The MoD investigated, and it was, as most of the sightings during October 1967 in the UK were, none other than our friend Venus. It's a classic of its kind.
http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/flyingcross.html
If you look at the image of what it supposedly looked like, and knew nothing else about what it was thought to be, nearly everyone would probably just say that it looks like a star, or another bright object as seen in the sky. And that's what it was. Venus. A bright object in the sky. And this case displayed all the hallmarks you'd expect to see from Venus.
Unfortunately this one is a dead-end for you, MR.
LOL Ahh yes..The old stand-by debunk of skeptics---it was just the planet Venus. Like the policemen couldn't tell the difference between that and the ufo.. Here's some other eyewitness reports of the cross-shaped ufo. Notice they describe it as moving. The skeptics dismiss this out of hand as an illusion, I think not..It was described as moving and then remaining stationary for 5 minutes. Illusions don't just suddenly stop like that.
"October 27 – another flying cross
Most celebrated of the cases was the famous ‘flying cross’ reported on the morning of 1967 October 24 by two Devon policemen and identified by astronomers and the MoD as Venus, which I deal with on
a separate page. What is less well known is that, three days later, policemen in Cheshire also reported a bright cross-shaped UFO. The MoD report on this sighting can be found in file
AIR 20/11890. What follows is a brief summary with my own comments.
At 4.15 am on 1967 October 27 two constables on beat duty in Stalybridge, Cheshire, made the first sighting of an object said to be bright, cross-shaped, and travelling at an estimated height of about 1,000 feet in a north-easterly direction.
Fifteen minutes later another PC at Mottram-in-Longdendale, about three miles south of Stalybridge, reported a hovering object moving from side to side over Glossop, a town another 3 miles or so away. Depending exactly where the officer was standing, the azimuth of the object would have been anywhere from the east to southeast.
‘The object then began an up and down movement and finally remained stationary for about five minutes,’ the report continues. Three officers were sent out by car from Chester to verify the incident, bringing the total of police witnesses to six.
The PC at Mottram-in-Longdendale was in touch by radio with one of the PCs at Stalybridge, so it is evident they were seeing the same thing. It is also evident that, despite the earlier report, it had not moved north-east at all, or else it would not have been hovering over Glossop.
The object disappeared into misty cloud at 5.30 am, over an hour after it was first spotted.
Spurious side-to-side and up-and-down movements of hovering celestial objects are common due to the
autokinetic effect in the eye. In addition, passing clouds can give the illusion that stationary celestial objects are moving.
Evidently all this was well-known to the MoD investigator, who commented in a handwritten note on the teleprinter printout: ‘The facts are consistent with Venus being viewed through semi-transparent clouds.’---
http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/octoberflap.html
And furthermore it looks like that skeptic astronomer made some major mistakes in inferring it to be Venus::
"Skeptic Ian Ridpath was has featured this case in some detail on his skeptical website:
http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/flyingcross.html
He is firmly of the opinion that it was the planet Venus and cites several academics who agree with this stance and Ridpath is at times less than complimentary about the Ufologist involved in this case. Well Mr Ridpath, you might have been wrong as over at Metabunk.org a forum member has been reevaluating this case and it seems Venus has been ruled out:
"Actually I got that totally wrong. The situation for Ian Ridpath is even worse...as I had set Stellarium for London, and not for Devon. On setting Stellarium for Devon, Venus does not rise until 3.40am and at 4am is a mere 3 degrees above the horizon. Atmospheric dimming would have reduced its brightness from the usual bright -4.6...down to a far less bright -2.7 ( i.e by about 85% ) so it would NOT have been the usual glaringly bright Venus that fools so many people.:"
https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...the-devon-police-the-flying-cross-1967.70621/
Two additional details mentioned in later reports:
"I was interested to read that there was an (apparent) corroborating sighting by "engineers at Hessary Tor". I'm guessing this refers to a transmitting station on North Hessary Tor. I'd not heard of this before.It's not much of a source given the proclivities of the author, but Arthur Shuttlewood in 'Warnings from Flying Friends' (in itself a nice, nostalgic snapshot of late 60s ufology) claims that the night was "cloudy over central Devon".
Another thing mentioned in one of the constables' interviews that he quotes was the claim the object was later joined by second one. If that's the case it does perhaps strengthen the argument that they were seeing Jupiter, later joined by Venus, but...who knows."
.
