Show Transcript and Notes: Flying Saucers Over Biggleswade

Below you’ll find the transcript for the Flying Saucers Over Biggleswade episode but here are some links to further information about the great flying saucer hoax, and other useful reading.

Here’s a link to information about the UFO monument in Frank Russell’s honour in Biggleswade pictured below. There’s also this article in the Comet all about the monument. There’s also this great blog piece with pictures and newspaper clippings all about the hoax

Here’s some images of the Toplers Hill water tower. Here’s a link to the image of John Whitworth in the canoe below Tower Bridge.

Weird in the Wade theme

Dramatic Intro

It’s Monday 2^nd December 1957, just before 8 in the evening. On a dark hillside in freezing weather four men are staring skywards. Every now and again one of them stamps their feet on the crisp frosty ground, just to keep the blood flowing. Occasionally a distant car or lorry trundles by on the great north road.

One of the men, Alan a local farmer is regretting not bringing his flask of tea with him. Should he go back to the car and fetch it? And risk missing it? Whatever it turns out to be? No, he’d never forgive himself. He returns his gaze skywards and banishes the thought of a steaming flask of tea.

Another of the men, Patrick is fiddling with some fancy recording gear he’s brought with him. BBC stuff he’s borrowing from work for the night. He shivers and fumbles with the buttons on his recording machine. He doesn’t want the batteries to go flat but he needs something to do though. So, he keeps testing, recording snippets of the night around them. Busy work to keep his mind off what might turn up in the night sky later.

John, the man who has brought them here together is rummaging in his pocket again he keeps taking his pipe out, looking at it, then putting it away. Patrick wishes he’d just light it and be done with it. But John doesn’t seem nervous, just excited.

The final man in their party is standing a little away from the others, his binoculars scanning the horizon purposefully, in a manner he is clearly accustomed to. He is Flt Lft Jack Hunter of RAF Henlow. 24 years’ service under his belt, an expert in aircraft and missiles.

The 8pm train from Biggleswade to London rumbles past in the distance and then the night around them falls silent again. Until

“There! There, chaps do you see it?” Hunter points, the other men look scanning in the direction Hunter’s binoculars are trained in. Patrick the BBC man, flicks on his sound recording machine and holds his breath.

“Do you see it yet? It’s amber in colour, moving fast, directly toward us!”

They look and yes, yes they see it, but they don’t know what it is and it’s coming right for them.

What these men witnessed that night becomes known locally as the Toplers Hill episode and there’s much more to it than meets the eye. Conflicting accounts, threatening phone calls, and possible contact with a person not of this planet.

One thing we know for sure is that whatever happened on Toplers Hill on the 2^nd December 1957 was categorically not part of an elaborate and ingenious flying saucer hoax. A hoax that captured the countries imagination and is commemorated in monument form just a few minutes walk away from my home.

Intro

Welcome to Weird in the Wade, episode two Flying Saucers over Biggleswade. I’m your host Nat Doig. On this episode we’ll investigate what really happened on Toplers Hill that night along with John Whitworth’s strange multiple encounters, including with what he thought was an alien being. We’ll explore how this mysterious event on Toplers Hill leads to a flying saucer hoax being discovered and yet the Toplers Hill incident is not part of that hoax. We’ll meet a working-class engineering hero who built a flying saucer in his shed and a woman defying conventions of the time by investigating UFOs with her trusty Labrador.

Context

It seems like for the last 70 odd years UFOs have always been topical. Only a couple of months before recording this podcast three unidentified flying objects were shot down over the US and Canada in February 2023. One was confirmed as a Chinese spy balloon, but the other two are still surrounded in mystery and speculation and haven’t to date been recovered. But even this recent heightened interest in unidentified flying objects or aerial phenomena as the military now like to call them, is nothing compared to how flying saucers gripped the popular imagination in the 1950s. By the mid 50s Flying saucer fever was sweeping through the sleepy towns and villages of Great Britain including Biggleswade. And I want to take a little bit of time exploring what was going on in 1950s Britain because they really were obsessed with flying saucers back then!

It’s important to point out that in the 1950s the term UFO was not universally used. Organisations of people who wanted to investigate the phenomena in a more systematic or scientific way, were beginning to use the term unidentified flying object, in a bid to move away from what they saw as the sensationalist term flying saucer. And to be fair a lot of the flying saucer sightings reported at the time, were not saucer shaped at all! But the media and your average person on the street in say 1956 would refer to what we might call a UFO as a flying saucer.

In many ways it’s not surprising that sightings of objects in the sky were becoming more common and of more interest. During the second world war a handful of UFO sightings were reported by military personal and civilians who were having to keep a keen eye on the skies alert to enemy bombers and missiles like the V2 rockets. So its not surprising that this vigilance for what might be flying above you in the skies continued.

At the same time as this increased vigilance, there were many more identified craft flying in our skies than ever before. Commercial aircraft were increasing in number as well as continued military activity as the cold war grew in intensity. So there really were more flying objects so it seems only logical some of these might be reported as unidentified by the public, especially if military related.

And military exercises were stepping up as the political tensions of the cold war between the west and the Soviet Union grew. This escalated further when on 4^th October 1957 Sputnik, the first man made satellite was launched into orbit by the soviets. It fell back into the earth’s atmosphere on Jan 4^th 1958 creating concern about whether it could land back on earth in a destructive way. The launch of sputnik marks the start of the space race between the US and USSR. The American satellite Explorer One was launched successfully on 31^st January the following year, 1958. The British public, geographically between the US and Soviet Union watched on as these satellites were launched into the skies above them. It’s hard to imagine what a big, exciting but also worrying thing all of this was to the average person. It was all anyone could talk about. My Mum’s pet goldfish which she had age 5 in 1958 was called sputnik.

She remembers at the time hearing on the radio and listening to her Mum and aunties talk not just about sputnik but about flying saucers. What were they? What would you do if you saw one? And also, knowing my Nana and great aunties, having a laugh at some of the more outlandish claims about aliens. I can imagine though that there was a general anxiety that these first tentative steps into space, could somehow invite something from out there to come and see what was going on down here. No one had walked on the moon yet, some still clung to the belief that mars had canals on it back then, signs of an industrial civilization, not categorically disproved until Mariner 4 sent back photographs of Mars’ red but barren surface in 1965. Obviously, there were many others who believed that the increase in flying saucer reports were down to military activity, and what was referred to at the time in the newspapers as “hush hush experiments with flying craft, missiles or satellite technology.”

Over in the US in 1948 there was the Roswell incident, where reports of a crashed flying saucer were quickly denied by the same military that had issued the initial flying saucer report. A weather balloon was blamed for the confusion. This incident seems to have made the subject of flying saucers newsworthy first in the US and then over here in the UK.

During the 1950s the number of flying saucer sightings increases considerably.. I did a general search over a two-year period from 1956 -58 through a newspaper archive and I found 13 separate incidents reported, many of which get multiple newspapers covering them so the number of articles is much greater. A more detailed search of just a two-week period in 1958 generated 6 separate flying saucer reports! Not related to any we’re covering today. And a UFO investigation organisation of the time reported receiving 2 sightings a week.

During the 1950s famous UK flying saucer sightings happened in as diverse places as:

• Portsmouth
• Co Derry, Norther Ireland
• Boston and Sleaford in Lincolnshire
• Runcorn, Cheshire
• Barnes and Hammersmith in London
• Glasgow
• And of course, Biggleswade in Bedfordshire

It wasn’t just flying saucer sightings that were whipping up interest.

• Between 1956 -8 two flying saucer films from the US were in British cinemas claiming to show evidence of aliens or UFOs.
• A colour film from Norway also touted evidence.
• Not a week went by without a science fiction film featuring flying saucers being on release.
• The Caxton Hall hosted a talk by an 81 year old woman who claimed to have spent time living with aliens.
• A rally was held by flying saucer enthusiasts at astronomical observatories across the UK looking for evidence of flying saucers.
• And in December 1956 Santa arrived at a Childrens Christmas event in a flying saucer rather than his traditional sleigh.
• There was even a report in early May 1958, before our hoax is uncovered, that people in the Manchester area were setting off homemade flying saucers and rockets that are exploding and causing a lot of concern.

It’s clear that there was a huge appetite for flying saucers. And The press generally treated the subject with respect but often there was a subtext to the articles, a raised eyebrow in the writing so to speak. Reading letters from the public sent into newspapers at the time, it’s clear that like today there were those who ardently believed that UFOs were from outer space and others who thought they were earth based military inventions, and there were also some who found the whole thing very amusing.

And it’s to this backdrop of flying saucer fever that our sightings on Toplers Hill and our separate flying saucer hoax take place. And the two are intertwined in a very intriguing way.

The Hoax

Frank

Before we explore what happened on Toplers Hill I’m going to tell you about the Biggleswade flying saucer hoax, how it came about, who was behind it and how it was discovered, because Its discovery is closely linked to the investigation into Toplers Hill.

The Biggleswade flying saucer hoax was both national and international news for some weeks in May and June of 1958. The master mind behind it was a working-class Dad and Judo instructor, he’s pictured with his shirt sleeves rolled up and wearing a knitted tank top, he had a long handsome face, a warm smile, and the fashionable brill creamed hair of his time.

Meet Frank A Russell our ingenious, engineer who built a fully operational flying saucer in his garden shed and fooled the inhabitants of Biggleswade for nearly a year, and all in aid of a good cause.

He was born in Biggleswade in 1918 and like many working-class children of the time he left school at 14. But he wasn’t like the other teenagers. He had a passion. A passion for engineering and for inventing and for grand building projects. And his first focus was not on the skies but on the seabed.

At age 15 he designed his first diving helmet which he described like this:

The first practical diving helmet I made was when I was 15. And it was built from an empty 5 gallon oil drum with a plate glass window, some scrap rubber sheeting, a length of garden hose, and a motor car type air pump. Inspite of its Heath Robinson appearance it actually worked efficiently at depths varying to 30ft. It was tested incidentally in a flooded pit at Arlesey.

The same pits where some fifty odd years later my Dad and I would fish in.

A year later, 1934 he had designed and built his first submarine model.

But world war 2 interrupted Frank’s inventing and he served in Africa, Italy, Sicily, and Greece. But even whilst embroiled in the conflict, he still had a keen eye for inspiration and after observing some metal floats off the coast of Italy he was inspired to take his submarine building to the next level.

Submarine

After the war, whilst he was living in a prefabricated house on George Street Biggleswade he started work on his manned submarine.

By September 1949 his submarine had progressed so well that the local paper ran a story about it. Frank claimed it will be the smallest manned submarine ever built. He was working on it with two friends Frank Pope and Bill Keys and he was keen to give them credit although they seemed less keen for the limelight.

A month later Frank’s submarine was gaining interest from as far afield as Dundee and Yorkshire. The article in the Dundee Evening Telegraph tells us that he has been working on the submarine for 14 months and that the dimensions were 16 ft 6in by 2 feet 6 inches. There is just enough room for one man, Frank to steer it. It weighed half a tonne and was fitted with oxygern tanks and cells that can absorb carbon dioxide, it had a telephone system so Frank could stay in touch with a boat which travelled behind it. The sub could be towed but had its own engine and could submerge under its own power. Let’s just stop for a minute. An ordinary working man in 1949 with a couple of his mates built a fully operational submarine in his back garden that was fitted with carbon dioxide scrubbers!  

Frank’s hope was to test the sub on the 4^th November 1949 in the river Ivel between Bedford and Biggleswade and apparently film crews were interested in attending the test. Frank was keen to get outside funding and he tells the press how much time and money it is costing him to build. he basically sets up a 1950s version of Go Fund Me scheme for his submarine project. He was ahead of his time in many ways, and you’ll hear about more of that when we get to his flying saucer.

Six months later in April 1950 Frank again spoke to the press about his project and has a very canny and novel way to encourage further support.

Firstly he said “I am amazed at the interest my project has aroused not only in this country but in others” letters were sent in to the Biggleswade chronicle praising the submarine project from as far afield as Canada and Australia.

He explained that his submarine is “Different form a normal craft, inasmuch as it is specially designed for exploring and photographing the seabed. There are underwater search lights on the hull”.

But if readers weren’t moved to back his project for just its engineering prowess, he put forward a reason for building the sub that was guaranteed to grab headlines and attract backers for a very different reason. He announced that he was building the submarine to search for Atlantis.

Now before you judge Frank for saying this, listen to his explanation, it’s probably the most intellectual argument for the search for Atlantis that I’ve ever read:

“There are many references to this lost continent in the works of ancient historians. Plato for instance gave the date of the catastrophe as about 11.500 years ago and said both his father and his grandfather had knowledge of the existence of Atlantis. Others who referred to it were Heslod, Euripedes, Seneca, Pliny, Herodatus (who mentions it frequently), Virgil and others. I believe there are too many references to Atlantis for it to be merely a legend. The earth is millions of years old and our accurate knowledge of history is a mere couple of thousand years or so. It is quite possible that there were other peoples and civilizations of which we have no knowledge at all.”

I don’t know if Frank’s interviews with the press at the time generated the funding he and his friends needed but in June 1951 his submarine is featured in Biggleswade’s Festival of Britain Exhibition and it is referred to as a working and tested submarine. I believe it was tested in the sea but I haven’t found any photographic evidence for the test.

I’ve told you all of this because I think it tells you a lot about Frank as a man. He was inventive, hard working, had a great sense of humour and clearly was ahead of his time in many ways. And not just from an engineering point of view the fact that he was a Judo and Jujitsu instructor in Biggleswade who went out of his way to encouraged women to join his club was quite a progressive thing to do at the time.

Frank seems to have been a likeable and extremely talented engineer. Also clearly determined and extremely intelligent. He was a great communicator and wasn’t shy of appearing in the newspapers, nor of using the media in a very sophisticated way, to draw attention to and bring in funding for his project. The way he invokes Atlantis as a reason to build the sub, but does it in such a scholarly way, shows how clever he was, at what today we’d call PR.

Flying saucer

I found no more references to the submarine after June 1951 and Frank does admit that he started building a prototype flying craft in the early 50s. It seems after the completion of his working one-man submarine, he shifts his focus skywards. So in mid-50s he was basically tinkering with what we’d think of today as drones.

Again we have Frank’s own words for what motivated him to move from tinkering with flying models to creating a large flying saucer. And it was all because he was disappointed in the amount of charitable revenue Biggleswade’s 1957 Carnival brought in.

Carnival

So Biggleswade holds a carnival in June each year. There is a week long set of events from a duck race along the river, to pub quizzes, discos and then the actual carnival parade with an elected King and Queen, and a fair on the Saturday. In fact the carnival will be in Biggleswade just two weeks after this episode is released.

Frank was involved in the 1957 carnival (I wonder if his judo group did a demonstration at it?) and he and his friends were a little disappointed by the size of the crowds at the event. So, Frank and two accomplices Mr J Bates and another who remained anonymous got together to decide how they could make the next years carnival a real success. I’ll let Frank’s own words take over the story from here which are taken from a letter he sent into the local newspaper after his hoax was discovered:

“We hit upon the idea of the flying saucers of which so much has been heard in the press and on TV etc.

I had already constructed a small working model some years previously. It was not difficult to make a larger four feet diameter model on the same principle and suspend it on a large meteorological balloon which we had intended for using for aerial photography. The whole assembly was wound up and down by means of a reel and line.

The plan was to show it at various places at night at intervals for some months, thus creating interest and curiosity, and then a week or so before the carnival week an anonymous letter to the press would inform them that a saucer would appear over the town. We though then and still do that this little scheme would have attracted large numbers of people to Biggleswade. After all it is a very good cause, and we had no qualms about it. It must be realised that secrecy was essential and we dare not let anything be known at all; we have all had to tell more white lies recently than ever before!”

There’s a lovely photograph in many of the newspapers of the time showing Frank with his flying saucer. He holds it from the top and it’s not much bigger than a large golfing umbrella in circumference. It’s octagonal in shape and rises to a dome in the centre. There does appear to be holes cut into it which light is shining out of, but the whole surface is covered in that silver foil. Frank has his sleaves rolled up is wearing a knitted tank top and is grinning mischievously at the camera. He’s looking a little older than when pictured in his submarine. Looking more like a trendy Dad now. The London Weekly News says he’s earning £11 a week from his engineering job. This is a little above the national average for the time, and I’m guessing is quoted to indicate that he is a skilled engineer being paid a good wage, but he is by no means a rich man.

Frank admits in the London Weekly news that he sent the saucer up 5 or 6 times and describes how no one aactually saw it the first time he flew it. He changed location to a playing field near to his house the second time that he flew it and the change of location did the trick:

“My mates asked me in the pub if I’d seen the flying saucer I had a hard job keeping a straight face. They explained how it had hovered stationary for several minutes and then vanished at a terrific speed with a flash of light. The flash of light was made by an ordinary fire work.”

So, it appears from my research that the UFO sightings were a local topic of conversation down the pub before May 1958, rather than making it big in the national news. But we do have evidence that these sightings were being reported somewhere and to someone because of how the hoax is uncovered. Enter our amateur UFO investigator John Whitworth again as Frank explains in his letter to the Biggleswade Chronicle newspaper on Friday June 6^th

“However other unidentified objects have apparently been hurtling about Beds of late and investigations into these got us involved as well, subsequentially we have been blamed for the lot. These inquiries have been made mainly by Mr J Whitworth of Shefford who is well known for his broadcasts on local events and has spent many hours and travelled thousands of miles on these investigations. It was his efforts to track down the Beds UFOs that led to our idea being discovered. We have admittedly been deliberately misleading him at times during his inquires. The temptation to have some fun with the saucer was too great as people may imagine but Mr Whitworth has behaved like the true sportsman he is and all is forgiven. We would like to emphasise to him and others that we were not responsible for the Toplers Hill episode.”

It seems a shame really that Frank’s bit of fun was uncovered just a few weeks before the carnival. One newspaper says the police were called in to investigate whether Frank’s flying saucer was somehow illegal, but nothing seems to come of it. The UFO investigators who uncovered Frank’s hoax wanted answers to their own experience on Toplers Hill but they came up empty handed. Frank denied completely that he had anything to do with it. It seems such a shame that the hoax was foiled when it was. I wonder how the story would be remembered now if on the day of the carnival Frank’s flying saucer had appeared above the crowds! I’ll come back to Frank’s legacy later in the podcast.

Toplers Hill

But what of Toplers Hill? If it wasn’t Frank’s flying saucer that the four men saw then what was it?

At the heart of the Toplers Hill incident is Shefford shop keeper John Whitworth. In the one photograph I’ve seen of him he has a mop of curly hair, a kind face and a big smile. By the early 50s his shop had expanded into a drapers, outfitters, and shoe shop. Known as the “walk-round” shop because to see everything in it you had to have a good walk around. He advertised by employing a lad to ride a specially branded penny farthing around the neighbourhood.  He was involved with the local community, including amateur dramatics, and the local business guild including supporting the business women’s guild and WI.

He also appears in at least three episodes of the BBC’s Town and Country radio show in 1957 and 58, talking about the history of Dead Man’s Cross at Haynes in Bedfordshire, Clifton pond, and also the state of rural roads. Nothing ever changes.

There’s nothing to make you think he’s the sort of chap to have a flying saucer and alien encounter but in the November of 1956 a year before the Toplers Hill incident, that is exactly what happens to him.

Funny customer

He tells the People news paper that it started with a strange customer entering his shop. This funny customer had long hair and a domed forehead. Long hair at the time would have been quite unusual on a man. It appears their interaction was initially fairly straight forward; the funny customer purchased a pair of gloves for which he paid for with exact money. The exact money is mentioned not by Whitworth but a fellow UFO investigator who clearly thinks that this in its self is suspicious behaviour, but we’ll meet Thelma the investigator later. Whitworth says that it was only after the purchase of the gloves that the funny customer suddenly asked “Would you like to meet a flying saucer?”

The article doesn’t tell us how Whitworth felt or how he responded but he must have said yes because he was told to report to Toplers Hill on the 28^th of November.

Just a few words about Toplers Hill. Because imagine, a strange person comes into your place of work and asks you if you’d like to see a UFO and then sends you to a location. That location is important. There are definitely locations I’d be happier to hang out in than others on a dark night.

Toplers hill is just south of Biggleswade. It is a hill but it’s not what many of you will think of as a hill. This part of Bedfordshire and all the way east to the coast through Cambridgeshire and Suffolk is flat and pretty featureless. Big skies but a monotonous landscape in winter. So Toplers Hill is not a dramatic hill but it does command a view of the surrounding flatter terrain, mainly of fields. It’s just off the A1 or Great North Road which back then was not a motorway by any means and ran through the centre of Biggleswade. There were a collection of houses and farms scattered in the Toplers Hill area that are no longer there. Who wants to live right on a motor way if they have a choice in the matter? There’s also a water tower, built in the 1930s and a small reservoir which now adays is covered by a rather flying sauceresque silver dome. I don’t know if it was like that at the time. Either way, then and now it’s a lonely spot that only featured in the news papers of the time as an accident black spot or when in January 1958 a poor unfortunate man form Hull was found dead in a ditch from starvation. He’d come south on New Years Eve looking for work.  

So that’s the place John Whitworth is sent to. I’m not sure if I’d have been so keen to hang out there in the dark and cold. But John tells the People newspaper that he went there as instructed and saw “a strange object. It was circular and as the object stood still in the sky, beams of light came out of what looked like portholes. Then it disappeared.”

Whitworth’s thoughts about this encounter again are not recorded. I’m guessing the 1950s were not a time when men and journalists were not encouraged to dwell on feelings even when triggered by extraordinary things!

I wonder if John Whitworth was already dabbling in flying saucer investigations in November 1956. Is this why he goes along with what the funny customer tells him? If he wasn’t dabbling in UFO investigations before he certainly is afterwards as Frank Russell says John has travelled thousands of miles in his pursuit of answers.

The next year

Almost a year to the day that the funny customer arrived in John’s shop, he returns. This time there’s no description of the strange chap buying anything just that he tells Whitworth to:

Go to Toplers Hill every night for several nights from November 27^th onwards at around 8pm. Watch for an object like the sun that will make one complete circle in the sky. When you see this, you will know that a flying saucer is due the next night.

The whole set up does seem very elaborate and time consuming whether we’re dealing with a sophisticated hoax, alien beings wanting to make contact or hush hush military craft being shown off. There must be easier ways to go about it. However, our funny customer has given Whitworth the circumstances to predict when the UFO will arrive (after the strange sun appears) and in doing so gave Whitworth the chance to invite others along to witness it

Whitworth went to Toplers Hill just south of Biggleswade every night from the 27^th November and we know thanks to a local newspaper report that on the 29^th of November he was indeed in Biggleswade where he was recording a meeting of the townswomen’s guild. They were holding a debate on whether husbands should help their wives in the home. And in case you’re wondering the debate was won by those proposing that men should indeed help their wives in the home. John was recording this debate so he could play it back to the women, so they could hear their own recorded voices. And it really struck me how far we’ve come since the 1950s technology wise. The thought of hearing a recording your own voice being a novelty and something that had to be especially arranged seems so quaint and old fashioned.

I do wonder if this was John’s own recording gear or maybe something he’d borrowed from his BBC producer friend Patrick?

Either way we know he was travelling to Biggleswade that night with recording gear and stopped off at Toplers Hill to see if this sun would appear in the night sky. It didn’t that night.  He journeyed to Toplers Hill every night for 5 nights until eventually something out of the ordinary happened.

Second sun

On the 1^st December which was a cold and frosty night, he finally saw a sun moving in a full circle around the sky, just as was foretold. It was on! The next night he was promised a flying saucer!

I have no further information about what this bright object looked like, other than it being described as a sun. A description used a lot at the time to signify any unidentified bright heavenly body. And as far as our story is concerned this incident is treated as a means to an end in the newspaper report. The appearance of this mysterious sun heralds the main event which was set to take place the next night.

The People article

Our main source of information for all of this is the Sunday People News Paper which was published on Sunday 4^th May some 5 months after the Toplers incident. (A UFO sighting on star wars day twenty years before the first film is released. May the 4^th be with you.) The newspaper report explains that after seeing the promised sun, John Whitworth gathers a small team around him to witness the flying saucer.

We don’t know how he recruited them. I wonder if he knew them from his UFO investigations? Were they customers in his shop? Or just friends? They make up a curious bunch.

The Sunday People’s main star witness is Flt Lft Jack Hunter of RAF Henlow, he has 24 years service in the RAF, is described as a technical officer, and is currently at RAF Henlow in order to take a “guided missile course.” He describes himself as being a UFO sceptic. Its clear why the People lead their article with him. He has expert knowledge in identifying aircraft and missiles. He will have been taught how to make observations and record them accurately for his work. He is the ideal witness.

The news paper describes Patrick Harvey one of the other witnesses as being 46, from Wendover in Bucks, (incidentally where I was born) and a BBC producer. There is also mention in another article of him being a sound engineer and having a sound van with him on the night.

The final additional witness is farmer Alan Chandler the People newspaper don’t give him an age or directly quote him at all. Though they did speak with him because he confirms the accounts of the other three men.

The paper claims that after getting wind of the story they “challenged” Flt Lft Hunter to confirm or deny the claims, it sounds like they doorstepped him. I’m not sure he had much choice in responding to them.

December 57

And with Hunter’s account we are back where we started this episode, on the freezing cold evening of 2^nd December 1957. Where four men braved the winter weather, because they have been promised a flying saucer contact. What were they hoping to see? Hunter says he’s a sceptic, but he goes along. He brings his binoculars. Patrick the BBC man, has his sound equipment. Were they hopeful or did they doubt Whitworth? Were they excited? Scared? What did they think flying saucers were? Hush hush military craft? Or do they think they’re not of this world? Aliens? Or interdimensional beings?  If Hunter was a sceptic was he hoping to unmask a hoax that night?

This is what he has to say:

• Just after 8 oclock I picked up a speck low in the sky about 6 miles off I estimate that it was travelling at 100 – 150 miles an hour. As the object came towards us I noticed it was amber coloured. As it came closer still it stood out in my binoculars like a very bright miniature sun. It was roughly the same size as a large aircraft, but it could not possibly have been an aircraft. There was no noise. It travelled about one and a half miles before it faded away.
• From the object position in the sky I say it would have been impossible for anyone to have staged a stunt.

Chandler the famer and Harvey our sound engineer back up Flt Lft Hunters account and Partick Harvey is quoted as saying:

•  I can find no normal explanation for what we saw. I am not saying we saw a flying saucer. It was something entirely un accountable.

The Sunday People, yet again frustrate us by not giving us any further information either from John Whitworth or about the effect this had on the men. They do reiterate that Flt Lft Hunter remained silent until now for fear of not being believed. They also put in bold and capitals the fact that Hunter said it could not be an aircraft nor a missile and it could not be a stunt.

There are a few things we can infer from the small amount of information we have.

The incident was well known locally. So I’m guessing it was an open secret, discussed down the pub and in John’s shop possibly and maybe recorded in media that is lost to us.

Whitworth certainly was able get together a small team of people who were interested enough to brave the cold temperatures to witness a flying saucer, whether from his pool of friends and associates or local flying saucer enthusiasts.

Whitworth was hoping to capture some evidence in the form of a sound recording, maybe for one of his BBC radio projects. And I did wonder why they didn’t try to get photographic evidence. Certainly, cameras were not rare, many families could afford a camera at the time. I’m assuming though that the average photographic technology in 1957 just wasn’t good enough for nighttime shooting. BBC sound equipment would have seemed like a safe bet, if it wasn’t for the fact that one of the eery features of the craft was that it made no sound. Again, I wonder what they expected here? Flying saucer noises? Aircraft engine? A laser beam to come out and zap something? Or maybe even the chap with long hair and domed forehead to appear beamed down from the flying saucer? But they were at least trying to capture evidence.

Thelma Roberts

That isn’t the end of the matter though. We do have another mention of the Toplers Hill event in the press. Enter Thelma Roberts, a 29 year old office worker by day, International UFO Observation Corps member by night. Every newspaper article of the times makes sure to mention her attractiveness, she’s pretty, with brown hair and dark eyes they say. And she has a trusty Labrador dog called Mullins. She’s the 1950’s UFO hunting, heroine we didn’t know we had.

Thelma turns up in the newspapers in late May 1957 about three weeks after the Toplers Hill story is splashed across the front page of the Sunday people and about a week before Frank’s hoax is covered in the press. Thelma was interviewed about another flying saucer sighting in Runcorn Cheshire but the London weekly news of May 22^nd carries a wide ranging interview with Ms Roberts. In which she is asked about “contacts” between people and flying saucers or their pilots and crew. And this is where our story gets murkier because Thelma Roberts starts talking about John Whitworth and Toplers Hill but her account differs from the Sunday People’s in a really dramatic and baffling way. This is what the Weekly news prints:

She (Thelma) spoke of an investigation she had carried out in Bedfordshire.
There a Mr J Whitworth had a contact. A man with a very high forehead and an unusual presence came into his shop and bought a white handkerchief, paying for it with the exact money. The man asked Mr W if he would like to see a flying saucer and gave a number of directions. Mr W carried out the instruction and eventually a saucer appeared. A year later the visitor re appeared and said that Mr W would have an actual contact. A large group of people including a BBC recording van went to the place of assignation. No one else came. And there was no sighting.

This obviously contradicts what Flt Lft Hunter, Whitworth himself and his two other witnesses say happened. It seems unfathomable, why less than three weeks after the story was splashed all over the Sunday People one of the widest read newspapers of the day, A UFO investigator would contradict it. Thelma claims to have investigated. And what she says next is even stranger.

She claims late on the night of the 2^nd December, after the disappointment of the flying saucer not appearing, Whitworth was at home when he received a phone call.

Ring ring

Hello Shefford 396 John Whitworth speaking

Mr Whitworth, you have been very foolish.

Whitworth passed the phone to someone else with him, possibly his wife, maybe to verify or get a witness to what was being said, Thelma doesn’t explain why:

Yes, hello who is this?

This call is for John Whitworth and for him only.

In this article Thelma gives no further information about Whitworth. She doesn’t speculate as to what the phone call was about or who it was from. But the inference is that he was being warned, and that by bringing together the witnesses and BBC sound man he had been foolish. Was that why the flying saucer hadn’t shown up in Thelma’s version of events? Or was the call just a neighbour, someone pulling his leg or maybe someone genuinely worried for his reputation?

But the biggest question is did this phone call actually happen? Whitworth himself doesn’t mention it. And why did Thelma say nothing showed up that night when it’s been so widely reported that something did?

It’s not the only time Thelma mentions Whitworth in the press. A day later on 23^rd May the Hertford Mercury and Reformer runs a story about her interesting line of work with the International UFO Observers and she tells them about the day of vigilance they have planned for June when they want people to look to the skies for flying saucers, but the article also quotes her at the end of it’s piece like this:

Miss Roberts does not claim to have seen a UFO herself but not so long ago a shopkeeper telephoned her from Bedford to say he had “one of the little men” in his shop. Surely this is a reference to Whitworth.

Now I’m going to speculate here, but I wonder if there was some kind of animosity between her and Whitworth? It’s hard to tell as all of these reports are being filtered through the lens of journalists and ones of the 1950s at that, who are keen to raise an eyebrow at the fact that such a young and attractive woman is involved in something so kooky. Is she poking fun at Whtiworth, is the journalist? Or is she being deadly serious here with the “one of the little men” quote. She tells the story in the paper the day before completely seriously.

There is one more curious thing though relating to Thelma and not about Whitworth but about Frank’s hoax. On the 22^nd May the London Weekly News prints the following in its article and interview with Thelma:

Miss Roberts said that there had been many reports of sightings from the same area. (Bedfordshire)

There were of course she said many hoaxes. There was definitely one in Bedfordshire where a man built a striking replica of a saucer which he could shoot into the air. They (the international UFO observation corps) had received countless reports from people who had seen this but the corps were now wise to this hoax.

As far as I can find out through the newspaper archives, Thelma is telling the journalist about Frank’s hoax at least 5 days before the news breaks.

The Weekly News article runs on the 22^nd, Frank’s story is splashed across national and regional newspapers on the 27^th. It’s likely that the original story and equivalent of a press release went live on the 26^th but that means Thelma is still jumping the gun by mentioning it. Is this what finally pushes Frank to go to the press? They’re only a few short weeks away from the carnival. It’s clear that the ufo investigators, John, Thelma and their friends had already uncovered the hoax. But it wasn’t in the news until Thelma mentions it here.

Whether Thelma’s disclosure prompted Frank to come clean in the press or not what I still can’t fathom is why Thelma claims that no craft was witnessed on Toplers Hill when four witnesses have been all over the Sunday People saying they did see something. To knowingly contradict a published UFO investigation seems to go against everything that Thelma is promoting in her news articles. She is passionate about the scientific approach to investigating these phenomena but she also appears to be a firm believer in extra terrestrials. One theory could be that she wants to muddy the waters surrounding the incident. She is a real outlier as a young woman working in this field in the 1950s maybe she has some kind of beef with John Whitworth. But maybe the simplest explanation is the best and it was just one of those mix ups, either on her part, the journalists part or a bit of both. This is how conspiracies are created out of thin air.

And what of that phone call to Whitworth. He doesn’t mention it. Is it because he thinks it was just a local neighbour pulling his leg? Or did it genuinely spook him and he doesn’t want to tempt fate by talking about it? It seems like a cliché to us now, UFO investigator or witness receives mysterious threats from shadowy officials. Men in black. I’m guessing the UFO investigators like Thelma might have been aware of this type of experience, because of the 1947 case of Harold Dahl and the case of Albert K Bender in the mid-50s who also claimed to have been warned off UFOs by men in dark suits. But to the wider public it must still have been a novel idea that flying saucer encounters went hand in hand with warnings from sinister authority figures.

Could Toplers Hill have been a hoax?

Frank Russell certainly rules himself out, and I’m inclined to believe him. Though the description of the craft Whitworth sees in 56 sounds a lot like Frank’s flying saucer. Frank’s a family man by the mid 50s, he’s flying his saucer on playing fields to fool his mates down the pub. I can’t really see him setting up such an elaborate trap for someone he doesn’t seem to have known that well before all of this flying saucer business. Also, most importantly Frank wasn’t interested in pranking individuals, he wanted to create a general buzz about flying saucers. He wasn’t a vindictive man out to humiliate or laugh at anyone.

Canoe Challenge

Could someone else have hoaxed John Whitworth, is he the type of man who would have been singled out to have such a trick played on him? Well, he was clearly a local character. Well known for his shop and his local BBC broadcasts. He was involved in the flying saucer community, but we don’t know if that was before his first sighting or as a consequence of it.

I did discover one thing about him, he was argumentative. Or at least would argue with customers. In a good natured way. There’s a photograph of him in a canoe with three other younger men. It was taken below Tower Bridge in London. The story that goes with this picture is that John got into an argument with three young customers in his shop. They were in their early 20s, he’s 36. The young customers accused John of getting fat from standing behind a shop counter all day. In the photo he looks fit and healthy but maybe a little softer and heavier than his young companions. Either way he challenged them to canoe from Avon Mouth to Tower Bridge in London with him to prove that he hadn’t gone soft. The photo shows them arriving at Tower Bridge, the young men are topless but John is in white shirt sleeves rolled up. He’s grinning in the sunshine.

Hoax theory

This anecdote tells me a couple of things. He’s clearly someone who will rise to an argument and rise to a challenge. In a good-natured bantering kind of way I think. I don’t think this was a bitter argument, but I think these customers got to him.

So maybe he’s the kind of guy who will joke around and possibly step over the line with a customer. And one of his customers, for a bit of fun, or with slightly more malicious intent, decided to play a trick on him, to bring him down a peg or two.

And maybe they were determined enough to send him on a wild goose chase night after night waiting for a flying saucer to arrive. Though surely the fun of this for the prankster would be to see him each night waiting patiently and then leaving dejected and disappointed yet coming back the next night, and the next to do just the same. It’s cruel and that’s why I don’t think Frank had anything to do with it. If Toplers Hill was a hoax I think it was personal someone who wanted to humiliate John. Make him look daft.

But there’s one bit of the incident that I just can’t get my head around as being part of a hoax and that’s what Flt Lft Hunter saw on 2^nd December.  He is such a reliable witness because he’s used to working with aircraft and missiles and identifying them, recording sightings from during the war etc. And I’m not saying it couldn’t have been hoaxed I really don’t know but it must have been a good one to fool him.

It also might be worth noting here that one of the young men who teased Whitworth and took part in the canoe challenge  in August 58, just 3 months after the Toplers Hill news story splashed, was from RAF Chicksands. He was a junior member of the Air Force. But Chicksands from 1950 to 1995 was a US airbase. So, this young man was in the US air force  

Could it be possible that someone from the US airbase at Chicksands, was pranking Whitworth? Maybe they knew that on the 2^nd December a new state of the art US aircraft was going to fly over the Bedfordshire countryside and it was just another opportunity to have fun with Whitworth again like they had the year before? It’s a theory. Chickands is southeast of Toplers Hill, as the crow flies maybe 6 miles or so. Hunter says the craft appeared about 6 miles away at first. Sadly, we don’t know what direction Hunter said he saw it in. He just says on the horizon about 6 miles away. And it would have to be something really experimental for Hunter to not know what it was. He also would have known exactly where Chicksands was.

The final hoax theory has to be that Whitworth himself was pranking everyone. But I can’t find any indication that he was either a practical joker, had any connection with projects like this or the skill and experience to orchestrate a flying saucer hoax. He wasn’t like Frank, he certainly wasn’t building UFOs in his shed! So I don’t think John Whitworth was hoaxing us. I think he believed that this was a real unexplained mystery.

Not a hoax?

But then what was it if it wasn’t a hoax? Whether it was aliens or the military they certainly went about things in a really elaborate and nonsensical way. Why make John jump through so many hoops. Why not just show him the flying saucer!  It’s like everything feels like a hoax, the strange bloke in the shop and the weird instructions really feel like a prank. The having to wait night after night for the flying saucer to appear is just a farce. But then what was witnessed on 2^nd December seems to be genuinely unexplained. An amber craft that was silent but moved fast. Unless the hoaxers were tied up with the military, and what was seen on 2^nd was an experimental craft after all, I really don’t know what to make of it. My best guess is this.

Conclusion

John’s shop was in the nearest town to RAF Chicksands, he clearly liked a bit of banter with his customers. Maybe a couple of his young American customers from Chicksands are rubbed up the wrong way by him and his jokes. and decided to play a prank on him. One of them raided the theatrical costume box, maybe payed an old man to play this part from them. They sent him into the shop to entice John out with the promise of a flying saucer. They set up the sighting in 1956 in a way that made Whitworth jump through hoops for them. They had a good laugh at John’s expense. Maybe the next year they learnt that their base was going to fly a new experimental craft, something that could be mistaken for a UFO. So, they decided to run the prank again, but this time they let John dig himself into a hole by inviting witnesses along. He does just that and the pranksters have their fun. Only gossip in the neighbourhood became so great a national newspaper gets wind of it and it hits the headlines. And if you want a bit of a conspiracy with your explanation. Maybe the fact that there’s only one obvious news story about it rather than multiple stories, is because the US Air force realise that Flt Left Hunter is describing one of their new aircraft and they don’t want anyone putting two and two together, so they encourage the press to not print anything more on this story. Who knows. Maybe they even phone Whitworth and warn him off.

There is of course always the slim chance that it was aliens!

What do you think? Would you go to these lengths to see a flying saucer? Or to make someone to believe that they’d seen one? Have you ever seen a UFO? If you know anything more about the Toplers Hill episode or Frank Russell’s engineering projects please do get in touch. You can find weird in the wade on twitter, Instagram and at the weird in the wade blog at weird in the wade.blog

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s stories about flying saucers both hoaxed and unexplained!

The legacy

The story of Frank’s flying saucer hoax was rediscovered a few years ago by a community arts project who were commissioned to make a monument to Frank’s flying saucer. They used the nose cone of a tornado fuel tank painted bright yellow, fitting with the nature of Frank’s own engineering projects being cobbled together with salvaged parts. You can see more about this on the weird in the wade blog.

The Toplers Hill incident seems to have largely been forgotten by the town.

Another UFO sighting from near to Biggleswade that has also been largely forgotten is that of a 1953 sighting above Potton woods. It’s been overshadowed by other spooky goings on in the area.

Next time on Weird in the Wade what’s haunting Potton woods? A strip of the ancient ampthill forest just north east of Biggleswade is associated with strange lights in the sky, hauntings, ghostly voices and even phantom smells. Is this phenomena connected to a plane that crashed into the edge of the woods at the end of world war 2? Or is there another explanation linked to the area’s extensive fruit production. I’ll speak with witnesses, paranormal investigators and I travelled to the woods in blue bell season, where I had my own seemingly inexplicable experience which I captured on my field recorder for the podcast. I’ll tell you all about it in the next episode of Weird in the Wade, What’s haunting Potton Woods.

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The podcast was researched, written and presented by me Nat Doig

Tess Savigear wrote the theme music

Additional music and sound effects by Epidemic Sound

And the tawny owl at the start of the show was a sound clip from Joseph Sardin’s Big sound bank .com