The mystery was compared to the 1947 Roswell incident in New Mexico

In 1962, shepherd Donald McKenzie discovered something mysterious on a remote Scottish hillside.

What he didn’t realise at the time was that he was witnessing what would become one of the biggest UFO mysteries in UK history.

He told police what he had seen, but they didn’t take him seriously and started questioning the quality of his whisky.

However, three months later a team from the RAF went along and what they discovered left people scratching their heads for over 50 years.


The team uncovered a box that was big enough to hold a man, and with a camera port, and a brass plate offering a reward if it was found. There were also bottles of a clear liquid strewn on the ground nearby.



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But what was most mysterious was a lack of scorch marks, no sign of impact damage, and there was no parachute.

The whole episode was compared to the Roswell incident when a ‘flying saucer flap’ was discovered in New Mexico in 1947.

Finally that mystery has been solved thanks to some files uncovered at the National Archives in Kew.

Dr David Clarke will publish How UFOs Conquered the World later this month and he revealed that it may have been from a CIA spy programme called Moby Dick.

The structure would have been attached to a massive balloon and was designed to be carried across the planet at 60,000ft over Russia where it would take pictures of nuclear facilities.

The spy mission lasted until 1956 and the one found by Mr McKenzie is believed to have landed six years prior to its discovery.

Dr Clarke said: ‘The Pentagon had spent $68 million on the project and was determined to keep it a secret.’

A press release in one of the files, dated January 1956, even listed cover stories that would be given to the media if the balloons were shot down or captured.

‘It seemed highly likely that a similar story had been used at Roswell to protect Mogul.

‘The official line was that the devices were ‘part of an Air Force meteorological survey of the northern hemisphere’.’

Sheffield Hallam University academic Dr Clarke says the project was abandoned in 1956, when the CIA switched to manned reconnaissance flights using the U2 spy plane.