This article was published in the daily newspaper The Daily Mirror, London, U-K., on September 13, 1965.
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By Ron Rickett
One of The Things which have puzzled Britain landed with a hump yesterday. And the so-called unidentified flying object was in fact identified - as an ordinary down-to-earth model about the size of a match-box.
The Thing was one of two pictured in the Daily Mirror last week that set Britain talking and searching the skies.
Mirror experts doubted its authenticity. Science Reporter Arthur Smith and Air Correspondent Peter Harris were both sceptical.
They were right. And the flying saucers believers are in for a shock.
For yesterday amateur photographer Roy Coombs admitted that it was all a clever fake.
He claimed to have taken his picture of The Thing in Surbiton, Surrey, last Monday.
Yesterday he explained how he did it.
Said 33-year-old engineer Roy, of Musjid road, Battersea, London: "I made a model of an object like one photographed near Warminster where all the strange sightings have been reported lately.
"Then I hung it by a piece of cotton from a tree and took several pictures of it.
"I did it only for enthusiasm for photography.
"I wanted to see if photographs of flying saucers could be successfully faked."
Gordon Faulkner, another amateur who claims to have snapped The Thing declared later: "My picture is definitely NOT a stunt."
Gordon, a 23-year-old factory worker, said he photographed The Thing on Sunday, August 29 as it flew over Warminster, the Wiltshire town worried for months by strange objects in the sky and by weird noises.
Meanwhile, in London, Mirror photographer ARTHUR SIDEY showed how easy it is to fake a flying saucer..
He went to Westminster armed with a camera and an "unidentified flying object" - an ashtray.
Said Arthur: "I focused on Big Ben, then an assistant threw the ashtray high in the air and I clicked my camera. The result is a 'flying saucer'."
Dozens of people in Southern England are still convinced they have spotted the thing themselves.
All over the weekend they have been flooding the Daily Mirror with calls.
And journalist Arthur Shuttlewood, of the Warminster Journal, has been besieged by the curious since he described the strange going-ons in the skies above the town in the Mirror on Friday.
A desperate Mr. Shuttlewood said yesterday; "My phone line has been burning hot since Friday, and it's getting progressively worse.
"I am going off on a short holiday until the heats cools off."
