Czechoslovakia, France and other European countries."
[3] Encyclopedia Astronautica.
[4] RAE 1990. Controller HMSO, London, 1991. © Crown Copyright. Courtesy Ted Molczan.
The trajectory
In various articles, the French press paid attention to the satellite re-entry, which had been observed by many people. Ted Molczan informed us that amongst the archived reports are several faxes from the highly regarded French astronomer and satellite observer/analyst Pierre Neirinck. Neirinck wrote in a message to us that he received 200 reports on the re-entry of this rocket stage at the time. In total, Neirinck has identified about 100 satellite re-entries. He wrote in a fax on November 5/6, 1990, that "the procession of multicoloured lights observed at 19:00 hrs was characteristic of the disintegration of an artificial satellite" and that "the various colours observed by the public can be explained by the variety of materials from which the satellite was composed." [6] In another fax on November 8, 1990, Neirinck wrote that "the decaying satellite over Western Europe on November 5 is now well and truly identified as the object 1990-094C." [7]In Pierre Neirinck's network was satellite observer Daniel Karcher, who did observations of the re-entering Proton rocket stage. Karcher was close to the trajectory of the passing rocket part, in Wittenheim, in the north-east of France. On the basis of Karcher's observations, the orbital elements of the rocket stage valid for the decay period could be determined with great precision. Neirinck's orbital elements of 1990-094C / 20925 in Two Line Element (TLE) format for the period around 18:00 UTC are available in this TLE file, which can be used in a satellite tracking program for the PC.
Using these orbital elements Ted Molczan has calculated the trajectory of 1990-094C / 20925, which is shown on the map above. You can read the conclusions he draws on the basis of his calculations on the page: Ted Molczan's findings.
[5] Picture from Proton Launch Vehicle Mission Planner's Guide, Revision 4, March 1999. Courtesy Ted Molczan.
[6] Fax from Pierre Neirinck. Source: Univers OVNI.
[7] Fax from Pierre Neirinck. Source: Univers OVNI.
The aircrews' perception
With the orbital elements, the positions of the decaying rocket stage in the minutes around 18:00 UTC (19:00 hrs MET) can be calculated. The adjacent table shows in which directions and elevations the rocket stage was visible from Tornado flight 603, which was at Flight Level 270 (altitude 27,000 ft) over Ypenburg. The position and altitude of the 603 were taken into account in the calculations.
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Re-entering satellites are subject to a dramatic speed decrease from about 30,000 km/h to 2,000 km/h, due to the increasing density of the Earth's atmosphere between a height of 120 km and 60 km. The forces accompanying this very strong deceleration usually cause the satellite to break up. At around 18:00 UTC, 1990-094C was travelling at an altitude of approx. 80 km over the Earth and the process of disintegration was going on. Pieces of debris produced light individually, which could be seen over distances of hundreds of kilometres. A number of luminous points were visible travelling across the sky as a group.
Pilots are trained airspace observers. How could they get the impression that they were observing an unidentified aircraft?
At 18:00 UTC the Tornado crews were flying in darkness. The so-called Uniform Daylight Period in the Netherlands had ended at 16:20 UTC on November 5, 1990. At 18:00 UTC, the moon had just risen a couple of degrees above the north-eastern horizon. Meteorological data show that there may have been a thin cloud layer just below a height of 9,000 feet, but little to none at higher altitudes [10]. Visibility was good. The Tornado crews of two (pilot & systems operator) saw a group of lights passing them that remained visible for a few minutes and that seemed to fly at a slightly higher altitude. Because it was dark, it was impossible to tell whether these lights were moving independently of each other or were fixed as part of an aircraft. The illusion that they were lights of an aircraft could however arise easily, because the lights were travelling at a seemingly small distance from each other, at identical speed and direction. There were also smoke trails that looked like contrails. Also, the positions of the lights were probably not changing much with respect to each other, which reinforced the illusion that the lights marked the outline of a solid object.
The human eye has the natural tendency to see points of light observed against a uniformly dark background as if they are interconnected [11][12], giving the illusion that they form a single entity. For this optical effect to have created such an illusion was almost inevitable. Besides, the brilliance of the lights in conjunction with such good visibility could create the impression that the lights were very much closer than was the case in reality. During their observations, the pilots did not notice anything that could have broken this illusion.
The pilots' expectations probably played a role as well. In the communications, we hear them speculating about which type of aircraft they are seeing. That is to say, they expected their observation to have been an aircraft. Pilots are trained to notice and observe aircraft, and this illuminated debris created the illusion of a passing plane with lights, as described above.
A re-entering and disintegrating satellite in darkness is a relatively rare event. In our opinion, the interpretation of the phenomenon by the pilots is not the result of inexpert observation. Their interpretation was caused by the occurrence of an exceptional event, limited visual information and an overly short time-period in which to come to a correct identification.
[8] Azimuth / compass direction: north = 0 degrees, east = 90 degrees, south = 180 degrees, west = 270 degrees.
[9] Calculation: 100 + 2 / 12 x 360 = 160 degrees.
[10] Upper Air Data KNMI De Bilt / University of Wyoming.
[11] How the Mind Works (1997), by Steven Pinker.
[12] Consciousness: An Introduction (2004), by Susan Blackmore.
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