BROAD HAVEN

Opening

At lunchtime on Friday 4 February 1977, a group of pupils playing football on the wet field at Broad Haven Primary School in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, ran in saying they had seen a silver object sitting in the trees beyond the pitch. Some called it a cigar, some a disc with a dome; some described windows and a door; a few said they had seen a silver figure with pointed ears near it. The headmaster, Ralph Llewellyn, assumed it was a prank.

The following Monday he tested them. He separated the children and had them draw what they had seen under exam conditions. The drawings came back strikingly similar. The Broad Haven sighting became the opening event of a strange year in that corner of Wales, told in the Dyfed Enigma report. This report is about the school.

Timeline

4 February 1977, lunchtimePupils aged nine to eleven, among them Shawn Garrison, David George and Michael Webb, see something silver beyond the school grounds while playing football. A boy runs in to tell a teacher, who does not come out. After the bell, David Davies, who had not believed the others, walks to the trees and sees a cigar shape with a dome for a couple of seconds.

The following daysStaff dismiss the story. The children take a petition to the local police station insisting they are telling the truth.

7 February 1977, MondayLlewellyn interviews the children separately and has them draw what they saw under controlled conditions. The drawings agree closely on shape and detail. Accounts give the number of children as fourteen or fifteen. Llewellyn tells the press that, sceptic as he is, he thinks they saw something.

17 February 1977Teachers and dinner ladies at the same school report a sighting of their own; one says she also saw a figure.

Spring 1977Sightings spread across the area, from a hotel at Little Haven to a farm a few miles away, and the press calls it the Welsh Triangle. Those later events, and the prankster who later confessed to some of them, are covered in the Dyfed Enigma.

1996Broadcaster Ray Gosling, making a Radio 4 documentary, tries to get the former pupils to admit it was made up. None does.

2021 to 2023A BBC podcast episode, a BBC Three documentary series and a 2023 Netflix Encounters segment produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin all revisit the school sighting with the original witnesses.

Key figures

The pupils are the witnesses, and decades later still the most consistent ones. David Davies has kept to his account into adulthood while declining to say what it was: not extraterrestrial, not even an aircraft, since no one saw it land or take off.

Ralph Llewellyn is the adult who chose a method. Separating the children before they drew is the reason the case is more than a playground shout.

David Clarke, the academic who has written most fully on the Ministry of Defence's UFO files, keeps the school sighting carefully separate from the later hoaxes in the area, rather than letting one explain the other.

Physical and documentary trail

The record: the children's original drawings, produced separately and kept in the school's own 1977 scrapbook, a rare piece of contemporary evidence for a UFO case of any era; the headmaster's statements to the press at the time; and the later interviews with the former pupils.

What is missing: any photograph of the object, any physical mark in the field measured before the press arrived, and any official identification of what the children saw. No one has ever confessed to staging the school sighting.

Even at my age and normally sceptical, I have to admit I think they saw something.

I did see something unexplained that day and I will stick to that story for the rest of my life.

Things you might not know

• The children petitioned the police. When the school didn't believe them, they took a petition to the local police station.
• The drawings are in a scrapbook. The school kept them in its own 1977 scrapbook.
• The sceptic walked out to look. David Davies hadn't believed the others, and only saw the object because he went to the trees after the bell.
• Some blamed the sewage works. One mundane suggestion is that the children saw machinery at nearby sewage works.
• The adults saw something too. Two weeks later, teachers and dinner ladies made their own report.
• Nobody recanted. When Ray Gosling went looking for a confession in 1996, none of the former pupils gave one.

Competing explanations

Imagination and a playground rumour. The default sceptical reading: one child's story spreading through the group and hardening into shared testimony. It is complicated by the drawings, since Llewellyn separated the children specifically to test for that, and the results were more consistent than the theory predicts.

A misidentified object. Machinery at the sewage works, a vehicle or a trailer in wet light. Possible for a glance; harder for a sighting that produced windows and a door in several separate drawings.

A prank. Pranksters in silver suits did operate in the area later that year. Their confession covers later sightings, not the school field, and no one has claimed this one.

Something unexplained. The view the former pupils still hold: they saw an object they could not identify then and cannot now.

Later life of the case

Broad Haven became one of the best-known UFO sightings in Britain and the starting point of the 1977 "Welsh Triangle". For the hotel, the farm, the Ministry of Defence inquiry and the men in the silver suits, see the Dyfed Enigma.

Finding

A group of schoolchildren saw something in the trees beyond their field on 4 February 1977, and a sceptical headmaster's careful test produced drawings that still agree. No hoaxer has ever claimed it and no explanation has been confirmed. The later hoaxes in the area don't reach back to it.

What still will not resolve: what was in the trees at lunchtime, since no photograph or physical trace was taken before the story spread.