Fireball over Portsmouth, HAMPSHIR · United Kingdom
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
Upon leaving the school at approximately 1900 hours we observed first a "fireball" traveling at a constant speed (ie, neither accelerating nor decelerating). It appeared to stop when two more fireballs appeared in a straight line and equidistant, behind the first. The first then "turned around" and receded into the distance appearing as a small pin-prick of white light. I cannot say what happened to the other two as we had to drive on. I estimate that we observed them for about 10 minutes. They looked nothing like I have ever seen before in the sky and I am confident that they were not meteor showers, meteorites, drones, helicopters, planes, fireworks, Chinese lanterns, or any tricks of light. It was dusk and the sky was clear.
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #172318). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
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UK sighting reports were handled by the MoD's UFO desk until 2009; later records answer to the Freedom of Information Act 2000, earlier files sit at the National Archives. Through Aletheca, the house instrument, anyone can commission the request — filed, chased, and published in the open, refusals included. The draft goes over already written: the records sought, and the date window they would live in.
Routed to: UK Ministry of Defence · records window 2022-10-08 → 2022-10-25