The following image was taken from the docks in Birkenhead by an ARP Warden during a winters evening in 1942. The gentleman, now deceased, wished to remain anonymous.
He said the air was clear and cold as he and his fellow wardens brewed up a cup of tea to stave off the chill for the long night ahead, looking out for Mr Hitler’s Luftwaffe. At around 22:30 hours, Mr X claimed he and his colleagues felt a rush of warm air over their heads accompanied by an electrical, tingling feeling all around them. Small sparks appeared to hover around all metallic objects.
Mr X pulled out the Kodak Brownie six-16 camera from his bag (he was a keen amateur photographer and always carried his camera whenever on patrol), as “… you never know when something may happen!”. From an interview in 1976 Mr X claimed the following…
“Looking in a North Easterly direction towards Liverpool, a large, glowing, egg shaped object appeared in the sky. It was difficult to gauge how big it was but it looked pretty big. There was a faint humming sound which we could hear all the way over in Birkenhead. We saw the search lights appear over the water and I decided to take a snap as it was something we hadn’t seen before. We all heard the ack ack guns going off, but it didn’t look like they hit the object at all, even though we saw tracer fire appear to hit it directly”
He went onto to say the egg hovered for around 30 seconds further, then drifted slowly upward and away, before shooting off “… very fast like…”, in a Northerly direction.