ACUFO:

There was a chase of phantom airship that night [January 31, 1916]. Flight Sub-Lieutenant J.E. Morgan, who went up from Rochford at about a quarter to nine, was at 5,000 feet when, according to his report, he saw a little above his own level and slightly ahead to starboard, "a row of what appeared to be lighted windows which looked something like a railway carriage with the blinds drawn." Morgan thought that he had sighted a hostile airship only some 100 feet away, so he fired at it with his Webley Scott pistol, whereupon he says that "the lights alongside rose rapidly" and disappeared. Heading west he fired a Very light in the hope that he might be near an aerodrome, but he got no answering signal. He next discerned a "blur of yellowish light," which he thought might be Southend pier. On coming down, however, he discovered that what he had seen were the lights of a large Dutch steamer off Thames Haven. Flying round it he asked with his electric torch for his bearings, but the only answer he got was from the guns and searchlights of the Thames Haven defences. Morgan, knowing that these indicated "land or ships at sea" decided to descend. From the reflected light of one of the searchlight beams he made out a coastline to which he steered and came down into a "muddy water course." He was uninjured. With the help of some Royal Engineers he was able to extricate his undamaged machine from the mud, and thirty-six hours later he was able to fly his machine back to Rochford where he arrived on the afternoon of 2nd February. Four machines from Yarmouth and two from Castle Bromwich searched the mists in vain.

At 8.45 pm [on January 31, 1916] another aeroplane, piloted by Flight Sub Lieutenant J.E. Morgan, may have observed the same UFO after arising from an aerodrome at Rochford, some twenty-two miles east of Hainault Farm. Morgan reported that at 5,000 feet he had seen, about a hundred feet away from his aircraft, 'a row of what appeared to be lighted windows which looked something like a railway carriage with the blinds drawn'. In the belief that he had chanced upon a Zeppelin, Morgan fired at the object with his Webley Scott pistol, whereupon 'the lights alongside arose rapidly' and disappeared! As on that particular night none of the raiding airships came as far south as Essex, what was it that these two pilots independently reported in the sky in the same area at the same time?

1916 Jan 31, 2045 hours, local, Near Rochford, England, Flight Sub Lieutenant J. E. Morgan. Flying at 5000 feet, he saw a row of lights like lighted windows on a railway carriage with the blinds drawn. Thinking he had encountered a German Zeppelin, he fired his Webley Scott pistol. The light rose and rapidly disappeared. (First sighting from an aircraft, first firing on UFO from an aircraft.)

Source: THE GERMAN AIR RAIDS ON ENGLAND, 1914-1918, by Capt. Joseph Morris (London 1925), page 81 (Credit: Dr. Thomas E. Bullard)

1916: January 31, 2045 hours, local, Near Rochford, England

Flight Sub Lieutenant J. E. Morgan. Flying at 5000 feet, he saw a row of lights like lighted windows on a railway carriage with the blinds drawn. Thinking he had encountered a German Zeppelin, he fired his Webley Scott pistol. The lights rose and rapidly disappeared. (This is the first sighting from an aircraft and the first firing on UFO from an aircraft.)

A/C Code: M GXE codes: _ _ _

Source: THE GERMAN AIR RAIDS ON ENGLAND, 1914-1918, by Capt. Joseph Morris (London 1925), page 81

(Credit: Dr. Thomas E. Bullard)

03 Project 1947 Reports, newsclippings and documents (cases from Jan Aldrich and Barry Greenwood)

Some 20 miles east of Hainault Farm was another of London's fighter aerodromes at Rochford in Essex. It was from here at 8.45pm that Flight Sub-Lieutenant J.E. Morgan arose for an anti-Zeppelin patrol in his BE2C fighter. Morgan, in an official report to the Admiralty, said that when he reached 5,000 feet he saw a little above his own altitude and slightly ahead to his right, about 100 feet away from his plane, "a row of what appeared to be lighted windows which looked something like a railway carriage with the blinds drawn."

Believing that he had flown directly into the path of a hostile Zeppelin preparing an attack upon Central London, Morgan drew his Webley Scott service pistol, aimed and fired several times in the direction of the "railway carriage." Immediately, "the lights alongside rose rapidly" and disappeared into the inky blackness, so rapidly in fact that Morgan believed his own aircraft had gone into a dive. By now Morgan had completely lost his bearings, and after a lengthy battle to bring his aircraft under control he was forced to make a crash landing on the Thameshaven Marshes.

A full account of Morgan's sighting, dubbed "an encounter with a phantom airship" appears in Captain Joseph Morris's official history of the German air raids, The War in the Air, published in 1925. The book was compiled from then classified records, and Morris refers directly to the airman's report filed with the War Office. Extensive searches of the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service records at the Public Record Office have failed to locate Morgan's original report. The station log from Rochford aerodrome does give brief details of Morgan's flight with the addition of the word "Zepp" which shows the pilot and his station commander believed he had had an encounter with something he took to be an enemy airship.

Morgan's report is not included in the official account of the 31 January, 1916 raid published by the War Office which charts the movements of the Zeppelins and the attempts by British fliers to intercept them in great detail. Historians have been left with the impression that the authorities gave no credence to his report. Here we have the first evidence of what has become a long tradition on the part of the War Office, and its successors the Air Ministry and today's Ministry of Defence, of 'down-playing' reports by military pilots of unidentified flying objects.

There was, in fact, additional support for the claim that an airborne object of some kind was present over London during the air raid. A fourth RFC pilot, McClelland, reported seeing what he described as "a Zeppelin" caught briefly in the glare of searchlights above London at 9 pm, 15 minutes after Morgan's encounter.

McClelland's report was in fact the subject of a comment by the Third Sea Lord, Rear-Admiral F.C.T Tudor, who dismissed it in one single paragraph which reads:

"night flying must be difficult and dangerous, and require considerable nerve and pluck, but this airman seems to have been gifted with a more than usually vivid imagination."

Historians of the Great War have used the phrase 'phantom airship' to describe inexplicable aerial phenomena. In later years broadly similar sightings were categorised by the largely baffled Air Ministry as ‘ghost planes' and ‘flying saucers.' Almost a century later we are no closer to explaining what was independently reported by four experienced pilots long before the phrase "UFO" was invented.

References:

• David Clarke and Andy Roberts, Out of the Shadows: UFOs, the Establishment and the Official Cover-up, London: Piatkus, 2002: see chapter 3, pp 40-44 for details of ‘Operation Charlie.'
• H.A. Jones, The War in the Air, Volume 3, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1931.
• C. Cole and E.F. Cheeseman, The Air Defence of Britain 1914-1918, Bodley Head, London, 1984.
• PRO Air 1/611 16/15/286. Report from Officer in Command, Royal Flying Corps, Hainault Farm, 2 February 1916.
• PRO Air 1/438 15/300/1. Rochford Station (Naval): report on night landing ground, 1916.
• PRO Air 1/720 36/1/6 GHQ Home Forces Intelligence Circular No 6, May 1916.

Something like a railway carriage

Brett Holman - 13 March 2010

On the last night of January 1916, a large force of seven Zeppelins crossed over the Wash into Norfolk, heading for the industrial cities of the Midlands. Unsure of their location, most of them instead dropped their bombs on relatively unimportant targets. But at least they got home okay. The defending aircraft of the RFC and RNAS had an awful night: 22 sorties resulted in six aircraft being written off, two squadron commanders killed and no contacts with the enemy.

Or at least ... no confirmed contacts with the enemy. Four pilots did report seeing something, but they were well to the south of the probable Zeppelin flightpaths, over London and Essex, and so their reports were dismissed by those higher-up as mistaken identities, phantom airships. At 7.40pm, Lieutenant R. S. Maxwell saw 'an artificial light' north of his B.E.2c while 10000 feet above London, and gave chase before losing it in clouds. 2nd Lieutenant C. A. Ridley, another B.E.2c pilot, also saw a 'moving light' over London at about the same time, and so they may have actually seen each other. Later in the night, at around 9pm, Flight Sub-Lieutenant H. McClelland (also flying a B.E.2c) also thought he saw 'a Zeppelin' by searchlight over London.

Strangest of all was the report of Flight Sub-Lieutenant J. E. Morgan, an RNAS pilot who sortied in his B.E.2c from Rochford in Essex at about a quarter to nine. At 5000 feet, slightly above and to starboard, he spotted

a row of what appeared to be lighted windows which looked something like a railway carriage with the blinds drawn.

(This is apparently a quote from Morgan's after-action report.) Thinking that this was a Zeppelin only a hundred feet away -- and presumably having no time to maneuver for a better shot -- he fired his Webley at it! It then seemed that 'the lights alongside rose rapidly' and disappeared. Morgan then started looking for somewhere to land: he saw some lights below which he thought was Southend Pier but turned out to be a Dutch steamer off Thameshaven. He managed to put down safely and flew back to Rochford the following day.

This episode has been assimilated into UFO lore as an early military encounter, a precursor of the foo fighters of the Second World War. There are a few scanty accounts on the net, but easily the best -- here and here -- is by David Clarke, who lectures in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University. He has worked closely with the National Archives in recent years with regards to their release of official documents relating to UFO sightings.

Clarke looked for Morgan's original report, but has not been able to find it. (He did find other documents, such as the Rochford aerodrome log which notes 'Zeppelin' next to Morgan's flight.) So he drew on the (very short) quotes from it given in Joseph Morris's The German Air Raids on Britain, 1914-1918 (Dallington: Naval & Military Press, 1993 [1925]), 81-2, which perhaps could be considered a semi-official history: it was certainly written with privileged access to official records of the services and ministries involved. Morris doesn't venture an explanation for what Morgan saw, other than that it was a 'phantom airship', and if this is all we have to go on it does sound mysterious.

But, looking at Christopher Cole and E. F. Cheesman, The Air Defence of Britain 1914-1918 (London: Putnam, 1984), 83-9 (which Clarke also cites), they provide details which aren't in Morris. For example, they say that when the row of lights 'rose rapidly', Morgan at first thought his B.E.2c was diving, but an instrument check showed that it wasn't. So either Morgan's report was still extant in the early 1980s when Cole and Cheesman wrote their book, or they had another source (or else just made stuff up, which doesn't seem their style). Morgan himself was killed in 1917, so it probably wasn't him. I'd guess they did see the original report, or perhaps a different precis of it, as they give a quote which is similar to that in Morris, but not identical:

a row of lighted windows ... something like a railway carriage with the blinds down.

Maybe this source is still out there somewhere? If so, it might shed some light on what it was that Morgan actually saw. Cole and Cheesman suggest that it might have been the Zeppelin L16 (which theory ufologists don't seem to mention). An airship gondola could well look 'something like a railway carriage with the blinds drawn': it wouldn't be well-lit, but I think there would be some light coming from inside. As noted above, L16 was supposed to have been much further north, but tracing the actual routes taken by airship raiders can be quite hard. The airship captains usually didn't know where they were, the pilots who flew against them often didn't know where they were, and the defenders on the ground often didn't see anything at all. The most reliable indicator of a Zeppelin's position is usually the bombs it dropped, but L16 turned back early due to engine trouble. So perhaps this explains Morgan's sighting. On the other hand, would a Zeppelin captain respond to being shot at by a pistol by climbing rapidly? Unlikely: he wouldn't even have noticed it. He might have seen the B.E. and dropped ballast to outclimb it, though, maybe into a layer of cloud which would explain why it disappeared.

But otherwise, if it wasn't an airship, what might Morgan have seen?