Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello,

Last night, around 8pm, there was a loud noise like a big passenger plane flying overhead, but also a kind of screeching whirring, like one of the engines was straining. I went to the window to see what it was but it had gone overhead. Russell was just returning and getting out of his car at the same moment and had tried to take a photo but he was too slow.

He said it was black, with triangular wings, like a fighter plane, but bigger, and it was travelling really slowly, like the speed of a helicopter, and really low.

We were in the garden a while later and heard it again, but passing quite a way to the east of our house this time, and it was big, and black as Russell said, and travelling really slowly.

What could this have been? I’ve not seen or heard anything like it and it made me feel uneasy.

One of those big double-propellor helicopters (chinook?) went over the day before as well, I’ve not seen those before around here either.

Like this? https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/m ... t-14468056

The RAF have stepped in to confirm that the aeroplane that peope witnessed was in fact an aeroplane:

https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/d ... st-1392402

No idea what Mimi and Russ saw though. But big planes can sometimes look like they're barely moving when they're low and some fighter jets are actually pretty big.

Was it a C-17?

Deffo a UFO. Flown by witches.

I’d say it was one of Bill Gate’s planes spreading nanobots using newly developed invisible chemtrails.

Flight tracker suggests zz178 was flying about from Brize Norton yesterday, and ZZ177 was in the air.

I love the "ghost plane" mock up in that article. Ooooh, spooooooky Lancaster Bomber!

It was Prince Phillip in his final boss form.

No, it was far more modern a plane in shape than those. Though I like the idea of a ghost plane.

Maybe. @mr Russell got a better looking and I at it as he was outside when it went right overhead the first time. Russell, was it like this shape?

Have to hit it three times by batting bombs at it if Mario has taught me anything.

Triangular like this?

As markg says, they're pretty hefty things - longer than a couple of buses, and bloody noisy too.

I only saw the side view as I only caught a look at it the second pass, when it was off to the east, but Russell saw it directly overhead. When I’ve seen planes like that they generally take your breath away with how noisy they are, however, and this wasn’t like that. It was more the sound of a regular passenger plane with with this added whirring strained sound, and it was travelling super slow. I posted on the local Next Door group to see if anyone else spotted it that knows a bit more about planes.

Clearly what is needed here is for Mr Russel to make a crude drawing of it in MS Paint and post it here, to allow us to identify it!

Apparently it may have been this. A couple of people on the Next Door group have said it was a C-17 or a Globemaster III, which when I Googled seemed to be the same thing.

I did ask, but he’s stuck in a cycle of online meetings.

Yeah that's what Mali's intel suggested as well.

Back when people worked in offices, our Office in Exeter was a couple of miles from the runway of Exeter airport, so we got to see loads of planes landing or taking off (depending on the wind) flying directly over our office. Often a giant military plane would do simulated landings (doing the whole landing thing, but just before landing they would climb back up again). They would do this about 10 times in a row.

I think I have a picture or possibly a video on my phone, which I will see if I can dig out (although it doesn't sound much like what you have described, If I find it I will post it just in case)

It could have been this. The wings look triangular like the one I saw did. From beneath it looked like a bomber plane, all black.

It was this. I looked up the other numbers Mali posted and zz178 came directly over our house:

I won’t post it zoomed in any further, but it went right over our house at our point on the road at one point and passed o er three times in total.

Thanks folks. You’re a knowledgeable lot.

Not quite longer than a bus. By the are pretty huge and loud.

The one that went overhead was 3.8 buses! I wonder how many elephants it weighed.

32 elephants (average male African elephant used for comparison).

I did a quick search for planes with triangular wings and there were some proper bonkers ones back in the Cold War

That looks like one of the good paper aeroplanes that the cool kid in class knows how to fold.

That news report was great. Lots of people see planes. They look military and are flying quite low. They are either very noisy, or silent. The sky may or may not have gone dark when some of them saw it, but that was probably just a coincidence. Someone thought it was a Dakota. Dakotas only have two engines, so they were just guessing. For some unexplained reason, the term "ghost plane" was used ..... are you familiar with the term "click bait?". We must be grateful that there wasn't any spurious reference to Prince Philip.

Thought for the day, with the Birmingham Mail: With reports the other day of so many people seeing a ghost plane, I am reminded that there is more in the world than is known by our philosophy. This may have been simply a plane, but truth is in perception, and Sue Dorling was clearly, unconsciously, thinking of our lord when she said "It made no sound at all, it wasn't just me who saw it. Indeed not, Sue, and we must all be ready to "see it".

The film with the clown?

Well, now I'm in a strangely-shaped aeroplane wikihole.

They usually touch down, roll for a few hundred metres then open the throttles to take off. It’s training exercises.
In my former life as a photographer, I spent a day shadowing a female RAF pilot stationed Lineham IIRC, and I spent two memorable hours standing on the flight deck photographing her during one of these circuit training exercises. It was quite the experience. Her landings were so smooth you barely registered them, and I was standing behind the flight lieutenant’s chair.
The torque from those 4 turbo props is astonishing. I had to hang on when she cracked the throttles to take off again!

I stay near a military airfield and our local MP and MSP usually post on social media with notification of upcoming exercise.

https://radar.freedar.uk/VirtualRadar/desktop.html

That’s very good for identifying odd things overhead and includes more military aircraft than most free trackers.

This is a good one. A tiny fighter designed to be carried in a B36 bomber.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_XF-85_Goblin

And this went over the UK today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-4

This went over our place this morning.

Did it really? Is it a llama?

I said I’d posted this in the Next Door group, didn’t I? Nobody was as helpful as here, but it got a good number of responses.

The first were from a few women ‘I saw this too!’, ‘I couldn’t help hear it, could it have been training for Phillip’s funeral?’, ‘I saw it when I was in my car, I think it might be a c-17 training from Birmingham, maybe’.

I then immediately posted what I found out here, the screenshot of the map, plane details, etc.

Then the local men turn up.

‘It was an a40 M Atlas military 4 prop plane’.

‘It is used to carry wounded heroes from Afghanistan and Iraq on Thursday evenings to BHX’ (it was Wednesday).

‘It’ll be an osprey’ (I looked this one up, because I only knew an osprey as a bird, and what the heck is that thing? The unholy child of a plane and a helicopter.

Anyway, quite apart from who was or wasn’t correct, why do a significant proportion of men have such confidence in their answers? None of them needed any kind of checking or verification to assert themselves. It was just odd. And why do none of them read answers that have gone before them. There were only 14 short comments, the map really stands out. You’d glance at it at least, no?

Classic mansplaining, I’m afraid. We never learn.

Yes, really. It looked as much like a llama as anything else. It must have been a couple of hundred feet up, which is why I couldn’t get a better shot of it, and moving quite quickly in the breeze, so I had to be quick to catch it at all.

I’m guessing it was for a kids party and hadn’t been tied down properly.

Yes we do.

‘It is used to carry wounded heroes from Afghanistan and Iraq on Thursday evenings to BHX’

I find this one particularly baffling.

To be fair he thinks that of every flying vehicle he sees.

And cars.

And pushchairs.

The fact that he used the word ‘heroes’ rather than ‘soldiers’ or ‘troops’ leads me to think it’s just idolisation making him assume links that aren’t there.

The map I posted the other day had disappeared yesterday from that site (it might be just the last trip out?) so I couldn’t look at it zoomed out, but I don’t think it landed at Birmingham, and if it did it went on a bit of a jolly joy ride first.