UAP: Historical overview of Europe
Italian MUFON director Edoardo Russo gave a brief presentation of the UAP phenomenon at the European Parliament
On Tuesday March 20, Portuguese MEP Francisco Guerreiro organized an exchange of views on the subject of UAP: Reporting and scientific evaluation in the European Union. During the conference, Edoardo Russo, Secretary of the Centro Italiano Studi Ufologici (CISU), gave a historical overview of the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) in Europe.
In his introduction, E. Russo recalled that UAP are a worldwide phenomenon. The first wave reported in Europe concerned the “phantom rockets” of 1946, sighted in Scandinavia, then in Italy and Greece. As for the scale of the phenomenon, surveys carried out across Europe reveal that 6.5% of the population claim to have seen a UFO, which represents 29 million people in Europe. And it appears that only 1 in 100 witnesses report their sighting, as there are 170,000 reports collected in Europe. That's more than in the United States.
There's no regularity in UAP sightings: they come in waves. The first was in 1950, affecting Belgium, Italy, Spain and the UK. In autumn 1954, thousands of cases were reported in France. There were several nationwide waves: United Kingdom in 1967, Spain in 1968, Italy in 1973, France in 1974. "Important waves of UAP sightings” are reported "in most European countries along the last 75 years at last", insists E. Russo. In 1978, Italy experienced a major wave of sightings. Scared fishermen refused to go out to sea, and "police patrols were sent photographing strange lights in the sky". The air force was tasked with collecting testimonies. It became a national affair.
After investigation, around 95% of UFOs are identified and explained by natural and human phenomena. Even so, there are still thousands of “abnormal” cases across Europe.
In a study conducted by the CISU, it emerged that witnesses mainly observed lights in the night sky (76%), and distant objects flying during the day (16%). 10% of reports concern close encounters (less than 150 meters from the witness). These reports are both highly credible and strange. They concern sightings by armed forces, temporary physical effects on the environment, ground traces and radar detections. More recently, there are reports of USOs (Unidentified Submerged Objects) (1%).
E. Russo emphasized the secondary social effect, which has been the subject of academic studies in psychology, sociology and anthropology. "While I can't speak here and now about panic situations, we are left with a large number of people wondering what they saw”. But no one is officially in charge of giving them an answer, and the witnesses find themselves caught "between those who tell them they were drunk and those who believe they are just extraterrestrial visitors".
The organizations that welcome witnesses are private, voluntary organizations, which try to find answers. In Europe, we have dozens of associations, some founded decades ago. E. Russo gave a few examples: "the British National Association has been founded in 1964, the Catalan-Spanish organization since 1958, and the Danish one since 1957".
Passionate volunteers gather testimonies and carry out field surveys. They collect and archive documentation, and provide support for studies and research. They are also involved in public education, conferences, and congresses. The largest existing archives are in Sweden, the "Archives for the Unexplained".
The military, as part of its mission to control and defend each country's airspace, collects reports on UAP, as does Project Blue Book in the USA. Today, ten European countries have declassified all or part of their military archives on UAP. This represents several thousand reports available for study.
There is only one example of a non-military governmental organization in the world, and it's French: the GEIPAN. Created by the CNES in 1977, this public service collects testimonies, carries out investigations and shares its answers with the public.
Through this review of existing organizations, E. Russo demonstrated the lack of institutional commitment to the subject of UFOs. However, politicians were quick to take up the subject. He pointed out that parliamentary questions have been asked in most European countries since at least 1950. The European Parliament has already received nine questions on the subject.
However, in 1989, following a wave of sightings in Belgium, Elio di Rupo, member of the European Parliament, obtained the opening of an inquiry by the Energy Research Committee. The Italian scientist in charge of the study proposed giving the GEPAN a European status.
Things didn't happen, and we're still here today.
"What are we doing about it?" concluded Edoardo Russo.
Full Transcript
The historical European context
UAP are not just an American phenomenon as some may think or believe. It's always been a global phenomenon, with sightings and testimonies from all over the world. Europe has always been in a central position regarding sighting reports, even before the American public discovered the flying saucers in the summer of 1947.
The first postwar wave of unidentified aerial sightings were the ghost rockets of Scandinavia, but also Italy, Greece, and the Mediterranean countries in 1946. And there are a lot of European witnesses. You may ask, “how many?” Opinion polls asked the question (not so many did) “Did you see a UFO?” We have some seemingly different percentages that amount to a weighted average of 6.5% of people having seen UFOs. If we consider European Union countries, that means as many as 29 million people think they have seen a UAP or UFO - call it as you like. Not all witnesses are reporting their own sightings. Our estimates are that less than 1% of the witnesses are stepping forth and are reporting their sightings, since the databases of cases collected by the Civilian UAP organisations presently comprise about 170,000 reports. Is it much? Is it few? It's higher than the total number of USA reports as collected by our sister organisations in the United States of America. We are talking of Europe in a geographical sense from Portugal, to Ukraine from Norway to Malta. Unidentified aerial phenomena are not regular in their apparitions. Sighting reports are coming in waves, with rich or poor years. The first large wave of sightings was in the spring of 1950. And it was a really European one, hitting several countries, Belgium, Italy, Spain, the UK, and an even greater UAP panic took place in the autumn of 1954 with thousands of cases mostly in France, and so on and so on. We had the national waves in the UK in 1967, in Spain 68, in Italy 73, in France 74. Important waves of UAP sightings took place in most European countries along the last 75 years at last. My own country, Italy, suffered such a strong UAP wave in the late 1978 that fishermen refused to go out fishing. Police patrols were sent photographing strange lights in the sky. Parliamentary questions were asked and the government charged the Italian Air Force to begin a formal collection of testimonies from the public. You can see here one of the national examples with the peaks on the sightings in certain years and not in others. Even if 90, 95 even 98% of those European phenomena were later identified and explained with known natural phenomena, or man-made objects, which is precisely the grassroots activity of us UAP investigators, we are left with a small, yet not negligible, residue of anomalous cases totaling thousands of UAP in the strictest sense, unidentified on a European scale.
What are people seeing ?
The largest part of sightings are distant lights in the sky: more than 75% of reports are of distant daylight flying objects. But we also have higher strangeness and higher credibility reports of close encounters when the phenomenon isn’t further than 150 meters from the observer in about 10% of cases. This is just a national sample from Italy, about 28,000 reports. The special cases I'm referring to may be sightings from the military, may be physical effects and temporal and physical effects on the surrounding environment. Pilot reports, that we've been talking about, that André (Jol) mentioned before, ground traces, radar detection cases. We cannot get all radar detection cases since a large part of them are military cases, and we are not given access unless there is some declassification of data. And, more recently, the attention moved to the sea. And you see, we have about 1% of cases (in that domain). More or less 1% of cases involve USO or underwater objects. And there are social side effects, which have been the object of academic studies by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists... Although we cannot talk here about the actual panic situations, we are left with a great number of people wondering what they saw. Millions of people, who have a right to an answer, if there is one, but cannot find anybody officially charged to give one to them and are crushed between those telling them “you were drunk”, and those believing it's just extraterrestrial visitors. It's only the private organisations, the volunteers, that take charge of these people of the testimonies, trying to find and offer answers to witnesses.
They are, we are, unpaid volunteers that are doing this by passion. There are a few hundreds of serious minded private researchers who try to apply a scientific approach within the European Union. And there are dozens of rational associations of them. One in nearly every European country, some of them having been active for decades. Just think that the British National Association was founded in 1964; the Catalonian Spanish organisation in 1958, and the Danish one, 1957.
What are they doing?
They are collecting testimonies. They are doing field investigation, trying to find the solution, they can find an explanation for the largest part of the testimonies. We are collecting documentation, archiving and offering support for study and research. That is not our business, us, private volunteers, to make scientific studies. It’s for the scientists to do so.
We are doing an activity of public education, conferences, congresses, interviews. Just think that the largest existing archive about UFOs in the world is in Sweden - “The archives for the unexplained”. The military have traditionally been collecting UFO UAP reports within their dedicated mission of controlling and defending each nation’s airspace. Most, if not all, European countries have had their own military archives of mostly military reports, just like in the USA. We all know about Project Blue Book, but something similar has been existing all over the world, nearly all over the world and in nearly all European countries. But what I want to tell and to stress is that as many as 10 European countries have declassified the military UAP archives or opened the UAP files, in part, or in total, which is amounting now to several thousands of reports available for a study.
What about other countries ?
We have 10-12 countries that have done the same. Let's remain in Europe for now. As for non-military, such as government organisations I'm not talking about private volunteers collecting analysing UAP reports when I say that the only one, not just in Europe, but in the world, is in France. In 1977, the National Space Study Centre CNES, The European NASA, created the study group on unidentified aerospace phenomena, the GEPAN. Its name changed twice, it’s GEIPAN now. It's not only still active as Andre showed, but it’s still offering investigations to the French public only, collecting testimonies, trying to identify causes, and offering those answers to the public. We will get back to them.
What about the politicians?
Well, they have been involved since the beginning. Parliamentary questions have been asked in most European countries since at least 1950. And the European Parliament got its own share of them too. You may see that there is a collection bias here because there are too many Italian ones. But we show that France had quite a collection that has not been collected properly. And around Europe, can I say that Europe includes the United Kingdom? Look at how many they have. The British Parliament is a special kind of Parliament - 110 parliamentary questions since 1950. Not bad. And the European Parliament, nine. Even if we take away the two questions by Francisco Guerrero that elevated the total, it's seven times more. But not just questions. We have a precedent.
In the last few months of 1989, Belgium, the country we are now sitting in, suffered a heavy wave of sightings. Several thousands in one month and a half forcing the local UAP study group the SOBEPS, the Société Belge d’Etude des Phénomènes Spatiaux, to have a collection in two volumes of several hundreds pages. It was a Belgian Member of the European Parliament, I should say of Italian origin, Elio Di Rupo, who became the Prime Minister of Belgium years later, that asked a question and obtained that the Committee of energy research and technology of the European Parliament began an investigation. The committee charged any Italian scientist, that was a member of the Parliament at the time, to do that work. And he offered a proposal of resolution not creating a new office but giving the French GEPAN a European status. Then the action went another way, the legislature finished, and it remained like that. So the ball is once again here.
What are we doing about it? What are you doing about it? We don't know. This is a very short and quick panorama about European history of UAP and European Studies.
Q&A
I'd like to comment on something because we talked about the GEIPAN and you mentioned one of the missions. What has been interesting in the last 10 years at last, is that the GEIPAN, which is an official body, has called at least twice a conference, a closed shop meeting involving civilian researchers. It was some scientists, it was some UAP researchers getting together to compare methodologies about the collection and analysis of data. This is an example that we should follow. I feel sure that GEIPAN is going on this road but any other institutional office, procedure and so on might profit, from 70 years of experience and of knowledge of those that have been going on, doing this work for free as volunteers because it's a large quantity of information and documentation that may be shared, not just open another office, like Ryan (Graves) was saying, the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office that is not talking with anybody else. We don't even know what they are doing concretely, we can’t see some output. But there is a large knowledge base, spread, that should be put together and given to scientists, that are the only ones that should be able to do something with that. We can collect, we have done it and so it's a good way to work together.
Edoardo Russo is a former chairman of Centro Italiano Studi Ufologici, MUFON-Italy National director, one of the coordinators of EuroUFO.net and a board member with UAP Check International initiative.
Review by Kate Sellier and Guillaume Fournier Airaud
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0