UFO Over Liverpool?and Crew Speaks Japanese?

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.

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