The 1912 Sheerness UFO incident, involving mysterious lights and wartime fears, remains one of Britain’s earliest and most intriguing aerial mysteries, writes NEIL NIXON
The Kent Messenger reported in 2020 that Kent ranked second amongst areas of the UK for the number of UFO reports it generated. It’s a raw statistic that can be looked at from many angles.
Kent sticks out into the sea, has a ridge of high ground down the centre and has many places offering views that go on for miles. It’s also underneath an obvious flight path from a range of European destinations to London.
All of the above may explain some of the many sightings of Kent’s lights in the sky. But it’s easy to miss the granddaddy of them all. The Sheerness UFO incident of 1912 generated wider publicity and more genuine alarm than any other paranormal report from the county.
It remains unexplained. It may, too, owe some of its origin to the uninterrupted views in the county and the proximity to mainland Europe.
On 14 October 1912, between 6.30 and 7pm, reports of the sound of an aircraft engine came in from Sheerness (then a hugely important naval dockyard) and nearby Queenborough. One or two witnesses, notably including a Royal Navy Lieutenant, also reported a moving light.
Thinking an aircraft was in trouble with darkness fast descending, the nearby Eastchurch Aerodrome lit flares and prepared for a landing, which never occurred.
For context here, the Isle of Sheppey saw the first British powered flight in 1909. Claude Grahame-White staged the first night flight the following year and by 1912 aviation had expanded but was still a tiny element of British life. Newspapers hadn’t long ceased reporting every single flight!
Newspaper reports centred on the possibility of a German Zeppelin overflying the strategically important dockyard and in parliamentary discussion the First Lord of the Admiralty, a certain Winston Churchill, promised to make inquiries. Eventually, he would privately assert this was a German airship.
L1, Germany’s prime naval Zeppelin, was then undertaking proving flights and had ventured out over the North Sea, but flight records indicate it wasn’t over Sheerness at that time.
In the run-up to war, other phantom airships appeared in British skies and the press became increasingly alarmed and outspoken over the threat they posed in the event of war.
Long after the event, no conclusive proof has emerged. If this was a deliberate stunt involving Churchill and the daring Grahame-White, then it’s unusual that two known attention-seekers and self-publicists combined to say nothing despite living lengthy lives and the need for secrecy on such a clandestine operation being long past.
If it was a Zeppelin, then the Germans took foolish risks at the limit of their capability and only alarmed a potential enemy, encouraging them to arm against such attacks.
If it was some other strange phenomenon, then its resemblance to the cutting-edge military threats of the time is uncanny.
If this was a case of mass hysteria, it was a widespread and specific example of such which, coincidentally, fed directly into a growing political will to arm against aerial attack.
If the story isn’t celebrated today, that’s largely because it lies so far back in our past that no eyewitnesses remain and as a UFO event it appears – on first glance – to be unspectacular.
In truth, it’s still of some value. If it was a clandestine military manoeuvre it was daring, successful and all the more impressive because the secrecy has held.
If it was anything else, then either it shows a strange natural phenomenon being widely misunderstood or a revealing case study of a mass panic long before such events were widely understood or studied.
Do you think the Sheerness UFO was a Zeppelin, mass panic, or something stranger? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
