The Broad Haven UFO Incident (1977)

The Broad Haven UFO incident remains one of the best-known schoolyard UFO cases in Britain. It began on Friday, February 4, 1977, at Broad Haven Primary School in Pembrokeshire, Wales, when a group of pupils reported seeing an unusual object near the school grounds. The case became famous because the witnesses were children, because their accounts were recorded soon afterward, and because their drawings showed a broadly similar object: a long, metallic-looking craft, often described as cigar-shaped, with a dome or raised center.

The number of witnesses is often given as fourteen pupils, though headteacher Ralph Llewellyn interviewed fifteen children separately on Monday, February 7. The children were mainly around ten years old. The sighting took place during the lunch break while some of the boys were outside playing football in wet weather. The object was seen on or near the ground in fields behind the school, partly hidden by trees and shrubs.

David Davies, then ten, later said he heard other pupils talking about the object during the day and went to the area himself after the bell. He described seeing a silver cigar-shaped craft with a dome over the middle third, which appeared briefly from behind a tree before dropping from view. Other children gave similar descriptions of a shiny or silver craft. Accounts differ on how many children saw the figure. Six pupils described a tall man in a silver suit; in another, two children were specifically said to have seen a moving figure, including David George, age nine, who described a “silver man with spiked ears.”

At first, the adults at the school did not accept the story. The headteacher separated the children and asked them to draw what they had seen. The drawings were collected on Monday, February 7, three days after the sighting, when Llewellyn interviewed the children separately. The drawings varied in detail, but they showed the same general idea: a low, elongated object with a dome or central raised section and, in some drawings or accounts, a light on top. This became one of the most important features of the case. The sketches were later preserved in the school’s 1977 UFO scrapbook, and copies or photographs of them appeared in newspapers, television coverage, and later UFO research.

After school, some pupils returned to the area to look again, and the matter was later taken to the local police station by pupils and parents. Thirteen days later, the school setting produced another report: teacher Mrs Morgan was said to have seen a large shining oval object, while two canteen workers reported an object on the ground, with one account describing a figure entering it before it moved away.

The Broad Haven sighting did not stand alone. It became part of a wider wave of reports in west Wales during 1977, often called the Dyfed Triangle or Broad Haven Triangle. One of the best known came on April 19, 1977, from Rosa Granville, who ran the Haven Fort Hotel in nearby Little Haven. She described seeing an object like an upside-down saucer and two faceless humanoid figures with pointed heads. She also reported heat, coloured flames, and burned ground near the site.

The reports reached local officials and the Ministry of Defence. Nicholas Edwards, then MP for Pembroke, contacted the MoD after receiving a large number of UFO-related reports from the area. Flight Lieutenant J. A. Cowan from RAF Brawdy visited Rosa Granville’s hotel and examined the reported landing site.

The case later returned to mainstream attention through Netflix’s 2023 documentary series Encounters, whose Broad Haven episode framed the school report within a wider regional wave of more than 450 UFO and entity encounters.

The most accurate version of the case stays close to what was actually recorded: children at Broad Haven Primary School reported seeing a silver, cigar-shaped or domed object near the school field on February 4, 1977; their headteacher interviewed them separately three days later and collected drawings; some pupils described a silver-suited figure; additional reports came from school staff on February 17; the sighting became the starting point of one of Britain’s most famous UFO waves of the 1970s; and official interest extended to the Ministry of Defence and a later-noted discreet military police inquiry.