While walking his dogs in the early morning of 26 October at Moigne Downs in Dorset, former RAF intelligence officer J. B. W. 'Angus' Brooks witnessed an object descending at phenomenal speed before abruptly levelling out at a height of approximately 250 feet, some quarter of a mile from where he was positioned.
Brooks described the object as a central circular body with a leading fuselage in the front and three separate fuselages at the rear. During the period of observation the three rear fuselages moved so that with the fourth fuselage they formed a cross shape. Brooks reported no obvious power units or noise and despite a very strong wind, up to Force 8, the object apparently remained motionless for over twenty minutes.
During the encounter one of Angus Brooks' dogs, an Alsatian, was very distraught and frantically pawed at him, disobeying his commands to sit.
A team of researchers from the Ministry of Defence, Dr John Dickinson of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, Leslie Akhurst from S4 (Air) and Alec Cassie, a psychologist, interviewed Mr Brooks and offered their explanation; he had seen a vitreous floater, i.e. dead matter in the fluid of his eyeball, the sighting of which had become dramatic due to Brooks' falling asleep or entering a near sleep state and dreaming.
Brooks seems to have been less than impressed with the MOD's explanation and not least the idea that he had dozed off to sleep during a Force 8 gale with an Alsatian clawing at him.
