We're Not Roswell, We're Portglenone

Back in December 1958, Portglenone, a village in County Antrim, made the news after a farmer there - Mr Joseph Bennett - had a very close encounter with a UFO. During this encounter, the unidentified object struck and damaged a tree, thereby leaving tangible evidence that something physical was responsible for the sighting.

Anyway, while I’ve known about this case for some time, the preceding paragraph just about sums up what I knew about it. I’d always assumed that it was one of those quirky incidents that had warranted only a few inches of newspaper space the day after it happened.

From Belfast Telegraph of 30 December 1958

Not so.

Turns out that The Belfast Telegraph took a very keen interest in Mr Bennett’s strange tale. The first story appeared on 30 December 1958.

MYSTERY OF FLYING OBJECT WHICH CUT TREE IN TWO

A middle-aged Portglenone farmer is still thinking about a mysterious black object which went over his head on Sunday afternoon - and cut a tree in two.

Mr. Joseph Bennett, of Bracknamuckley, was out walking when he heard a strange noise. He looked up.

“It made a sound like rushing wind,” he said. The thing - it was about seven feet broad - flashed towards me some 18 or 20 feet up.

“It came from the south and was travelling in a north-westerly direction. Next thing I saw was it’s swift passage through a row of trees which divide two farms at Gortfadd.

“It cut one of the trees in half; the trunk was two feet thick. In a matter of seconds it had vanished.

“It was an oak tree, 40 ft high, and it is sliced clean eight feet from the base.”

And the question they were asking in Portglenone to-day was: “What was that thing?”

The people of Portglenone weren’t the only ones asking that question, as the Telegraph reported on 31 December:

Q.U.B. SCIENTIST PROBES ‘FLYING AXE’ MYSTERY

THE STRANGE BLACK OBJECT reported to have ripped apart a large oak tree at Portglenone, Co. Antrim, on Sunday, has already entered the files of U.F.O. (unidentified flying object) researchers.

Mr. Terence Nonweiler, lecturer in the aeronautical engineering department of Queen’s University, and a former member of the Council of the British Interplanetary Society, to-day visited the scene.

Before leaving for Portglenone, Mr Nonweiler told me: “This would appear to be the first case in the United Kingdom where such a mysterious happening has been reported and in which some tangible evidence remains in the shape of the damaged tree.”

From Belfast Telegraph of 31 December 1958

The farmer, Mr. Joseph Bennett, of Bracknamuckley, insists that the tree was sliced in two by a huge, black object which passed over his head, and then proceeded on its way.

NO SCORCHING

He says it was moving at a height of 18 to 20 feet.

The tree shows no signs of scorching, which would indicate lightning, and there is no damage to adjoining trees.

Thousands of U.F.O.’s, in many parts of the world, are now on record.

The term is used by scientists who refuse to accept the description “flying saucer,” which came into vogue a few years ago after several pilots had reported circular objects travelling at speeds of thousands of miles an hour.

In Great Britain, U.F.O. enthusiasts are formed into clubs and keep watch at week-ends from mountain tops. They even have their own magazine.

The forestry department of the Ministry of Agriculture are interested in the oak tree, and to-day instructed their forester at Portglenone, Mr. A. McLean, to examine the tree.

An official said: “This is most unusual in an oak tree but not in an elm [1]. We have never had an instance of this before. We will be glad to have full details for the record.”

Mr. Nonweiler spent about 15 minutes at the tree. He found that there were signs of rotting at the point where it had broken off, and there were also four marks on the bark - three on the trunk and one on a large branch, all in a direct line.

NOT POSITIVE

He said: “I think that the rotten state of the trunk explains why it broke at that particular point, and the four cuts in the bark may have some significance.”

He was not prepared to say positively, however, that the tree had been brought down by a flying object.

Mr. Bennett told Mr. Nonweiler: “At about 3-30 p.m. on Sunday I saw what looked like a small black cloud giving off a hissing sound and travelling at fantastic speed along the valley from the direction of Lough Neagh at a height of about 20 feet.

“It passed right through the tree which crashed and proceeded on its way at the same speed as if nothing had happened. the tree came down with a terrible crash.

“It was going so fast that that I could not tell whether it was a solid object or not. It was going at many times the speed of a jet plane.”

Mr. Alfred Connolly, who owns the field in which the tree stood, said that the state of the branches made it look as if something solid had torn across the tree as it came down.

He added: “Mr. Bennett is a most reliable witness. If he says he saw a black flying object you can be sure that he saw it.”

The tree was to-day the main object of interest in the Portglenone area and cars stopped every few minutes on the near-by road as the occupants alighted to examine it.

 By 1 January 1959, the “experts” were already reporting their findings.

FLYING OBJECT - ‘EVIDENCE IS TOO FLIMSY’

Although an element of mystery still surrounds the felling of a tree at Portglenone by a small, black object travelling, according to a local farmer, “at fantastic speed,” an examination of the Meteorological Office records to-day showed that gusts of wind of 52 miles an hour occurred about the time of the incident.

Weather experts inclined to the view that a local whirlwind, similar to that at Kilkeel a few months ago [2], had been responsible.

“It may be,” a Meteorological Office spokesman said, “that it was not severe enough to do any other damage.”

Mr. Terrence Nonweiler, Queen’s University lecturer on aeronautical engineering and a former member of the council of the British Interplanetary Society, who examined the tree yesterday afternoon, said afterwards that the evidence was “too flimsy” to say that the tree had been brought down by a solid flying object.

He thought that the marks on the tree would not fit the theory that it had been brought down by the object.

He was impressed, however, by the testimony of Mr. Joseph Bennett, a local farmer, who told him that he watched the object from its appearance over Lough Neagh until it left the valley after bringing down the tree.

And it is the opinion of the local people that “something very odd” happened on Sunday afternoon.

The final story, which appeared in the Telegraph on 2 January, featured more “experts” and their opinions. On a personal note, if we’re expected to favour those theories that have the least assumptions, then the theory that a saucer from Zeta Reticuli damaged the tree is on a par - kind of, if you stand really far back and squint at it - with all of the other suggestions.

‘FLYING AXE’ WAS REALLY A WHIRLWIND, SAY FORESTRY EXPERTS

Forestry experts gave their verdict to-day on the Portglenone “flying object” which felled a two-foot-thick tree last Sunday - it was a whirlwind.

Samples of the sheared trunk were examined under a microscope at the Ministry of Agriculture’s Forestry Division in Belfast and were found to be decayed.

“The tree just snapped below a dead branch,” an official said to-day. “It was very heavily branched at the top and the strain over the years had damaged the cells. A sudden gust of wind was all it needed.”

Just one thing puzzles the experts - the cleanness of the break.

From Belfast Telegraph 0f 2 January 1959

“It could be that the fungus developed in a regular pattern,” the official said, “but it is unusual. There was certainly no evidence of impact damage on the outside of the tree, or on trees nearby.”

To get the samples local forester Andy McLean had to climb the eight-foot tree stump. Souvenir hunters have been at work on the felled section of the tree.

WATERSPOUT THEORY

Dr. E. M. Lindsay, director of Armagh Observatory, today put forward the theory that the tree had been brought down by a waterspout.

He said that the fact that the black object was said to have come from the direction of Lough Neagh, together with many examples in the files of the Observatory of waterspouts near the lough helped to support his theory.

“Oddly enough,” said Dr. Lindsay, “practically all these reports were made in the last century, but they are well authenticated. One official, who lived at Loughall, observed several. There were many such reports in the early 1800s.”

Dr. Lindsay has not seen a waterspout in Northern Ireland, but he has experienced many on visits to South Africa. The water taken up by the whirling current of air accounts for the blackness, he says.

Notes:

1 Is he suggesting that it’s usually only elm trees that get rear-ended by flying saucers?
2 In the early hours of Tuesday, 30 September 1958, what was described as "probably a minor tornado" ripped through Kilkeel. Though lasting only three minutes, it managed to do quite a lot of damage.

Sources:

The Belfast Telegraph, 30 & 31 December 1958 and 1 & 2 January 1959