Read the full story of how I found the most famous UFO photo in the world in my exclusive story published by The Daily Mail here. And follow the breaking story over on UAPMedia UK.

After thirty years immersed in the world of UFOlogy I had grown cynical after viewing hundreds of unconvincing photographs and films.

Most were blurred, grainy and out-of-focus shots of what could have been frisbees, streetlamps or even seagulls.

But when retired RAF officer Craig Lindsay showed me the only surviving print of the Calvine UFO photo he had kept safe for more than three decades I knew I was looking at something exceptional.

My quest for the truth behind this photograph began back in 2009 when I was curating the release of thousands of once secret MoD UFO documents at The National Archives.

One of the files contained a poor-quality photocopied drawing of a UFO with a Harrier beside it, produced by the RAF’s photographic experts in 1990.

There was also a briefing prepared for Defence ministers in Margaret Thatcher’s government should they need to answer questions when the story broke in the Press.

Yet it never did and the file revealed nothing more about the photograph or the man who took it.

As an investigative journalist this mystery was too intriguing to ignore.

Little did I know then, however, that it was soon to become the longest and most frustrating investigation I have ever conducted. In the summer of 2021 I published the results of research in my Calvine case file update.

But even now, one year later and with one of the original missing photograph found, many questions still remain unanswered.

Wherever I searched for answers, I found insiders blocking my inquiries.

For example, the MoD and The National Archives have refused to remove the black ink that covers the name of the photographer in the Calvine file, claiming it would be an intrusion into his privacy.

Yet in 1990, within days of his sighting, this man had sent his negatives and personal details to Scotland’s best-selling tabloid, so he was not shy of publicity at that time.

Even more baffling no one at The Daily Record remembered the story clearly or could explain what had become of the negatives that remain missing to this day.

A week spent knocking on doors in Pitlochry, the nearest tourist town to Calvine and gateway to the Scottish Highlands, also failed to develop any new leads.

Inquiries at the hotels where I knew the two young witnesses had worked likewise drew a blank. No one remembered the story or had even heard rumours about it.

Had the original story been spiked by a D-Notice, a gagging order based on national security concerns, served on the newspaper by the MoD?

While this might sound like something from TV’s The X-Files research by UFOlogist Matthew Illsley revealed that the Record’s editor, the late Endell Laird, had been a member of the MoD’s D-Notice committee at the time.

Was this just a coincidence?

And is there a link between the date of the sighting and the invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi forces that happened two days before the Calvine incident?

Thirteen years and many dead ends later a lucky break led me to call Craig Lindsay who, it turned out, had kept a genuine, first-generation print of the ‘best’ photograph.

He said: ‘I have been waiting more than 30 years for someone to call me about this story…and you are the first person to do so.’

In his own words, it is ‘either an extremely clever hoax or it shows “the real thing”’

But if it is ‘the real thing’ was the craft built by humans in a secret hangar somewhere on Area 51?

Or could it have come here from another planet?

Ex-MoD desk officer turned UFO pundit Nick Pope has described the Calvine image as ‘the most spectacular UFO photo ever sent to the Ministry of Defence’.

But could it be a very elaborate fake? Expert photographic analysis by my colleague Andrew Robinson, senior lecturer in photography at Sheffield Hallam University, suggests not.

He says: ‘My conclusion is that the object is definitely in front of the camera, i.e. it’s not a fake produced in post production, and its placement within the scene appears to be approximately halfway between the foreground fence and the [Harrier jet] in the background.

‘Could this be a kite or a radio controlled model? It could be but it would have to be a very large kite/model, at least 20-30m [65-98 ft] long if not longer’

In June 2021 the Pentagon released its long-awaited report on what it now calls UAPs or unidentified aerial phenomena after a spate of similar sightings and footage taken by US Navy pilots.

The new US UAP Task Force listed five identified categories that most sightings, when resolved, are likely to fall into. One of these is ‘classified programs’ developed by the US government.

The report says ‘we were unable to confirm, however, that these systems accounted for any of the UAP reports we collected’.

When I last published an update on this story I concluded it must be a hoax. But now I am convinced the Calvine UFO photograph shows one of these US classified ‘Black Project’ programs.

There is evidence that the Americans, and possibly also the British government, have found it useful to ‘keep the UFOs flying’ because they provide a useful cover for their own covert military activities.

But in this case their cover was blown by two young men who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Ministry of Defence must now explain to the public why, if there are no such things as UFOs, how they can justify keeping their identities secret for a further 54 years.

And MoD also should explain what happened to the negatives and their file on this case – otherwise they are simply adding further grist to the mill of the conspiracy theorists who believe the authorities are hiding ‘the truth’ about visits to Earth by aliens.

I am open-minded about the possibility that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. But I remain unconvinced that it has ever visited Earth.

The Calvine UFO photograph is in my opinion the best image of an unidentified flying object ever taken.

But as Dr J Allen Hynek, consultant to the USAF’s former UFO Project Blue Book once said, ‘unidentified to whom?’

Note: the original Calvine print and related documents were donated to my legend archive at Sheffield Hallam University Library Special Collections in July 2022.

Copyright David Clarke 2022