The Devon Flying Cross
In 24 October 1967, near A3072 between Hatherleigh and Holsworthy, near Okehampton, Devon, England, in the early hours of 24 October 1967, two Devon and Cornwall police constables, Roger Willey and Clifford Waycott, were on night patrol in car Delta Nine, based at Okehampton, working the A3072 between Hatherleigh and Holsworthy. This case file covers what witnesses reported, the official narrative, and a two-pass assessment with its evidence tier.
What did witnesses see at A3072 between Hatherleigh and Holsworthy?
In the early hours of 24 October 1967, two Devon and Cornwall police constables, Roger Willey and Clifford Waycott, were on night patrol in car Delta Nine, based at Okehampton, working the A3072 between Hatherleigh and Holsworthy. At one minute past four in the morning they saw a brilliant object hanging at about treetop height ahead of them. Willey described it to the press as looking "like a star-spangled cross radiating points of light from all angles." On camera for ITN, he was more specific: the object "was like unto a cross, although the inner parts were somewhat similar to the points of a compass, and they were quite blurred, the inner parts of the cross. But it was brilliant, brilliant white, brilliant light."
Willey said his first instinct was to give chase. "Constable Willey just said 'Here we go then,' and we drove off after it." The two men pursued the light along winding country lanes at speeds reported up to ninety miles an hour, but they could never close on it. The closest they came was about four hundred yards. "We drove towards it and it moved away," Willey told reporters. "It then led us on a chase as if it was playing a game with us." On the newsreel he added, "the acceleration away from us was terrific. So really, we didn't get under it to hear any sound." There was no engine noise at any point beyond the noise of their own car.
Both officers were adamant the thing was real and structured, not a star or an illusion. "There was no question whatsoever that this was a figment of the imagination," Willey said. "It was definitely there, it was definitely either manned by some sort of being or remotely controlled." Pressed by the interviewer on whether they felt watched, both men answered, "Definitely. Yes." Waycott, the more guarded of the two, said he was "a bit sceptical, but this was definitely no star," and judged the object roughly the size of a conventional aircraft while insisting it was neither an aeroplane nor a helicopter.
The chase covered roughly fourteen miles. Reports describe a second, identical cross-shaped object appearing later in the episode, around 4:23 in the morning, before the lights moved off and faded. The officers were not alone. A motorist named Christopher Garner of Hatherleigh independently saw the cross-shaped light that morning and said he thought he was having a nightmare. Beyond Devon, the Member of Parliament for Torrington, Peter Mills, later told the House of Commons that "two police officers and engineers at Hessary Tor" had reported low-flying objects moving over the area for more than an hour, which puts further corroborating witnesses on the high ground of North Hessary Tor on Dartmoor.
What is the official explanation?
The case was the most high-profile sighting in a country-wide British UFO flap in October 1967. The two policemen were interviewed by an investigator from the Ministry of Defence's Defence Intelligence branch DI55. The MoD's own report on the incident was withheld for more than thirty years and only became public when the relevant file was opened at the National Archives at Kew in 1998. The file reference is AIR 20/11612.
The DI55 assessment is blunt. As quoted from that file, the investigator wrote: "It was apparent that the policemen had rehearsed their story several times as a result of interviews with the Press. By this time they had drawn certain conclusions from their observations, eg that they had seen a spaceship, which were quite unsupported by their factual account of events. Venus is still a plausible explanation for what they saw." Summing up the whole month for his superiors on 30 October 1967, the head of the MoD secretariat S.4(Air), James Carruthers, wrote to the Under Secretary of State for the RAF, Merlyn Rees, that "There is nothing in any of this current series of reports to alter our basic attitude to UFOs," a line also held in AIR 20/11612.
The matter reached Parliament. On 8 November 1967 the Member for Torrington, Peter Mills, asked the Secretary of State for Defence about the North Devon reports. Answering for the government, Merlyn Rees said: "We received a number of reports of objects seen in the sky over North Devon in October. After investigation, some proved to be aircraft and some were lights. Of the lights, the majority were the planet Venus; but the source of a few lights has not been positively identified. I can say, however, that none of these unidentified lights was an alien object." When Mills pressed him on the police and engineers at Hessary Tor who had watched low-flying objects for over an hour, Rees pointed to "complete radar coverage to a very great height over all these islands" that showed nothing, and added that the department had "access to scientists of high repute" and "also to psychologists" who had been consulted. The nearest RAF station, Chivenor in north Devon, stated it had no aircraft over the area that could account for the sighting, which removed the obvious conventional-aircraft explanation and left the MoD pointing at Venus.
This was not an isolated official finding. The same October flap produced a second cross-shaped UFO reported by police in Cheshire three days later, on 27 October 1967, the MoD file for which (AIR 20/11890) carries a handwritten note that "The facts are consistent with Venus being viewed through semi-transparent clouds," and a Welsh sighting near Castle Peak that the MoD also logged as Venus (AIR 20/11889).
What did the witnesses think it was?
Willey and Waycott both believed they had chased a genuinely anomalous, controlled craft. Willey's on-record position was that the object "was definitely either manned by some sort of being or remotely controlled" and "definitely being controlled to view our car." Waycott, the self-described sceptic, still insisted it was "definitely no star" and that what he saw was a real object of roughly aircraft size that was not an aeroplane or a helicopter. Their conviction was strong enough that the DI55 investigator complained they had, after repeated press interviews, hardened into the belief they had seen "a spaceship."
The officers were corroborated by independent witnesses. The motorist Christopher Garner of Hatherleigh reported seeing the same cross-shaped light that morning and described his disbelief. The Member of Parliament for Torrington, Peter Mills, told the Commons that police officers and engineers at Hessary Tor on Dartmoor had watched low-flying objects in the area for over an hour, placing further observers on the high moor that same night.
How firmly the two constables held their belief over time is itself disputed, and this is where the witness record gets interesting. The astronomer Howard Miles of the British Astronomical Association, who interviewed the two men, told Ian Ridpath that the officers "accepted completely my explanation of the apparent motions of Venus as being due to travelling along a bending road" and "seemed quite satisfied." Ridpath records a similar acceptance when the Venus explanation was laid out for them. So the witnesses' own later position is not a clean claim of an unexplained craft. By the accounts of the astronomers who spoke to them, they came round, at least for a time, to the idea that they had been fooled by a very bright planet.
The dispute
The dispute is a positive identification, not a vague guess. The object has been identified as the planet Venus by named, independent, civilian astronomers, and that identification was accepted by the Ministry of Defence as well. Venus was a brilliant morning star low in the eastern dawn sky over Devon at four in the morning on 24 October 1967, in the exact direction and at the exact time of the chase. The optical mechanism was demonstrated to the witnesses: a bright fixed light near the horizon, watched from a car driven fast along bending country lanes, appears to keep pace, dart, hover over the trees, and shoot away as the road curves, because the eye reads a distant point as a nearby object. The cross or "star-spangled" shape is the standard appearance of a very bright point source seen through atmospheric turbulence near the horizon, a windscreen, or a watering eye.
Who advanced it matters here, because this is not just an official line. Arthur Smith, science correspondent of the Daily Mirror, recognised the "flying cross" as Venus at the time. Howard Miles of the British Astronomical Association investigated the case, interviewed both constables, and reported that they "accepted completely my explanation of the apparent motions of Venus as being due to travelling along a bending road" and "seemed quite satisfied." The astronomer and writer Ian Ridpath records the same acceptance. Independently, the MoD's Defence Intelligence branch DI55 concluded in file AIR 20/11612 that "Venus is still a plausible explanation for what they saw," and three days later a near-identical cross-shaped UFO reported by Cheshire police was filed with the handwritten note that "The facts are consistent with Venus being viewed through semi-transparent clouds." The entire October 1967 flap of "flying crosses" resolved the same way, which is strong corroboration that this was a class of misperception with one cause.
What keeps the case in the disputed column rather than fully closed is that the Venus reconstruction has real friction. At four in the morning Venus stood only a few degrees above the horizon, where its light is heavily dimmed by the atmosphere, and the bright planet Jupiter was close by in the same patch of sky, yet the officers reported one dominant object, with some accounts adding a second cross around 4:23. A planet does not divide. The "just above the trees" placement and the reported "terrific acceleration" are also a stretch for an object tens of millions of miles away. None of this is a confession, recovered props, or a frame-by-frame fabrication of a specific image. It is a positively identified real-world cause, Venus, carried by named analysts who showed their method, set against genuine astronomical objections that the identification does not entirely dissolve. That combination is why the case is logged as strongly disputed with the Venus explanation dominant, and why the final discredit call is left for human review.
Is the Devon Flying Cross real? The two-pass assessment
Pass one, the ordinary explanation. The dominant counter-explanation, advanced by named civilian astronomers and not merely asserted by the MoD, is the planet Venus. On the morning of 24 October 1967 Venus was a brilliant morning star low in the eastern dawn sky, exactly the direction the chase ran and exactly the time the officers were out. The mechanism is well understood and was demonstrated to the witnesses: a very bright point of light low on the horizon, watched from a moving car on bending lanes, appears to pace the car, dart, hang over the trees, and accelerate away when the road turns, because the driver unconsciously reads a distant fixed light as a nearby moving object. The "star-spangled cross" with "points radiating from all angles" is the classic visual signature of a bright object seen through an out-of-focus or watering eye, a windscreen, or atmospheric turbulence near the horizon. The science correspondent of the Daily Mirror, Arthur Smith, recognised it as Venus at once. Howard Miles of the British Astronomical Association reached the same conclusion and said the two constables accepted it when he walked them through the geometry. The MoD's DI55 file independently landed on Venus, the nearest RAF station ruled out its own aircraft, and three days later a near-identical "flying cross" reported by Cheshire police was logged with the note that the facts were "consistent with Venus being viewed through semi-transparent clouds." A whole October flap of these crosses resolved the same way. That is a positively identified, specific, real-world cause with a shown method, not a vague guess.
Pass two, if it is real. If the object was a structured craft, the strongest points in its favour are the corroboration and the behaviour. The two trained observers were not alone: a motorist saw it, and a Member of Parliament reported police and engineers at Hessary Tor watching low objects for over an hour. The officers insisted on a definite shape, a brilliant white light, total silence, and "terrific" acceleration, and Waycott, a self-declared sceptic, would not call it a star. The Venus account also has real astronomical friction that its proponents tend to skate over. At four in the morning Venus was only a few degrees above the horizon, where atmospheric extinction cuts its brightness sharply, and the bright planet Jupiter was nearby in the same part of the sky, yet the officers reported a single dominant object and, in some accounts, a second one. A planet does not split in two. The "just above the trees" detail is hard to reconcile with an object millions of miles away.
Weighing the two passes, this case carries a positive identification of a specific real-world object, the planet Venus, put forward by independent civilian astronomers (Howard Miles of the BAA and Arthur Smith of the Daily Mirror), with a demonstrated optical mechanism, and accepted at the time by the witnesses themselves according to those astronomers. That is materially stronger than an unsupported official assertion. It is not, however, a confession, a recovered hoax prop, or a frame-by-frame demonstration that closes every loose end, and the low altitude of Venus, the nearby Jupiter, and the reported second object are genuine objections that the Venus reconstruction does not fully answer. For those reasons the case is filed as Strongly Disputed rather than resolved outright, with the Venus identification dominant but not airtight.
Sources
- api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1967/nov/08/unidentified-flying-object-north-devon
- ufologie.patrickgross.org/press/times24oct67.htm
- www.ianridpath.com/ufo/flyingcross.html
- www.ianridpath.com/ufo/octoberflap.html
- www.metabunk.org/threads/devon-flying-cross-of-1967-uap.12987/
- ufologie.patrickgross.org/press/pics/bristol24oct67.jpg
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