A UFO expert has uncovered evidence that a mysterious flying machine that crash-landed in 1967 in Oxfordshire was an early type of stealth bomber, writes PAUL HARRIS.

It appears a secret military aircraft that crashed during the Cold War near Bicester was probably a prototype for a hypersonic bomber designed to fight the Soviet Union.

Aviation enthusiasts have evidence that a crash retrieval team was despatched from RAF Upper Heyford, near Bicester, in 1967, to collect scraps of a triangular shaped plane - that resembled today's stealth bomber - from a nearby field.

The aircraft bits were taken back to the base, locked in an aircraft hangar and then disappeared without trace. The team had been accompanied by American military personnel to ensure the operation was a success, according to a new eye-witness account.

Until now, there was no evidence that the aircraft had crashed-landed at all. Today, RAF records giving details of that operation are believed to remain classified.

Now an Air Force employee, attached to the Air Salvage and Transportation team in 1967, has admitted for the first time that the "hush hush" operation did take place.

UFO expert Tim Matthews, 31, formerly of Haywards Close, Wantage, obtained a transcript of an interview between that airman and the renowned UFO researcher, Andy Roberts, a contributor to the Fortean Times magazine of the unexplained. In the transcript, the RAF employee, who wanted to remain anonymous, said: "This flying machine, I'll put it, had crashed, you could see where it had gone in, there was a big scar mark across the fields, as if it had come down and bounced a bit, as they do.

"It was just like the nose cone or the front end of a stealth bomber. We picked it up, put it on the back of a low-loader and it was brought from where it landed or crashed to RAF Bicester."

He said it was taken straight down to the bomber dump, instead to to a hangar.

Air expert Chris Gibson told Mr Matthews he believed the mystery plane crashed during an early test flight for a secret aircraft called the P42.

Mr Matthews also received a letter from a man stationed at RAF Bicester in 1967. He wrote: "During the late 1960s, we were stationed at 71 MU (Maintenance Unit) RAF Bicester. One of the wide variety of tasks was the transportation and storage of the abandoned project, the TSR2.

"The new Wilson Government cancelled it after discovering that Britain was broke and the cost of the project, already enormous, would increase further.

"One or more of the aircraft were transported to Bicester and stored in one of the hangars kept closed to most station personnel."

Mr Matthews said: "We are talking about a secret history that some people know about, very few people talk about and the records are buried in classified archives."

But it is only a matter of time before RAF records from the Cold War, classified until the next century, are released into the public domain.

Story date: Saturday 27 March

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