Cylinder over Bickley, KENT · United Kingdom
A conventional explanation is favored by the record but was never formally confirmed.
The report, as filed
Cylinder [NUFORC annotation: Balloon - Probable]
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #176766). 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 2023-07-11 → 2023-07-28