The UK National Archives states it plainly in its official research guide: “Until 1967 Ministry of Defence policy was to destroy UFO files at five yearly intervals, so many records have been lost.”
Official recording of UFO sightings began in the early 1950s. That means at least fifteen years of sighting reports, MoD correspondence, analysis documents, and official policy discussions were deliberately destroyed before the policy changed. The question that has never been answered: why?
What the Policy Means
This was not records decay or administrative neglect. It was a formal, active policy. Every five years, the Ministry of Defence reviewed its UFO files and destroyed them. From the early 1950s through 1967, that policy was in force. The period covers:
- The 1952 Washington DC overflights — which occurred over the US capital and generated official UK interest
- The 1952 UK sighting wave including mass civilian and military sightings
- The establishment and early years of the RAF’s classified UAP investigation programme
- Winston Churchill’s direct inquiries about flying saucers — his 1952 memo exists (PREM 11/855) but the responses from the Air Ministry may not
- British military encounters over the UK, Germany, and Cyprus during the Cold War years
The Churchill Memo Survived. Most of Its Context Did Not.
In July 1952, Winston Churchill — then Prime Minister for the second time — wrote a memo asking: “What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?” The memo is in the National Archives at Kew, catalogue reference PREM 11/855.
Churchill’s question survives. The full official response, and the years of subsequent analysis that would have informed it, may not — because the destruction policy was in force until 1967.
Why 1967?
The policy changed in 1967. The National Archives does not explain why that specific year. 1967 was also the year of the Rendlesham Forest precursor sightings at RAF Lakenheath, significant UK-based Cold War intelligence activity, and the year the Condon Committee was established in the US to officially debunk UAP research. Correlation is not causation — but the timing is noted.
Since 1970, surviving MoD UFO files have been reviewed for eventual release at the National Archives. The MoD UFO Desk closed in November 2009. The final tranche of UFO files was released in June 2013. The records that survived — DEFE 24, DEFE 31, AIR, FCO and BJ series, 1950–1995 — are what remains after two decades of systematic destruction.
The Oracle Assessment
The US destroyed pre-1967 Roswell-era records too. The UK destroyed their equivalent. The pattern of systematic destruction in exactly the years when the phenomenon was being most actively reported and investigated is consistent with something being managed rather than simply filed. What was in the destroyed files is unknowable. That they were destroyed — repeatedly, deliberately, at policy level — is documented fact.
Source: The National Archives, UK. Official research guide: “How to look for records of… UFOs.” nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/ufos/