Branson's UFO Hoax

 

When I first heard about this story I was surprised that I hadn't before. It's a very significant once and it concerns something that took place a long time ago, in 1989. The person involved is one of the world's most famous entrepreneurs and, at the time, one of the richest, Richard Branson. Along with being a business magnate Branson was a keen balloonist and attempted to break several distance and altitude records in specially designed balloons. However, when it comes to his strange feats in balloons, one in particular made me sit up and gasp. On April the 1st... when else?... Branson launched secretly at 4 AM just outside London in a balloon made to look like a UFO. Its envelope was shaped like a typical flying saucer and it was covered with lights that flickered in different colours, rather like the mothership in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was custom built in secrecy by Cameron Balloons Ltd of Bristol and Branson christened his caper "Project Wedgewood"... possibly because his wife hit him on the head with a teapot when he divulged his plan to her. As this strange aircraft floated majestically over the M25, cars pulled over and motorists stared up at it. The police were inundated with calls, the army was put on standby and morning radio and TV programmes began reporting on it. The original plan was to land the balloon in Hyde Park but the wind changed direction and the crew were forced to put down in a Surrey field. Police surrounded the field, staring in terror as what they thought was a craft from another world drifted down to the ground. The gondola was also specially designed. It was enclosed and filled with dry ice. One of the crew was a very small man and as the police approached, the door opened; the dry ice vapour flooded out and the dwarf walked out to meet the officers dressed up as a Hollywood alien. Source: https://twistedsifter.com/2015/04/richard-branson-london-ufo-april-fools-prank-1989/.
 
This was obviously just a publicity stunt, one typical for that eccentric billionaire. I don't think Richard Branson had any more nefarious motives for what he did, but you can be sure other opportunists did. This is not unlike the "Avebury Carlos", In 2003 a TV production company employed a team of special effects engineers to design and build a drone that looked like a flying saucer; they then flew this over Avebury, Wiltshire. The plan was to fly it over this ancient monument and gathering place of counter-culturists, pagans, mystics and hippies to see how many of them would be fooled into thinking that a real flying saucer was in the sky above them. Many of the people at Avebury did indeed report a UFO, but in a way the plan backfired because they reported pretty much what they saw. There were none of the embellishments and exaggerations that I think the hoaxers were banking on. It showed that even the so-called "most gullible members of society!" have turned out to be much better witnesses than previously thought. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BatI-5AKLNQ. I'm sure Branson was not personally involved in it, but I'd bet my last penny that the Tavistock Institute and other psychological "think tanks" were monitoring this story very carefully, watching how people reacted, everybody from the attending police to the drivers listening on their car radios. What phonecalls and letters did media studios and newspapers receive? They want to know what would happen if a real flying saucer flew over London.
See here for background: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2020/02/ufo-disclosure-portal.html.