Foxtrot 94 and the UFO that never was
John Nichol debunks an enduring 'alien abduction' story
One dark September night at the height of the Cold War, Captain William Schaffner, a US Air Force exchange pilot was scrambled from a Lincolnshire airbase to intercept a mysterious ‘blip’ on radar.
It was to be his last mission and the beginning of a mystery that would endure for 32 years. One month later his RAF Lightning jet, call-sign Foxtrot 94, was retrieved from the North Sea but the cockpit was empty.
The fact that the Vietnam veteran’s body was never found later sparked claims that he had been spirited away by aliens during a ‘cat and mouse’ interception of a UFO.
But the truth about the tragic series of events that led to his accidental death were buried in a RAF Board of Inquiry report that was classified for three decades.
His widow Linda and three sons did not gain access to the inquiry report until his youngest, Michael, stumbled across a fake transcript on the internet that claimed to reveal his father’s last words as his jet closed in on the ‘UFO’.
In 2005 investigative journalists from the BBC’s Inside Out team flew Michael to the UK to read a copy of the RAF report at MoD Main Building in London.
I summarised the facts about this troubling case on my Wordpress blog in the same year and published images from the report in my book Britain’s X-traordinary Files published by The National Archives/Bloomsbury in 2014.
But now former RAF navigator and best-selling author John Nichol has published the definitive account of Schaffner’s life and death in his new book Eject! Eject! (Simon and Schuster 2023).
In his book Nichol, whose RAF Tornado was shot down during the first Gulf War, tells the story of the ejection seat that has saved the lives of countless lives through interviews with aircrew and their families.
Sadly in Schaffner’s case a servicing error in the hood-firing mechanism of Lightning XS-894 meant that the explosive charge failed to detonate when Scaffner pulled the ejection handle in his cockpit.
He had been scrambled from RAF Binbrook to take part in a NATO Tactical Evaluation exercise designed to simulate a Soviet air attack on the UK’s East Coast. But the intruder aircraft was actually a slow-moving RAF Shackleton, posing as a Soviet bomber.
Despite being a highly experienced fighter pilot Schaffner was not trained to shadow and shepherd enemy aircraft at low level in darkness.
The inquiry heard evidence from the RAF ground controllers and the Shackleton’s crew who recalled seeing the Lightning’s lights as it turned, immediately before it hit the water.
Nichol interviewed Schaffner’s family and colleagues for his detailed account of the events that led up to the pilot’s death. He describes the suffering they experienced as a result of the secrecy that surrounded the RAF inquiry. The family returned to Ohio without ever being told the outcome.
This in turn encouraged the rumour mill that, in turn, produced the fanciful UFO narrative that first surfaced in an article published by the Grimsby Evening News in 1992.
It told the story of an anonymous source who claimed to be a member of the original RAF flight investigation team that examined the wreckage of Lightning XS-894.
He claimed that Schaffner’s Lightning had been vectored onto a UFO tracked on radar 90 miles east of Whitby on the East Coast of Yorkshire. He also provided what was purported to be an actual transcript of the interchange between the pilot and the RAF ground controller just before they lost contact. According to this, Schaffner saw a bluish conical object that was so bright he could hardly look at it.
As he closed in he exclaims:
‘Wait a second, it’s turning…coming straight for me…am taking evasive action’.
The book reveals that when Michael Schaffner shared this with his father’s USAF friends one responded: ‘This is utter hokum. We didn’t communicate like that. It’s just a bunch of made-up junk’.
The MoD’s board of inquiry report contains the actual transcript of his conversation with ground controllers. This contains the following lines describing the ‘UFO’ (the RAF Shackleton):
Capt Schaffner: Contact with a set of lights in that area
Fighter Controller: Say again.
Capt Schaffner: Set of lights in that area – closing.
The pilot then explains he will have to ‘do some manoeuvring to slow her down a little bit’. Then ground control warn him to ‘keep a sharp look out.’ As he does contact is lost and the final moments of the transcript contain the controller’s desperate calls on radio:
Fighter Controller: 45 Patrington you are dark on me this time – check target’s heading and your own over….C45 Patrington do you read over….Do you read – over. Do you read – over.
Nichol makes no comment on the motivation of the ‘UFO hunters and conspiracy theorists’ who spread the fake version of the story online.
But part of the blame must lie with the culture of official secrecy that kept Schaffner’s family in the dark about the precise circumstances for some three decades.
When the BBC team first asked the Ministry of Defence to release the accident report they were initially told it had been shredded. This was untrue but it was only released after intense pressure from the journalists.
Some will continue to believe that the official sources are part of the cover-up and that Schaffner died whilst pursuing a UFO. If true, this would mean the MoD along with dozens of individuals involved in the investigation and Schaffner’s own colleagues have openly lied in their testimony to the inquiry.
Some genuine mysteries do remain and the most puzzling relates to the identity of the source for the Grimsby newspaper’s story who first made the connection with UFOs and alien abductions.
Who was the anonymous source and what was their motivation for seeding a bogus story into the UFO rumour mill?
The UFO version of the story, exciting though it sounds, has no evidence to support it other than the fact that Captain Schaffner did exist and was killed in an aircraft accident in the North Sea.
Eject! Eject! by John Nichol is published by Simon & Schuster.
I had never heard of this incident. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.