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G. W. Cammell was the author of a book titled “More Lives Than A Cat”, telling how in his RNZAF and RAF career he had flown 39 types of aircraft, including helicopters.
In 1943, Gordon Wallace Cammell was a Flight Lieutenant, with Service No NZ415290, pilot of a RNZAF Lancaster II serial DS655 marked KO-M of the 115th Squadron of the Bomber Command. The plane was shot down and force landed on May 27, 1943 (Source Allied Air Forces Losses and Incidents Database) and made prisoner, sent to Stalag Luft L3 Sagan and Belaria.
What he observed obviously puzzled G. W. Cammell, and, in his words, the crew and the debriefing officer.
By: Gordon W. Cammell, Royal Air Force, retired.
On those occasions when the subject of UFO's has been discussed, I have recounted experiences, some personal, and some second hand, of which I have some knowledge. I have now been asked to record details of these incidents and although one of them occurred fifty years ago, they are still quite clear in my mind.
I am a retired Royal Air Force officer and spent a combined total of more than twenty years as a pilot in the Royal New Zealand Air Force and R.A.F. In May, 1943 I was the captain of a Lancaster bomber aircraft, and as we crossed the English Channel upon returning from a bombing raid over Germany, I and all of my crew saw what appeared to be a huge orange ball on or near the sea, seven or eight thousand feet below us. It appeared to be stationary as we observed it for about ten minutes, and its light intensity was bright and constant. We decided that it was not an aircraft or ship on fire, since we could not see flames or changing reflections on the water. After landing back at our base at R.A.F. East Wretham, Suffolk, England, we reported our sighting to the debriefing officer who also had no idea of what we had seen.
In 1953 I was based at R.A.F. Coltishall, Norfolk, England as a jet pilot flying Meteor night fighters. During a routine night flying exercise one of our crews, Captain, F/OJ. Allison, and radar operator, F/OI. Heavers, reported sighting a cigar-shaped UFO with internal green lights visible through windows. When this crew entered our flight room upon their return, they were both very excited and convinced that the object they had seen was extra terrestrial, because of its very high speed and unusual configuration. The next day we learned that the crew of another night fighter jet of number 85 Squadron, flying near their base at R.A.F. Maidstone, Kent (over one hundred miles from Coltishall) had reported an identical sighting only three minutes after our crew's encounter. Three minutes to cover a distance of 100 miles meant that the UFO was traveling at about two thousand m.p.h., which was well in excess of the capability of any aircraft in the U.K. at that time in history.
It was within the same general time frame of the above reported UFO sighting that during one afternoon, I was doing duty in the aircraft control tower as “Duty Pilot”. Fog covered the area, giving very limited visibility on the ground for take-offs and landings, and so flying had ceased for the day. However, an order was received from the officer commanding the ground control interception radar site at R.A.F. Neatishead, to scramble two radar equipped Meteors, and the crews were instructed to climb to 30,000' and attempt to intercept and identify two UFO's that appeared on the radar screens moving at a speed in excess of 1700 m.p.h., inland after crossing the Norfolk coast from the sea. However, well before our aircraft could reach their assigned altitude, the UFO's turned and traveled back towards the European Continent and were no longer visible on the ground radar screens. Our aircrews did not see the UFO's visually or on their radar screens, since they were out of their range by the time they had completed their climbs.
For some years my wife and I owned a holiday home near Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and spent two or three months there each summer. Our house commanded a wide un-obstructed view over farmland to Horo Straight, 1 1/2 miles distant, which runs between Vancouver Island and the San Juan Islands of Washington State. This view was seen through a large picture window in the living room where we relaxed, especially during the evenings. Quite often we would not draw the drapes so that we could enjoy the rising of a full moon as it appeared over the island, and left an orange reflective glow on the sea in the foreground. We sometimes saw lights of different colors moving across the sky, and these at times would remain stationary for periods of time before moving on again. I have spend nine years as a pilot flying small and large helicopters. I believe that I would have recognized them as such. I was always intrigued by these lights, but as they didn't appear often, I didn't think too much about them.
However in the summer of 1991 when the sun had set, and it was quite dark, I saw two orange balls on or near the water in Horo Straight about two miles away. They were very large, at least fifty feet in diameter, and were immobile. I took my binoculars to view these objects, but could not make out any details in the orange glows. Initially, they were close together and could be seen within the focal width of the binocular lens. Then after some time, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, they appeared to drift apart so that I could not observe both orange balls through the lens at the same time. While viewing this phenomena I remembered that I had seen something very similar to this in 1943 on or over the English Channel. As of then, I couldn't bring myself to believe that I was watching extra terrestrial vehicles, and felt that there had to be a logical explanation for them. After perhaps an hour, when nothing seemed to have changed and the orange balls appeared as they were when I first saw them, I felt tired and retired to bed. During the night I awoke and looked to see if the orange balls were still visible, but they had disappeared. For the next day or two I studied our local newspapers to learn whether others had reported any unusual sightings on Horo Straight, but there was nothing. I asked some of our neighbors if they had seen anything unusual that night, but of those to whom I spoke, their drapes had been drawn and none had seen anything unusual.
Gordon W. Cammell
R.N.Z.A.F./R.A.F.
Retired
