THE wreckage of a miniature UFO that ‘crash landed’ on the North York Moors sixty years ago has been found – hidden in the archives of a London museum.

The story has been claimed by some as Britain’s answer to the #Roswell incident.

In a plot worthy of The X-Files the metal object, shaped like a miniature flying saucer, was found by three men on Silpho Moor, near Scarborough, one night in November 1957.

How the Yorkshire Post broke the story on 9 December 1957

One later paid £10 – more than £200 in today’s money – for the mysterious object that appeared just weeks after the Russians launched Sputnik into orbit around Earth.

But what became known as the Silpho Saucer vanished without trace soon after the finders cut it open in the Yorkshire spa town.

Photographs show the copper base of the object was inscribed with hieroglyphs that one of the men compared with Russian lettering.

Hieroglyphics were also found on the wreckage of the UFO that allegedly crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in June 1947.

When the Yorkshire object was opened a tiny book made of 17 thin copper sheets was found inside, held in place by a coil of copper wire. The sheets were covered in more hieroglyphics and these were deciphered by a Scarborough café owner, Philip Longbottom.

Headlines from the Scarborough Evening News 1957

He claimed they contained a bizarre 2000 word message allegedly sent to Earth by an alien called Ullo who wanted to warn us about atomic warfare. It contained the warning: ‘You will improve or disappear’.

A fragment of fused metal and plastic from the outer shell of the ‘saucer’ (Copyright Dr David Clarke)

For decades afterwards UFO enthusiasts drew a blank in their quest for the missing saucer – although some claimed it ended up in a scrapyard or had been on display in a fish’n chip shop in Scarborough.

But for half a century the missing pieces of the puzzle have been sitting inside a tin cigarette box at the Science Museum Group’s archive, more than 200 miles away from the wild moorland where they were found at the height of the Cold War.

The remains of the Silpho Moor UFO, with the cigarrette box in which they have been stored for 50 years (Copyright Dr David Clarke)

Papers in the museum archives reveal the remains of the ‘Silpho Moor Object’ were sent to London for examination by experts in 1963.

The specimens included a fused section of the metal and plastic from the outer casing, a length of hollow copper tubing and tiny pieces of foil from the booklet that was discovered inside.

The Science Museum passed them to Gordon Claringbull of the Natural History Museum, who specialised in meteorites and explosives.

He said he could find ‘nothing unusual’ in the samples. In a memo to the Science Museum, Claringbull said that he was ‘prepared to wager anything’ that the pieces of metal were made on Earth.

Sceptics claimed the ‘saucer’ was made from a domestic hot water cylinder in a back-street garage and planted on the moor as an elaborate hoax.

Air Chief Marshall Lord Dowding who examined the Silpho Saucer in 1958 and believed it was ‘genuine’

Believers such as Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, who led the RAF during the Battle of Britain during WW2, revealed in 1959 that he had ‘actually held and examined’ the Silpho object.

He described it as a ‘a miniature pilot flying saucer’ – and was convinced it was a genuine artefact from space.

Tests carried out at Manchester University revealed the object’s shell contained lead and the copper parts were of unusual high purity.

But a metallurgist concluded it could not have arrived on Earth from space as there was no evidence it had been exposed to high temperatures.

UFO expert Jenny Randles, who read the report produced in Manchester, said she believes ‘it is the most costly and well organised hoax that has ever taken place in Britain.

‘The hoaxers never seemed to gain from it and whoever had it built spent considerably more than the £10 the finders reportedly paid for it’.

I was invited to see the remains at The Science Museum after giving a talk there on my work for The National Archives on the release of the Ministry of Defence’s UFO files.

One of the museum staff tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was aware that ‘bits of a flying saucer’ had been kept in a cigarette tin in the museum group store for decades.

The caption on the box that contains the ‘alleged UFO bits’ at The Science Museum, London (Copyright Dr David Clarke)

I was absolutely amazed when later we opened the tin box and saw the wreckage. It was obvious these were the remains of the missing Silpho Saucer that some have claimed as Britain’s answer to the famous Roswell incident.

It is astounding to learn that pieces of this unusual object have been sitting in a museum archive for more than half a century.

The Silpho Saucer story first broke on 9 December 1957 when The Yorkshire Post revealed how ‘a mystery object’, shaped ‘like a large flattish spinning top’, 45 cm in diameter and weighing 15 kg, had been found on the moor northwest of the town two weeks earlier.

Scarborough businessman Frank Dickenson, then 42,  claimed he and two friends were driving up Reasty Hill near the village of Silpho at night when his car stalled and they saw ‘a glowing object in the sky’ that appeared to fall to the ground on a ridge above Broxa Forest.

Mr Dickenson left the car, climbed a steep bank and found the metallic saucer lying in a patch of bracken.  But as he returned along a footpath to alert his friends he passed a young couple walking towards the scene.

When the three men returned to search the moors, the object was gone.

Images taken by Dr John Dale in 1958 showing the intact saucer, the copper base with hieroglyphs and one of the copper sheets from the ‘booklet’ that contained a message from Ullo (credit: Dr John Dale)

But he was so desperate to get it back he placed a classified advert in the Scarborough newspaper.

This was answered by someone claiming to be the mystery man on the moor, who initially demanded £200 in cash.

Mr Dickenson later handed over £10 in a night-time exchange for the metal object that was hidden in a sack.

He asked Scarborough solicitor Anthony Parker to examine it at his home in nearby Scalby.

Parker told the Press he had advised Mr Dickenson to hand it to the Air Ministry and said: ‘I do not think it is a flying saucer and I do not believe such things come from outer space’.

But Mr Parker’s fascination grew after he, Mr Dickenson and Philip Longbottom prised open the two halves of the object. Inside they found traces of ash, fused glass and the copper book ‘that had a coil of hollow tubing wrapped around it’.

The story made headlines just two months after the Cold War space race began with the launch of Sputnik. Some of those who examined the Yorkshire ‘whatnik’ initially feared it could have fallen from the spy satellite or was part of a bomb or wartime mine.

Another fragment of UFO wreckage from Silpho (Copryight Dr David Clarke)

And in a bizarre twist, over thirty years later a cache of IRA guns and bomb-making equipment was found near the same patch of isolated moorland shortly before Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was due to speak at the Conservative party conference in Scarborough.

The arms cache included Czech-made Semtex, a key component in bombs used by Irish terrorists.

It was found by a man searching for compost in Broxa Forest, close to Silpho Moor, in March 1989 and sparked a huge security operation.

The Science Museum, South Kensington, London: last resting place of the Silpho Saucer (credit: Wikipedia)