Alleged Photo of Airship over Liverpool
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On July 3rd at around 11 a.m., dozens of people in England
saw what they described as a long silvery cigar shaped flying
object. Most of the witnesses said the object appeared out
of nowhere. One woman said she saw the shadow of the
object first, because it was a bright sunny day, when
suddenly a huge shadow swept over the nearby streets.
People looked up and saw what was described as a Zeppelin
or an airship.
Some estimated the airship?s size to be 300 feet in length,
others said it was about 150 feet long. Minutes later, the
police and Liverpool Airport received calls from people who
reported an unidentified object travelling towards Liverpool
City Center. The airport was naturally concerned because
whatever the object was, it posed a danger to any planes
coming in or taking off at the airport. However, the radar
screens of the air traffic controllers showed that there was
nothing unusual in the skies.
Reports continued to flood in to newspaper offices and radio
stations across the region. The airship was seen flying very
low at times, and office workers in Liverpool saw it coming in
at what looked like rooftop level. Miss Roberts, a secretary at
an office building in the area, was so convinced the airship
was going to hit the building she was in, she ran to the
stairwell and down the steps. Fortunately, the unidentified
craft drifted past the building and floated away. Several
patrons in McHales bar and the Crown pub were sitting
outside, enjoying the sunshine as they drank, and probably
thought they'd had too much to drink when they saw the
torpedo-shaped object fly overhead.
According to various reports, the airship then passed over
several cities and ended up over Blackpool, where a woman
reported seeing a silvery blue cigar shaped craft off the
coast, about a mile out. This was around 8 p.m. that night.
A tape of what is alleged to be a radio broadcast from the
airship was sent to a local radio station from Gareth Maine of
Hunts Cross. He is a radio expert who claims to have tracked
the airship with a highly directional parabolic dish. Maine
picked up male and female voices on a now obsolete medium
wave radio band. These voices originated from the airship but
he couldn?t understand what they were saying.
After the tape was broadcast, listeners phoned in and
claimed the voices in the transmission were speaking a dialect
of Japanese. One listener, Mitsunari Okumura, a Japanese
student staying in Liverpool, provided the following
translation:
Man: Is that it? Is that better?
Woman: Yes, the altitude is right.
Man: Wind speed is low, and we are over the river. Northerly
(?)
Woman: Slower. Video now. Slower.
Man: The docks. Closer. Change frequency. Another channel
(?)
Woman: Liverpool Bay. Right seven degrees. Slower.
Man: Crosswinds. If I can go in closer I can scan in detail.
I?ll
try now. Is that better?
Woman: No, and don?t go down too low. Try the other
cameras.
Man: I?ll go down anyway and if it gets risky I?ll come up and
head northwest. You?re breaking up slightly. Another channel?
(Fades out)
Opinion: Maybe it's a hoax, or maybe some Japanese
filmmakers have their own blimp. Or, just maybe, the weird
airship controversy of the 1890s has returned to haunt us
once again.
