Howden Moor Incident

Tiny Tree, Howden Moor
Originally uploaded by seansonofbig

Following this comment, (and a nasty weather forecast)we decided to scratch yesterday's planned visit to Wales, and to investigate the claim that we (along with more or less everyone else) are wrong about the location of the V1 crash on Howden Moor. It was also an opportunity to practice my map and compass navigation, ready for a Mountain Leader training course I'm doing later in the year.

Howden Moor is the focus of all sorts of strange stories, of covert military operations, UFOs, Meteor impacts, Ghost Planes, Drug Smuggling, and IRA weapons caches. That someone might suggest that a crater was caused by a parachute mine rather than a V1 seems quite prosaic compared with the other wild tales.

The problem was, we'd never seen any sign of the tree "Tomsk" refers to anywhere near the V1 crater, and we never would have seen this tiny tree if there hadn't been a complete whiteout on the day.

Location: SK 18494 96603

This is the only tree anywhere near the V1 site (albeit much further than 40 metres away), but there was no sign of a second crater in its vicinity. Can't see anything in Google Earth either on Howden Moor or Macclesfield Forest locations, despite Tomsk's claim.

We had no difficulty finding the previously located crater using map and compass only, despite the weather. Hmm.

And how about the other stories? The Howden Moor incident is a favorite of UFOlogists, who allege that a UFO crashed and exploded on the moor in 1997, and there has been a subsequent coverup.

We would suggest that of all possible explanations, this is the least likely. An optical illusion is surely the most likely explanation. Sorry, spacecadets.