Is the Calvine UFO photo the best one ever seen?

“What really happened in Calvine?” The Guardian headline read. “The mystery behind the best UFO picture ever seen,” it continued.

Calvine UFO photo? What was that? Not that I’m a ufologist. I wouldn’t even call myself a UFO enthusiast. More like UFO-curious, so I am not familiar with every UFO case.

However, I feel I’m at least acquainted with most of the big cases. How had I missed this one, especially one regarded as generating the “best” UFO photo?

Well, the answer lay in the article. The photos were taken in 1990 in Calvine, “a pretty little hamlet in Perth and Kinross” in Scotland. They were almost immediately shared with the press, including the Daily Record. However, they weren’t made public until over 30 years later, in 2022.

Wait. What? So who classified them as the “best” UFO photos then? And how was it they finally came to light?

Again, luckily, the article held the answers…but it also created even more questions. Most are ones that even those connected to the case would like answered. I get it. They’ve certainly continued to haunt me weeks after reading the story. Perhaps writing it all down will exorcise them. Let’s find out.

However, before we do, this is a good place to warn you to read at your own risk. Especially if this is the first you’re learning of the Calvine UFO photos. This mystery might stick with you, too.

Who took the Calvine UFO photos?

Two men were hiking one evening when they spotted the diamond-shaped craft in the skies above them. Here’s how The Guardian sized up their experience:

It apparently had no clear means of propulsion and left no smoke plume; it was silent and static, as if frozen in time. Terrified, they hit the ground and scrambled for cover behind a tree. Then a Harrier fighter jet roared into view, circling the diamond as if sizing it up for a scuffle.

That’s when one of the men had the good fortune to have a camera on him, and the presence of mind to use it. A few days later, they shared both their experience and their photos with the Daily Record.

Why did it take the men a couple of days to share the photos?

The fact that it took the men a few days to go to the press raises issues. Those who are inclined to call it a hoax will say it gave them time to get their stories straight and/or doctor the images.

However, I got to thinking back to the Nineties. It wasn’t like it is now. The first thing very few people did when something extraordinary happened to them was to go public with it. Not like we do now. People share stuff as it’s happening on social media these days.

Also, if you were alive back then, do you remember how we had to wait for photos to be developed? Sometimes as long as a week. Two or three days were often considered “fast.”

Was the one-hour option around by then? I don’t remember. It probably was. I could never afford it, though, so I never used it. Not until many years later when one-hour became the norm.

Anyway, I presume that factored into why it took a couple of days for the hikers to share the photos —and perhaps their story too. After all, “a photo is worth 1,000 words,” right? And even though “pics or it didn’t happen” wasn’t as popular a sentiment as it is now, if you’ve got the visual goods to back up your story, waiting to include them would only add weight to your testimony.

The more intriguing question is not why it took them a while to share their story, but why the paper never did.

Why didn’t the Record publish the Calvine UFO photos?

This is a mystery in and of itself that makes it easy to see why some believe a cover-up conspiracy was at play in the case of the Calvine UFO photos.

The Ministry of Defence

At the time, Andy Allen was a picture editor at the Record. He reached out to RAF press officer Craig Lindsay, sending him the best picture of all the photos. Once he saw it, Lindsay contacted the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

In addition to requesting that Lindsay get the remaining photos and their negatives from the Record, the MoD also asked him to speak with the hikers. Once he did all that, the MoD essentially relieved him of any further involvement, instructing him to leave the case in their hands. He did.

David Clarke’s Investigation

Former reporter turned professor David Clarke earned his PhD in folklore. He first learned about the Calvine UFO when he read former MoD civil servant Nick Pope’s 1996 book Open Skies, Closed Minds.

Pope briefly touched on the Calvine photo in his book, which Clarke remembered years later when he began curating “the release of thousands of UFO documents for the National Archives.” Among them was a drawing of a diamond-shaped UFO, and notes from defence ministers that read:

Have looked at the photographs, no definite conclusions reached regarding large diamond-shaped object. Confident that jet aircraft is a Harrier. Have no record of Harriers operating in location at stated date/time. No other reports received by MoD of unusual air activity or sightings at location/date/time.

Clarke tried to track down the photo, including asking the Record if they still had a copy. Not only didn’t they, but no one remembered the story at all. Clarke figured the paper didn’t run it because they couldn’t verify its veracity, or outright thought it was a hoax.

The D Notice Committee Connection

Further fueling the conspiracy theories is the fact that the Record’s editor at the time the photos were taken, Endell Laird, was a member of the MoD’s D Notice Committee. The Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee issued D notices (which these days are called DMSA notices) “to prevent the publication of news stories that may jeopardise national security.”

Did the Record receive a D notice? Or did “Laird conspire with the MoD to suppress the story?”

No one knows for certain, but it does sound like, at minimum, there might have been a conflict of interest. However, in a 2024 documentary, a former MoD employee “confirmed that the MoD prevented the release of the photographs.” Whether that happened through a D notice or not hasn’t been confirmed. (I don’t like to assume much, but in this case I think it’s safe to assume a D notice was issued.)

Why did Lindsay have a copy of the photo?

Clarke has continued to document UFO cases as the National Archives declassified information. That’s how a trail led him to Lindsay in 2019. Lindsay had been waiting for someone like Clarke to contact him for decades.

Lindsay dug out a copy of the photo “after a few weeks of trawling through mountains of papers in his garage.” He gave it to Clarke under two conditions. One, that Sheffield Hallam’s library keep it. Two, it would be returned to the hikers if either ever came forward.

Having a copy struck me as weird, but what was written on the back was even weirder: “Copyright Kevin Russell c/o Daily Record GLASGOW.”

Well, there’s a name. That should clear some things up, right? Wrong. Clarke pointed out it seemed unlikely one of the hikers would know to copyright the photo. But someone working for the Daily Record would.

Sadly, Allen, the picture editor who sent in the photos to MoD, had passed away by this time. He might’ve been able to clear things up.

Clarke investigated whether Kevin Russell was either one of the hikers or someone who had worked for the Record. He’d heard both hikers were chefs who had worked at Fisher’s Hotel in Pitlochry. But no one with that name had.

The Record also didn’t have any record of any staff or freelancers by that name. Clarke even contacted every Kevin Russell he could find (140 of them). None claimed any knowledge of the Calvine UFO.

So who is Kevin Russell? If he comes forward, does the copyright still entitle him to the photo?

Was the Calvine UFO photo a hoax or experimental U.S. aircraft?

Jumping back to 1990, Lindsay was in London for a MoD meeting a couple of months after turning the photos over to them. He immediately recognized one of the photos in their offices. The best one. It was hard to miss. As he put it, “There, on the wall in front of me, was a great big poster-size print of the best of them.”

He spoke with some of the specialists who had investigated the photos. They didn’t know what the diamond was, but they felt the photos were real and not tampered with in any way.

Decades later, during his research, Clarke asked a former Defence Intelligence Department official if he had come across any “truly inexplicable” things during his career. He mentioned the Calvine photos causing a “stink”, but also said MoD knew what the “UFO” was: “an experimental craft belonging to the US.”

Some said it was a “bauble” hanging from a tree to create the effect of a large, mysterious flying object. Others said it was a reflection in water, doctored to look like a craft. Except there is no water where that shot was taken. Another theory is that it’s fog obscuring a mountain and playing a trick on the eye.

Clarke had a colleague, a senior lecturer in photography, analyze it. He concluded, “Whatever the diamond was, it was a real object in a genuine photograph.”

The photo was taken in the days directly after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Some reason the military was testing “advanced aircraft.” But as the article pointed out, “would you road-test it in broad daylight in a relatively populated area?”

Did England’s version of the Men in Black visit the men who took the photo?

A man named Richard Grieve claimed to have worked as a dishwasher at the hotel with the men who took the photo. He claimed men in a black car wearing dark suits pulled the two men aside. When they came back, they both looked “spooked” and were never the same after.

If this really happened, is this further evidence of a conspiracy to cover up a legit UFO sighting?

Also, wouldn’t that man remember his former fellow co-workers’ names? Maybe not. I don’t remember all of my former co-workers’ names. Not off the top of my head. But hearing their names often jogs my memory. Would he at least remember if one was called Kevin Russell? It makes me wonder how reliable his testimony is and whether it can be trusted.

Why is the Calvine UFO photo the best ever seen?

The article doesn’t really answer this either. Lindsay forwarded it to the MoD because it was the clearest photo of a UFO he’d ever seen. Maybe that’s it? Because, as far as ranking UFO photos go, there’s no mention of that or of the Calvine photo winning any top honors in any “Best UFO Photo” contest.

Why won’t MoD release their analysis?

MoD analyzed the photos in 1990 and 1992. When Clarke contacted them about containing their findings, he got the run around.

“I am afraid we no longer offer comment on UFOs/UAPs [unidentified aerial phenomena] etc,” a MoD spokesperson informed him.

Clarke pointed out they could “could easily clear up this mystery” by revealing their conclusions. The fact that they won’t leads many to assume that’s because they believe the photos are real.

Who were the men who took the photo?

“The identity of the man (or men) who took the photographs remains a mystery, as does the identity of the diamond.”

This is the most intriguing question of all. Who were they? They were willing to come forward then. If Men in Black really came to speak with them, are they still afraid of what might happen if they come forward now? Is that why no one’s heard from them? Or are they no longer alive?

So many questions…that very well may continue to remain unanswered.

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What do you think of the Calvine UFO photos?