March 1, 2025

Close Encounters of an Archival Kind

By JOE OLIVER

“Declassified ‘X-files’ Show Winston Churchill Ordered UFO Cover-up to Prevent Panic” blared a headline in The Daily Express in October 2023.¹ For more than twenty years, regular stories from the tabloid press, broadsheet newspapers, and even the BBC have reported (and rereported) that Winston Churchill asked the British Government to investigate Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) and then to cover up the disturbing findings.²

So, what is the truth? Is there a kernel of fact buried under a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma of excitable reporting? Just how do UFOs KBO (Churchill’s acronym for “keep buggering on”) in the world of Churchill studies? This article will answer these questions by examining how the stories first emerged and the documentary evidence behind them.³

The two most regular news stories to appear promising revelations of “official documents” revealing a Churchillian interest in UFOs are (1) that Churchill ordered a cover-up of potential alien activity during the Second World War, and (2) that during his post-war premiership Churchill ordered a cover-up in 1952, with the two stories sometimes entwined. Let us take each subject in turn.

Wartime Word of Mouth

The wartime story was first reported in 2010, after the United Kingdom’s National Archives released more than 5,000 pages of files covering unsolicited reports to the Government of potential UFO sightings. One of these was a 1999 letter from a member of the public (described as “a scientist” in much of the later reporting, although this does not have a bearing on his claims) whose name is not included in the released files. The writer claimed that his grandfather, also unnamed, was a wartime bodyguard to Churchill and witnessed a conversation between the Prime Minister and General Dwight D. Eisenhower in which the two leaders discussed how to respond to a UFO sighting.

Supposedly an RAF plane returning from a mission “over France or Germany” reported a “silver disc” passing “about ten feet away” before flying off “at incredible speed.” “This event was discussed by Mr. Churchill and General Eisenhower, neither of whom knew what had been observed.” When “another person at the meeting” raised the possibility that it might be alien, Churchill apparently exclaimed, “This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic amongst the general population and destroy one’s belief in the church!”⁴

This does not sound like particularly natural dialogue, even for the colourful Churchill, who also never concerned himself greatly with the position of the Church of England. When once described as “a pillar of the Church,” Churchill replied that he was more of a supporter from the outside “like a flying buttress.”⁵

In any case, it turns out that this alleged Churchill quote only comes to us third hand.  Disregarding the need for security, the bodyguard apparently repeated his story to his nine-year-old daughter. Many years later, she shared it with her son—the letter writer—after watching a television documentary about UFO sightings. The writer wished to know if the Government could provide more information about the incident. A Ministry of Defence official, nothing if not public-spirited, replied by reporting that staff had consulted the files but could find no records of such a meeting between Churchill and Eisenhower. A civil servant from the Cabinet Office later wrote confirming that they had no closed files relating to Churchill and UFOs.⁶

Whilst an entertaining tale for fans of urban legends, the “official files” on the Second World War “cover-up” are therefore useless from the point of view of historians. This widely reported story is astonishingly unsubstantiated, based only on a 1999 anecdotal letter, which was neither an official document nor a contemporary record. Without their names, we cannot even trace the claimants. In consequence, The Daily Telegraph, reporting on the story complete with a photograph of Churchill and Eisenhower in discussion (from 1960), asked readers rather plaintively, “Do you know the scientist who wrote to the Ministry of Defence? Can you add further details?”⁷

The 1952 “Cover Up”

Closer examination should be given to the stories about a UFO “cover-up” in 1952 since there is at least contemporary documentary evidence showing that Churchill took an interest, albeit briefly, in the matter. The first media reports came in 2002, fifty years after the fact, with the publication of the book Out of the Shadows: UFOs, the Establishment and the Official Cover Up. This was the work of David Clarke, an academic focusing on folklore and contemporary legend (who later served as a consultant to the UK National Archives) and Andy Roberts, a historian of the paranormal (not Andrew Roberts, Lord Roberts of Belgravia, the Churchill biographer and ICS Trustee).

Despite a title suggestive of conspiracy theories, Clarke and Roberts were simply examining the belief in UFOs as a social phenomenon, one which gained traction during the Cold War amidst widespread fear of atomic war and mysterious new weaponry. Having made use of the Freedom of Information Act then recently passed by the Blair Government to obtain official files, the authors rediscovered a 1952 memo of Churchill’s and understandably used the tabloid gold of “Winston Churchill + UFOs” when promoting their book.

The original documents showing Churchill’s involvement are held in the UK’s National Archives at Kew. Quoting the brief correspondence verbatim is more enlightening than much of the later commentary on it.

On 28 July 1952 Prime Minister Churchill wrote a minute to two old friends serving in his government: Secretary of State for Air William Sidney (officially Lord De L’Isle and Dudley) and Paymaster General Frederick Lindemann (Lord Cherwell), the Prime Minister’s longstanding scientific adviser nicknamed “the Prof.” The minute read: 

What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth? Let me have a report at your convenience.—W.S.C.⁸

“All this stuff about flying saucers” was a reference to recent news stories covering what became known as the “Washington flap,” a spate of apparent UFO sightings over Washington, D.C. on two consecutive weekends in July of that year, firstly on the 19th and 20th and again on the 25th and 26th. Adding substance to eye-witnesses reports of strange lights in the sky, Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base both reported tracking UFOs on their radar, even observing some apparently hovering over the White House and the US Capitol.

President Harry Truman was sufficiently interested to take part in calls with the US Air Force, where it was suggested unusual weather conditions had caused false radar readings. When the Pentagon held a press briefing on 29 July to repeat this explanation, it attracted the highest attendance of any press conference held since the Second World War.⁹ Across the Atlantic, Churchill, who read the newspapers in bed each morning, would have seen reports of the alleged sightings in the London press, provoking his memo.¹⁰

Lord De L’Isle replied to the Prime Minister on 9 August summarising the Air Ministry’s position in Churchill’s preferred manner of memo, i.e., less than one page in length:

PRIME MINISTER

The various reports about unidentified flying objects, described by the Press as “flying saucers”, were the subject of a full Intelligence study in 1951.

The conclusions reached (based upon William of Occam’s Razor) were that [1] all the incidents reported could be explained by one or other of the following causes:

• Known astronomical or meteorological phenomena
• Mistaken identification of conventional aircraft, balloons, birds, etc
• Optical illusions and psychological delusions
• Deliberate hoaxes.

2. The Americans, who carried out a similar investigation in 1948/9, reached a similar conclusion.

3. Nothing has happened since 1951 to make the Air Staff change their opinion, and, to judge from recent Press statements, the same is true in America.

4. I am sending a copy of this to Lord Cherwell.

D.L.D. [Lord De L’Isle and Dudley]¹¹

The Flying Saucer Working Party

The “full intelligence study” mentioned by De L’Isle was the work of the splendidly named Flying Saucer Working Party (FSWP), a group which met from 1950 to 1951, before Churchill became Prime Minister for the second time. It convened largely at the instigation of the Sir Henry Tizard, Chief Scientific Adviser for the Ministry of Defence. Tizard had played a key role in developing defence technology, and indeed weapons of war, since the 1930s. As Chairman of the pre-war Committee for the Scientific Study of Air Defence, he had been instrumental in the development of radar, which had been vital to victory during the Battle of Britain. Even more consequentially, Sir Henry had led the “Tizard Mission,” making a series of journeys to the United States and Canda in 1940 and 1941 to share British scientific secrets. It was Tizard, with Churchill’s approval, who informed the Americans of British progress on “tube alloys,” the codename for research into the development of an atomic bomb.¹²

Anglo-American co-operation once again operated in full force with the FSWP. Assistant Director of the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence H. Chadwell Marshall assisted the group, and their findings were influenced by the US Air Force’s 1949 study “Project Grudge.”¹³ The FSWP consisted of five intelligence officers from the Army, Navy, and Royal Air Force (RAF), holding meetings in the Metropole Building off Whitehall. Their succinct terms of reference were:

1. To review the available evidence in reports of “Flying Saucers.”

2. To examine from now on the evidence on which reports of British origin of phenomena attributed to “Flying Saucers” are based.

3. To report to DSI/JTIC as necessary. [The Directorate of Scientific Intelligence and the Joint Technical Intelligence Committee]

4. To keep in touch with American occurrences and evaluation of such.¹⁴

In practice this gave members of FSWP the task of reading through hundreds of reports of potential UFO sightings.

The FSWP delivered their final report in June 1951, which can now be found in the National Archives. Just six pages in length, the report is witheringly dismissive of there being any proof of extraterrestrial origins of UFOs. The committee attributed the sightings to the same rational explanations given by Lord De L’Isle, noting that the 1948–49 American “Grudge Report” and a study by the Swedish Air Ministry had come to the same conclusion.

The report cited a case in which an alleged UFO was tracked by the RAF for several minutes before being found to be a conventional plane reflecting the sunlight in such a way as to make it appear disc-shaped. The report suggested most other sightings were caused by similar human error. Similarly, an expert analysis explained how previous unusual radar readings had been traced back to interference from other transmitters.

The FSWP also noted that press stories about UFO sightings usually led to a cascade of further reported sightings, with cases of “one report inducing another….” The committee determinedly played down press stories: “All the more spectacular incidents, of which much has been made recently in the British press and publications, have been fully explained.”

Interestingly, the FSWP report includes an apparent reference to the 1947 “Roswell Incident,” alleging a UFO landing in New Mexico. “We have been informed by a member of the United States investigating team,” the committee states, “that the even more sensational report of the discovery of a crashed ‘flying saucer’, full of remains of very small beings, was ultimately admitted by its author to have been a complete fabrication.”

In terms of practical recommendations, the FSWP considered, given the “unco-ordinated and subjective” nature of the evidence they had to work with, progress in further investigations “could only be obtained by organising throughout the country, or the world, continuous observation of the skies by a co-ordinated network of visual observers, equipped with photographic apparatus, and supplemented by a network of radar stations. We should regard this, on the evidence so far available, as a singularly profitless enterprise.”

With wearied exasperation evident between the lines, the FSWP concluded, “We accordingly recommend very strongly that no further investigation of reported mysterious aerial phenomena be undertaken, unless and until some material evidence becomes available.”¹⁵ If this can be called a cover-up, it is one that is rationally argued and transparent. And if we are to allege any Prime Ministerial level of suppression, it should be remembered the FSWP carried out their work under the Attlee Government.

On 14 August Lord Cherwell concluded the correspondence with the note:

Prime Minister

I have seen the Secretary of State’s minute to you on flying saucers and agree entirely with his conclusions. 

Cherwell.¹⁶

Beyond initialing each memo (showing he had read them) the day after they arrived, Churchill himself made no further comment.¹⁷

When, a month after Churchill’s correspondence concluded, there were further newspaper reports of “flying saucers” in September 1952, an order was then sent to RAF stations stating that UFO sightings were not to be shared with the press, because “The public attach more credence to reports by Royal Air Force personnel than to those by members of the public. All reports are therefore to be classified confidential.”¹⁸

The order was issued at a much lower level than the Prime Minister’s office, and there is no archival evidence that Churchill was even aware of it. No documents indicating that Churchill took further interest in UFOs have been found either at the UK National Archives or the Churchill Archives at Churchill College, Cambridge. Of course, those who see the very absence of any documentary evidence as proof of a massive official cover-up remain unsatisfied.

The Uncovered “Cover Up”

For a time, the report of the FSWP vanished into the UK Government archives. Failed attempts to find it long after Churchill’s death naturally fed suspicions of a cover-up and expectations of a much more extensive “smoking gun” document than the actual six-pages so dismissive of the whole notion of UFO sightings.

The National Archives’ briefing note on UFO files records that several unsuccessful attempts were made to trace the FSWP report.¹⁹ David Clarke writes that “The very existence of any ‘official’ study of UFOs had been long denied by the MoD.” In 1998 the minutes of the Joint Technical Intelligence Committee were released, including discussion of the FSWP’s terms of reference, proving that a study had been carried out. But the actual report remained elusive. As Clarke recalled, “Even when the minutes of this non-existent committee came to light…the report it produced could not be found. The document, we were repeatedly assured, was ‘absent’ from the catalogue at the Public Record Office [now the National Archives]. Staff concluded it ‘had not survived the passage of time.’”²⁰

Finally in 2001, following a Freedom of Information request, a copy of the FSWP report was found amongst the papers of the Ministry of Defence. The files were made publicly available from 1 January 2002, and Clarke publicised this “Holy Grail for UFOlogists” the same year. This received much media attention at the time, and for more than twenty years now it gets “rediscovered” and reported as if the story were new. “Churchill + UFOs” makes for good “clickbait,” at least demonstrating there remains a popular interest in Churchill.

The Sheerness Mystery

If Churchill’s 1952 interest in flying saucers was fleeting, it is not difficult to find other examples of his curiosity intersecting with the concepts of extraterrestrials and UFOs.

The concerns of the British and American governments in the 1950s with UFO “sightings” were not entirely unjustified. In the context of the Cold War, suspicious sightings could conceivably have meant the appearance of new Soviet weapons. Churchill’s own attitude was surely influenced by memories of previous security threats, such as the German zeppelins of the First World War and the V1 and V2 rockets deployed in the Second. An episode from before the Great War illustrates this point.

On the evening of 14 October 1912, residents of Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey reportedly heard the sound of an aircraft overhead and observed searchlights in the sky. The residents would have been among the few in the country then familiar with the sound of an aeroplane because the Royal Navy had a flight training school at nearby Eastchurch. No registered aircraft were missing, however. Flares were lit in an attempt to guide the aircraft down, but the (presumably human) pilot evidently ignored them and flew away.

The mystery was reported in the press, and Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, ordered the Royal Navy to make inquiries. As David Clarke puts it, this “could be described as the first government inquiry into a UFO sighting,” although fears in 1912 were less about potential alien encounters and more about the technical advances being made by Germany.²¹

German zeppelins had begun the world’s first commercial flights in 1910, and, mindful of their military potential, the German army and navy had ordered several. Concerned that zeppelins could be making clandestine reconnaissance flights to spy on British naval dockyards, MPs raised questions in parliament.

Churchill answered questions on the “Sheerness Incident” three times in the House (on 18, 21, and 27 November 1912) thanks to the efforts of a persistent backbencher, William Joynson-Hicks. Nicknamed “Jix,” Joynson-Hicks enjoyed a long career, regularly crossing paths with Churchill. In 1912, he was an independent-minded MP whose bugbears included the national security threat of newfangled German zeppelins.²²

Churchill was uncharacteristically quiet when questioned on the unexplained aircraft, with one session including this illuminating exchange:

Mr. Joynson-Hicks asked whether we have any airship equivalent in size and power to a Zeppelin or any airship capable of travelling at the rate of sixty miles an hour?

Mr. Churchill: No, Sir.

Mr. Joynson-Hicks: Arising out of that effective ‘No, Sir,’ will the right honourable Gentleman tell us how fast our airships can go?

Mr. Churchill: No, Sir.

Churchill did tell the Commons, however, that “I caused inquiries to be made and have ascertained that an unknown aircraft was heard over Sheerness about 7 pm on the evening of 14th October.…There is nothing in the evidence to indicate the nationality of the aircraft….I know that it was not one of our airships.”²³

Privately Churchill was more certain of the aircraft’s origin, telling the Committee of Imperial Defence that “There was very little doubt that the airship reported recently to have passed over Sheerness was a German vessel.”²⁴ Since zeppelins and aeroplanes later did carry out bombing raids over Britain during the First World War, the fears of “Jix” and others were not unjustified. Indeed, as fate would have it, only the second air raid over the British mainland took place on Christmas Day 1914, when a German plane was spotted over Sheerness.²⁵

Men on the Moon?

Throughout his career Churchill maintained an interest in new science and technology. Just before the Great War, he became an aviation fanatic. He took flying lessons in 1913 and only gave up on earning his pilot’s license at the urging of his wife following several crash-landings. This enthusiasm was noted by early aviation journals. Flight Magazine reported in November 1913 how Churchill was the first minister in the world to take control of an aeroplane in flight, and The Aeroplane wrote in January 1914 that Churchill had “proved in a high degree the fairy godfather of naval aviation. The Navy hardly possesses a single type of aeroplane on which he has not made a flight as a passenger.”²⁶

As the first person to serve as Secretary of State for Air (1919–21), Churchill maintained his enthusiasm for flying throughout his life, becoming the first world leader to make a transatlantic flight in 1942, even taking the controls for part of the return journey, and enjoying helicopter rides in the 1950s.²⁷

By the 1950s Churchill had also long taken seriously the possibility of flight beyond the stratosphere, showing a consistent interest in space. The best-known example of this is his essay “Are There Men on the Moon?” an entertaining tour d’horizon on the possibility of life existing beyond earth. This article drew headlines when it was “unearthed” in 2017. Astrophysicist Mario Livio published an analysis of the “lost” article in Nature. A clarification was later published, however, after former Finest Hour editor Richard Langworth and others pointed out the article was in fact already well known to Churchillians, having been written in 1939 and previously published in 1942. The newly discovered version of the essay was in fact a copy made for Churchill in the late 1950s, which, whilst reducing the novelty, is an interesting demonstration of his continued interest in the topic.²⁸

Churchill’s answer to his title “Are There Men on the Moon?” is in short “No.” While dismissing the moon as an “arid desert” devoid of atmosphere, Churchill does argue, following the Copernican principle, that given the vastness of the universe and the potential for a countless number of planets within it, it is likely that some can support life.

Amidst the cares of 1939 Churchill wrote, “I, for one, am not so immensely impressed by the success we are making of our civilisation here that I am prepared to think we are the only spot in this immense universe which contains living, thinking creatures, or that we are the highest type of mental and physical development which has ever appeared in the vast compass of space and time.” Churchill also predicted that “It is conceivable that one day, possibly even in the not very distant future, it may be possible to travel to the moon, or even to Venus or Mars.” Noting the speed of scientific advances, he argued that “A man who had maintained at Queen Victoria’s Jubilee that within fifty years one would fly the Atlantic in a matter of hours would have risked being certified.”²⁹ The Daily Express reported on this in 2019, with characteristic understatement, under the headline “NASA Moon Landing BOMBSHELL: How Winston Churchill Made Shock Prediction.”³⁰

As Mario Livio notes, Churchill was well read in science. He had passed the time serving as a cavalryman in India in 1896 reading a primer on physics and was also an avid reader of science fiction. Churchill was particularly fond of the works of H. G. Wells, writing of his books, “I could pass an examination in them. One whole long shelf in my small library is filled with a complete edition.”³¹

Livio speculates that the topic of “Are There Men on the Moon?” may have been inspired by the infamous 1938 radio broadcast in the United States of an adaptation of War of the Worlds, which caused panic amongst some listeners, who mistook the drama for real news coverage of a Martian invasion.³² Professor Richard Toye has also speculated that amongst other Churchillian borrowings from Wells, his famous title The Gathering Storm was a direct reference to War of the Worlds, which contains the phrase.³³

Aliens Breed Contempt

In later years, Churchill’s personal library (by then certainly no longer “small”) would also be supplemented by his cousin Desmond Leslie sending him a copy of his 1953 book Flying Saucers Have Landed. Leslie argued that UFOs had been visiting earth for thousands of years and promoted his co-author George Adamski’s claims of meeting aliens on several trips to the moon and Venus.³⁴

Leslie was not the only Churchill relative convinced of the reality of UFOs. Churchill’s son-in-law and ministerial colleague Duncan Sandys was another firm believer, though (as with his support for Britain joining the emerging European Common Market) was seemingly unable to ignite his father-in-law’s passion on the subject.³⁵

In his retirement Churchill continued to take at least a passing interest in the space race. In 1957 he wrote to his wife Clementine to say that he had been following news of the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik: “The Satellite itself does not distress me. The disconcerting thing is the proof of the forwardness of Soviet Science, compared to the American.”³⁶

Anthony Montague-Browne, Churchill’s Private Secretary throughout his final years, was dismissive of the idea that Churchill was particularly concerned about extraterrestrial threats, believing his boss usually had enough terrestrial military problems to worry about. When interviewed by David Clarke, Montague-Browne recalled that the 1950s debates about UFOs were merely “a light-hearted distraction from the serious business of the Cold War,” and that Churchill simply “wanted to know the facts in case he was questioned in Parliament. That’s all.”³⁷

The final word should go to the man himself, as recalled by the artist Bernard Hailstone. Making conversation with Churchill during sittings for a portrait in 1955, Hailstone asked his subject about recent news reports of UFO sightings and whether he believed in “flying saucers.” Churchill, whether in seriousness or wishing to end the conversation, responded with a vintage Churchillian bon mot: “I think we should treat other planets with the contempt they deserve.”³⁸

Joe Oliver is an alumnus of the University of Sheffield and University of Exeter history departments. He is particularly interested in researching Winston Churchill’s life post-1945. He wishes to express his indebtedness to Dr. David Clarke for his easily accessible research on the “UFO files” in the National Archives, which point out several important references, and to Dr. Brett Holman for his research on the “Sheerness Incident.”

Endnotes

1. Joel Day, “Declassified ‘X-files’ Show Winston Churchill Ordered UFO Cover-up,” The Daily Express, 2 October 2023.

2. See for example, “Churchill Ordered UFO Cover-up, National Archives show”, BBC News website, 5 August 2010.

3. Previous issues of Finest Hour have addressed UFO stories, with Richard Langworth noting in “Datelines” in #148 that in 2010 the story was already an old one, having been addressed in #115 “Datelines” and #129 “Out and About.”

4. The redacted letter is in the National Archives Kew, under DEFE 24/2008/1.

5. See Mary Soames, “Winston Churchill: The Great Human Being,” Enid and R. Crosby Lecture, 21 April 1991, delivered at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, 21 April 1991.

6. See National Archives, DEFE 24/2008/1.

7. Andrew Hough and Peter Hutchinson, “UFO Files: Winston Churchill ‘feared panic’ over Second World War RAF Incident,” The Daily Telegraph, 5 August 2010.

8. National Archives, PREM 11/855, p. 6, [Labelled Subject file B.F.6. 8 52, (Defence research), Serial No. M. 412/52.]

9. See Curtis Peebles, Watch the Skies! A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth (New York: Berkley Books, 1995), pp. 73–78 and 87–88.

10. See, for example, “Saucers near Washington,” London Daily News, 22 July 1952. Lord Moran’s diary mentions that on 30 July 1952 Churchill “threw the morning papers on the floor in disgust.” See Churchill: The Struggle for Survival(London: Heron Books, 1966), p. 392.

11. National Archives, PREM 11/855, p. 3.

12. See Roger Connor, “The Tizard Mission: 75 Years of Anglo-American Alliance,” National Air and Science Museum, 17 November 2015, and David Zimmerman, Top Secret Exchange: The Tizard Mission and the Scientific War (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996).

13. David Clarke, “Unidentified Flying Objects Briefing Note,” Edition 4, London: The National Archives, June 2012, p. 4.

14. National Archives, DEFE 41/75, JSI/DTIC Minutes.

15. National Archives, DEFE 44/119 [Labelled JSI/DTIC Report No. 7].

16. National Archives PREM/11/855, p. 7.

17. National Archives, PREM/11/855, pp. 5 and 7. On De L’Isle’s Memo, Churchill appears to scrawl “Put by” (i.e., retain a copy). Jock Colville, Churchill’s private secretary who recorded details of daily conversations over this period and rarely misses an interesting titbit, records nothing in his diaries about UFOs.

18. National Archives, AIR 20/9994.

19. Clarke, “Unidentified Flying Objects Briefing Note,” pp. 3–4.

20. See David Clarke, “National Archives UFO: The Flying Saucer Working Party,” 2012, online article at https://drdavidclarke.co.uk

21.David Clarke, “Churchill’s Secret War,” Fortean Times, No. 372, November 2018, p. 33. For the Sheerness Incident, see Brett Holman, “The Sheerness Incident,” Airminded: Air Power and British Society, 1908–1941, 14 October 2007, online article at https://airminded.org

22. Amongst other Churchill connections Joynson-Hicks, as the Conservative candidate had beaten the then Liberal Churchill in the April 1908 Manchester North-West ministerial by-election (necessitating Churchill’s move north to represent Dundee). Later both men sat together in Stanley Baldwin’s 1924–29 Cabinet, in which “Jix” served as Home Secretary.

23. Hansard, Volume 44, HC Deb., 27 November 1912, columns 504, 1242–25.

24. National Archives CAB 38/22/42, Minutes of Committee of Imperial Defence, 6 December 1912. I am indebted to Brett Holman for the reference.

25. N. J. Parker, Gott Strafe England: The German Air Assault against Great Britain, 1914–1918, vol. 2 (Warwick: Helion and Company, 2019), pp. 54–55.

26. Flight Magazine, 6 December 1913, The Aeroplane, 1 January 1914, quoted in Anne Hughes and Ian Gee, Waterbird: Wings over Windermere (Lancaster: The Lakes Flying Company, 2023), pp. 23–24, to whom I am indebted for the references.

27. See Christopher Sterling, “Churchill and Air Travel,” Finest Hour #118, spring 2003. For Churchill’s 1942 transatlantic flight, see Jim Trautman, “Winston’s Wild Ride: The Most Daring Flight of the Whole War,” The Pan Am Historical Foundation, 2023, online at https://www.panam.org/war-years/746-winston-s-wild-ride

28. See Mario Livio, “Winston Churchill on Alien Life,” Nature, 542, February 2017, pp. 289–91, “Correction: Clarification,” Nature, 544, April 2017, p. 9; Richard Langworth, “Are There Men on the Moon, Introduction,” The Churchill Project, Hillsdale College, 17 February 2017, online at https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/men-moon-churchill-alien-life-1942/

29. Text at “Are There Men on the Moon,” ibid.

30. Callum Hoare, “NASA Moon Landing BOMBSHELL: How Winston Churchill Made SHOCK Prediction,” The Daily Express, 19 May 2019, online at https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1129189/nasa-moon-landing-winston-churchill-shock-prediction-alien-news-spt

31. Winston S. Churchill, “H. G. Wells: Who Nurses a Grievance but for Which He Might Be of Great Help to Britain,” Sunday Pictorial,858, 23 August 1931.

32. Livio, “Winston Churchill on Alien Life.” On the 1938 broadcast, see A. Brad Schwartz, Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News (New York City: Hill and Wang), 2016.

33. Sarah Cassidy, “Churchill ‘Borrowed’ Famous Lines from Books by H.G. Wells,” The Independent, 27 November 2006. Another example of the interconnections of Churchill’s long-life came when he fought Joynson-Hicks in the 1908 ministerial by-election and H. G. Wells publicly supported Churchill. See Jonathan Rose, The Literary Churchill (London: Yale University Press, 2014), pp. 85–87.

34. Desmond Leslie and George Adamski, Flying Saucers Have Landed, London: Werner Laurie, 1953. See CHUR 1/48, Churchill Archive, Churchill College, Cambridge for correspondence with Leslie.

35. See PREM 11/855, pp. 1–2 for correspondence with Duncan Sandys. See also John Colville, The Churchillians(London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1981), pp. 25–26, 39–41, on Churchill and Lindemann’s relationship with Sandys.

36. Winston S. Churchill, undated letter, probably 11 October 1957, quoted in Mary Soames, Speaking for Themselves(London: Doubleday, 1998), pp. 620–21. For Churchill rereading “Are There Men on the Moon,” see Livio, “Winston Churchill on Alien Life.”

37. Quoted in Clarke, “Churchill’s Secret War,” p. 37.

38. Quoted in “Memories of Churchill,” The Daily Telegraph, 26 January 1965. Again, I am grateful to David Clarke for the reference.