The UK MoD UFO files

Formerly classified files on UFO sightings from the UK Ministry of Defence, 210 in all, moved to The National Archives at Kew and released between 2008 and 2013. They cover the ministry's UFO desk, which closed in November 2009.

The National Archives says official recording of UFO sightings in Britain started early in the 1950s. Until 1967 the Ministry of Defence destroyed its UFO files every five years, so many records are gone. From 1970 most of the surviving files were put under review for later release, because the public was interested.

Files released in 2012 show how the ministry handled the subject. Answering a request from the US Air Force in 1965, the MoD said its policy was to play the subject down and avoid giving it undue attention, and that this was why no political push for a formal inquiry had ever arisen. In 1995 the ministry's UFO desk had the RAF air attaché in Washington find out how the U.S. defense department viewed UFOs.

The MoD opened a public hotline for UFO reports in 1997, Sky HISTORY says, and shut both the hotline and the desk in November 2009. The archives released the files in batches, and the tenth and last, in 2013, covered the desk's final two years, from late 2007 to its closure, the Associated Press reported. Dr David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University acted as media consultant and spokesman during the move of 210 files from the ministry's archive in London to Kew between 2008 and 2013.