John Wick
The Mystifying Pentyrch Incident

During a cold evening of February in 2016, a vicious incident would transpire on the outskirts of Cardiff, which would, in time, go on to become known as the Welsh-Roswell incident. There are many questions that arises regarding this incident like whether the British military genuinely ambushed UFO in the Welsh valleys, or was this instead a misunderstanding of more earthly events. In this post, we delve into the mystifying Pentyrch incident.
Experience of the control room operator
The control room supervisor slipped back into the main office, having finished his cigarette break, and then made his way back across the sprawling space towards his computer. Logging back into the system, he scanned through the calls, which had come in during the last 10 minutes. To his relief, it appeared the call-handlers had not had to deal with anything too contentious for the brief period he had been absent. Those listed on screen were standard fayre for a Friday late shift, several assaults or cases of anti-social behavior in the city centre and a couple of domestic incidents.
Having convinced himself that there would be nothing in particular to pass on to his nighttime counterpart when he was relieved, the supervisor decided to treat himself to one last cup of coffee before the end of his shift. But he had not long been in the kitchen when one of the controllers stuck their head round the door.
A number of calls had come in of bizarre activity taking place out to the northwest of the city. Several local residents were complaining of strange lights in the night sky, which were disturbing their livestock and causing some alarm. Reassuring the operator that this was most likely standard air traffic, or possibly even aircraft from the nearby St. Athan military base, the supervisor finished making his drink before heading back to his screen. But before he had managed to cross the room, one of the staff shouted across that more aircraft were now being reported, low-flying helicopters and military transports were being seen in high numbers.
Hurrying back to his desk, the supervisor quickly placed a call to the communications room at St. Athan to enquire if there was indeed a military exercise underway. Having been placed on hold by an operator, he then scanned through his emails from the previous week, in case he had missed any notifications, but found nothing relating to the events being reported.
Checking his watch, he saw that it was just after 2:00 a.m., an odd time to be conducting an exercise, especially over residential areas. Eventually, having waited some time and with further bizarre reports still filtering back to him, a calm voice came on the line. He was politely informed by the unknown speaker that the increased military presence in the area was all accounted for and was indeed part of a pre-arranged exercise.
But over the course of the next hour, the calls coming into the police switchboard became increasingly bizarre. One local resident had seen a squad of armed soldiers hurrying across a nearby field, apparently in pursuit of something, another stated she had seen a huge pyramid shaped object, covered in red lights, silently hovering near her home. But by far the most worrying was the report of an explosion in some nearby woods, followed by an Apache helicopter crash-landing in a farmer's field.
During the course of the evening, the police control room would struggle to cope with the volume of reports it was receiving, leading to several more frantic calls to their military counterparts in an effort to query what was taking place. Each time they were given the same response. There was nothing to worry about, all of this was pre-planned and that everything would be back to normal by the following morning. But nothing could have been further from the truth.
The village of Pentyrch
The strange events which allegedly took place in and around the village of Pentyrch on the evening of the 26th of February 2016 would not pass unnoticed by the media. Several articles were published after the incident on local news websites, featuring accounts from some of the witnesses, as well as formal responses which were obtained from both the police and the ministry of defense. There were also several follow-up pieces, which made their way into national news outlets, with the more spectacular witness accounts concerning the incident reproduced as part of a wider analysis of British UFO incidents.
But many who resided in Pentyrch felt that their voices were intentionally being silenced. And that in some cases, their accounts were deliberately undermined in order to invalidate their reports. It appears evident from the sheer volume of calls received by the police control room in Cardiff on the evening in question that something unusual did indeed take place in the skies over the region. And it seems equally clear that the residents contacting the authorities roughly convinced that what they were witnessing was not of this Earth.
One of the first callers to contact the police that evening was a local man named Mike Henry. He reported having witnessed a series of pulsating red spheres. These went on to align themselves into the shape of a triangle, which then slowly descended from the clouds. Henry had watched on in wonder as this large pyramid like object had come to a halt about 10 feet above some nearby fields, before going on to disgorge a series of smaller red and green orbs. These orbs began to dance around just above the ground beneath the hovering craft, before then merging into a larger sphere, which continued to emit bright pulses of light, alternating between red and green.
Caz Clarke's sighting of the UFO
Henbury's statement is perturbing enough, but even more so when viewed in conjunction with the account at the main witness to the evening's events, a local residents by the name of Caz Clarke. For Clarke, the incidents in Pentyrch had begun three days earlier on the 23rd, when she and one of her friends noticed military plane circling the area. For the next two days, she continued to see unexpected aircraft in the skies above her village, both during the day and the hours of darkness.
Then at around 2 a.m. on the 26th, She was in her back garden with two of her neighbors, when they were disturbed by a loud drone in the skies overhead. Looking up, they saw a large military jet, and E3 sentry, with what appeared to be a circular radar dish rotating above it. They watched on as the plane began to circle the area, apparently searching for something. It was then that they became aware of a vivid crimson light, slowly descending over some nearby woodland. Clarke and one of the neighbors decided to move in for a closer look. As she and her companion continued to observe, this light broke apart into a series of smaller glowing red orbs, which began to align themselves into a roughly triangular formation.
The space between these orbs suddenly darkened, the night sky behind them disappearing as a massive pyramid-like craft seemed to materialize out of nowhere, framed by red lights. From their vantage point, roughly two hundred yards away, the two witnesses watched as the pyramid gradually began to rotate on its axis. At the apex, a bright green object was ejected at great speed, which took up position hovering in the night sky, a short distance away.
Whilst this was happening, a series of what appeared to be lightning bolts issued forth from the lower far corner of the pyramid which seem to be striking the ground beneath it. These bursts of light was so intense that they backlit and illuminated the sheer size of the craft hovering above. More orbs were ejected from the top of the pyramid as the military jet continued to circle overhead. These new lights appeared to dance and mingle with one another as if protecting the main craft.

As Clarke and her friend looked on, a number of additional aircraft soon arrived to join the E3 sentry. After conducting some research, Clarke would later go on to identify these as Hercules and Globemaster military transport planes. The new arrivals, which numbered four in total, formed up on the E3 Sentry and then began to circle the pyramid craft, in an apparent attempt to hem it in.
The Strange Occurring
At this point, two things occurred. The red lights marking the outline of the floating pyramid initially dimmed, and then disappeared with the larger craft also vanishing from sight. At the same time, the smaller green object which had been hovering nearby flared brightly three times, before setting off at high speed away from the location, bobbing and weaving as it went. Clarke and her friend observed the progress of this green orb, as it led the pursuing planes away and off to the west, varying its speed and course until all of them had disappeared into the night. Shortly after this, two smaller objects which were red in color appeared from the right side of the field.
One of these paused overhead appearing to scan Clarke before it then turned green and moved away. Over the next hour, the skies above Pentyrch were filled with yet more activity. Other witnesses reported seeing unknown objects, which were in turn chased away from the area by a group of Apache gunships, before all activity finally ceased.
Clarke and her friend decided to venture out into the field where the pyramid had been hovering in search of any physical evidence, but frustratingly there was nothing to be found.
Roughly half an hour later, after they had returned to Clarke's address and were discussing the events they had witnessed, the pair was startled by the sound of a distant explosion. They realized it had come from the west, the direction in which the military aircraft had been chasing the green object. She quickly formed the opinion that it must have been shot down.
The following morning, with the entire community discussing the previous night's events, Clarke asked her friends and neighbors if any of them had heard the explosion. Several of the witnesses stated that they had, some even reporting two separate explosions in close succession. The first of which seem to have come from the skies above and the second from the ground, in the vicinity of the nearby Llantrisant Forest. Llantrisant Forest is a 600-acre woodland known locally as Smilog woods. Determined to find out if her theory was correct, Clarke immediately set off towards the forest.
Upon her arrival, it did not take long to locate signs of an apparent impact. Sure enough, deep in the woodland, she found a debris field of countless trees which appeared to have been splintered or shattered, as if recently impacted from above by a heavy object. Bizarrely, it also seemed to be snowing, but only in the local vicinity of the damaged trees. That same day, Clarke also visited the area where the lightning bolts from the pyramid shaped craft appear to make contact with the ground, expecting to find the grass there burnt.
While there was no obvious damage, she did find that all plant life in the immediate vicinity appeared to be dying. Again, it was snowing, but only inside the field. Clarke states that to this day, nothing grows in this area and that it has become known as "the bald patch".
Military personnel were also witnessed on the outskirts of Pentyrch, who when questioned, told passers-by that they were performing training exercises. But when plain clothed civilians suddenly arrived and camped out in the fields behind Clarke's house, they gave conflicting reasons to local residents as to why they were there. Some witnesses were told by the outsiders that they were a fracking survey team, whilst others were informed that they worked for a cellular network.
The authorities also enforced unexplained road closures in the immediate aftermath. The reason given was due to an overturned lorry, but the number of highways that were closed, which included the M4 Motorway, seemed excessive. Clarke has spent the years since her encounter searching for evidence, which might validate her account. She has revisited the crash site with local UFO enthusiasts, who claimed to have detected what appeared to be very high levels of electromagnetic radiation.
Using the Freedom of Information Act, she has also produced evidence from local air traffic control outlets, as well as geological and seismological data, which she believes supports her account of the night's events. She has produced witness testimony from residents as far afield as Port Talbot and Swansea, who say they observed objects that evening which was similar to those cited above Pentyrch. They state that the explosions were so powerful that it shook their houses. Patients in a nearby hospital claimed that the sheer intensity of the blast shook them awake in their beds. But despite the efforts of Clarke and other local residents, the authorities continue to dismiss her findings, stating that what she and her companions witnessed was simply a military training exercise.
Possible reasons for the Pentyrch incident
What makes the Pentyrch incident stand out from the majority of other alleged British UFO Encounters, is the sheer volume of the people involved. The southwest region of Wales is no stranger to reports of strange lights moving around in the night sky, but these are usually isolated incidents with only one or two witnesses. On this occasion, an entire community was affected to a degree where a significant number felt the need to request urgent assistance from the Emergency Services.
Are we really to believe that all of the witnesses involved were simply mistaken or confused about what may have been nothing more than a simple military training exercise? Commentators on the incident believe that the answer to that question is a resounding 'yes'. They dismiss the more fantastic elements of the witness accounts, citing aspects of mass hysteria and attention-seeking, and point to what they believe are more tangible facts.
Wales is home to a large number of significantly sized military installations and the incident occurred around the time of a biannual military training exercise named Operation Chameleon. The Ministry of Defense purport to be quite open in describing the practices which take place during these drills, applying for no-fly orders in advance of the whole exercise, and listing all their training practices on their website in the aftermath. Observers state that the red and green objects described by witnesses were most likely drop-zone markers, and the lines of lights in the sky believed to be the outer edges of a large spacecraft were likely descending paratroopers.
For the purposes of the exercise, each of the soldiers involved would have been wearing a light on their gear to indicate their position to the rest of their unit. To a member of the public, seeing several straight lines of red or orange glowing lights descending slowly from the sky, it might be possible to mistake their alignment for the edges of something large hovering above. It would also not be unusual for aircraft to be simulating crash landings or for soldiers to be moving around with their weapons on open display.
But for Clarke and many of her fellow witnesses, such arguments represent a classic government cover-up. First and foremost amongst the alleged contradictions is that Operation Chameleon took place a week before the Pentyrch incident and was situated in the North of England, not Wales. Secondly, nobody knew anything about any pre-planned exercise, not the police, not the local government, not the media, and most importantly, not the local residents. No one had been informed of any such maneuvers, which itself is a huge red flag.
Before any military exercise involving aircraft, a NOTAM or notice to airmen must be issued in order to warn commercial and civilian pilots not to enter the airspace, to prevent midair collisions. NOTAMs are usually raised well in advance, but in the case of Pentyrch, one was not issued until 9 p.m. on the 25th, mere hours before the alleged exercise. Not to mention that the boundary of this NOTAM was exceeded by over 50 miles, something that would never happen because it would endanger other aircraft.
In any case, the idea of conducting such a high intensity drill at low level over a residential area at such a time in the morning is almost inconceivable, not just because of the obvious disturbance, but because of the very real risk of causing an accident. Clarke was right below the alleged drop zone and categorically states that no soldiers or parachutes were present in the field when she and her friend went to check. No paratroopers were deployed that night whatsoever. The soldiers witnessed on the ground fast roped from helicopters over Llantrisant common.
Elsewhere, the military continues to deny that any explosions occurred, despite seismological data confirming otherwise. Finally, many witnesses state that what they saw was a real physical craft, not just an outline depicted by lights, which in any case were far too steep in orientation to be Armed Forces parachuting into the area.
Caz Clarke has resolved not to give up her quest to uncover the truth and continues to submit freedom of information requests to local organizations in search of evidence which supports her account. Since she first came forward, she has successfully passed three separate polygraph tests conducted by the leading government examiner and reports that she and her family have also received threats against their lives for speaking out.
Conclusion
Whilst the arguments for the Pentyrch incident being a pre-arranged military exercise are somewhat plausible, when viewed in context, it would have been completely out of character for the British Armed Forces. The commonalities in the testimonies of local residents do make their stories compelling. The very fact that so many were upset by the commotion proves that this was completely unplanned and unexpected. This is truly an interesting case with many complexities, unfortunately too many to mention in the space of this post.
In time, it is possible that the efforts of those who continue to investigate aspects of this story may payoff, and the truth behind what occurred in the skies above this quiet Welsh village may finally be presented.