The South Wales UFO Invasion: The Night Of The Triangles!

One evening in January 1983, over an approximate two-hour period, over a hundred residents of South Wales witnessed multiple anomalous aircraft moving or hovering overhead. Many of these witnesses made official reports to local police, with the incident receiving extensive local and national news coverage in the immediate aftermath.

Despite this, the encounter is not as well-known or spoken about as much as we might imagine, even within the UFO community. This is perhaps even stranger when we consider apparent connections to a UFO crash that happened in the same region around the same time.

As well as the newspaper coverage at the time, the strange evening has been investigated by several investigators and organizations, including the Swansea UFO Network, who have conducted extensive interviews with many of the witnesses in the decades since. Indeed, that night in January 1983 is not only one of the most interesting in UFO history, but perhaps one of the most discreetly important.

Multiple Reports With Differing Details

According to the multiple eye-witness and newspaper reports that would follow, at around 5:15 pm on the evening of January 19^th, 1983, multiple residents of the city of Swansea reported seeing strange, triangular objects with various colors of red, blue, white, and green moving overhead. ^[1] In fact, the more reports that came, the varying descriptions were relayed, perhaps because of the different viewpoints of the respective witnesses.

Some people, for example, stated the objects were distinctly triangular, while others offered that they were oblong or elongated. Similarly, some witnesses insisted these strange craft were approximately the size of two football fields, while others claimed they were no bigger than a standard family car. Further differences were found in the speed of the objects, with some witnesses stating they were barely in their sight before they had disappeared again, while other reports stated that the objects were traveling at speeds as slow as 30 miles per hour, remaining in view for a considerable time.

Undoubtedly, one of the most intriguing and detailed accounts came from 14-year-old Leanne Gaskins, who claimed she spotted the aerial anomaly at around 5:45 pm – 30 minutes after the first reports surfaced. She claimed to have seen a triangular object with “lights all over it”, which hovered silently over the BP oil refinery just outside Swansea. Another witness – Simon Matthews – seemingly also witnessed the same object over the oil refinery, stating that he saw “two sets of red lights in triangular formations blinking on and off”, something which led investigators to speculate whether there was more than one object overhead.

From Kilvey Hill To Port Talbot – The Sightings Continue

A short time later, at nearby Kilvey Hill, an anonymous witness reported seeing a “massive oblong object” that had bright white lights shining from it, moving slowly over a broadcast mast, while a short distance away and almost the same time, another witness claimed to have seen an oblong object and a triangular craft moving towards Kilvey Hill from Morriston.

A short time after that, at a little after 6 pm, a report of yet another different-shaped object was made when a witness claimed to have seen a silver saucer-shaped craft hovering over the steelworks in Port Talbot. Even more remarkably, several moments later, a second object approached the first before both headed off into the distance, in the direction of Swansea.

Around the same time, a driving instructor, Orllwyn Jones, was driving in nearby Sketty when he saw a black, car-sized triangular object moving silently overhead. The witness stated that the object moved at a reasonable pace and had bright lights at each corner. Several minutes later, three men who were standing outside the Gorseinon and District Working Men’s Club just outside Swansea reported seeing a “huge triangular shape” that had lights on it moving across the early evening sky. As fascinating as these initial reports were, however, the evening’s events were only getting started.

The Strange Sighting Of Natalie Bowden

Just short of half an hour later, at around 6:30 pm, 13-year-old Natalie Bowden was sitting in the back room of her family home, in the annex of the property next to the kitchen, watching television, when she suddenly felt a sudden urge to get up and go outside. She left the room and made her way to the front door of the property. She opened the door and stood on the doorstep, immediately noticing a “massive UFO” hovering right above the house, around 30 to 50 feet from the property.

Years later, she described the object as being “immense” in size, and appearing like a “stadium of light” with pink and cream lights on its exterior. She remained where she was, looking up at the bizarre aerial anomaly, stating that at one point, she believed the object was “trying to say something to me in my head”. She remained where she was for several more moments, eventually beginning to feel a sense of unease and even fear due to the unknown nature of the events she was witnessing.

At this point, she turned around and ran back inside the house, “screaming” out to her siblings and stepfather to come outside and witness the object also. In fact, she made so much noise that several of her neighbors also ventured out of their houses to see what was taking place. Strangely, Natalie recalled that as they looked up at the craft, she suddenly noticed that despite the freezing wintery conditions of the night in question, it “wasn’t cold anymore”. Moreover, there was a strange silence around them where she felt you would be able “to hear a pin drop”, elaborating it was “just stillness, complete stillness”.

Things turned even stranger several minutes later when her stepfather and her sister suddenly went back inside, despite the surreal nature of the events unfolding above them. Stranger still, Natalie recalled that they both had the exact same “mechanical” nature about them as they did so, almost as if someone, or something, had taken control of their actions. Likewise, most of her neighbors also went back inside their respective homes, leaving her alone, watching as the object disappeared into the distance.

The video below features an extended interview with Natalie Bowden.

“It Was Just Hanging There, Completely Still!”

Around 30 minutes after Natalie Bowden had first spotted the huge object over her house, at just after 7 pm in Cardiff, Carole Griffiths and her husband were driving close to Llandaff Rowing Club when they noticed a strange triangular object hovering silently overhead. So enthralled were they by what they were seeing that they pulled their vehicle to the side of the road to take a closer look, noting that the object had several bright lights on its exterior and appeared to be hovering over the River Taff. Carole later stated to the local media that the object “looked like Concorde taking off, but it was just hanging there, completely still.” With them was a third witness – Dr. Nribenra Deb, who claimed that he “didn’t know what he was looking at”, adding that he had “never seen anything like it before!”

There were several other reports from residents around the Cardiff area during the same time-window, including a group of over 20 primary school students who each claimed to have seen a “massive triangular object” moving across the sky over Whitchurch at a particularly low altitude. Even more remarkable, a football match in Llantwit Major was brought to a stop as players and crowd alike looked upward in awe as one of the strange aerial vehicles made its way overhead.

As the evening progressed, more and more reports came in from the public, as well as from serving officers. In fact, two Swansea CID officers reported seeing two strange objects over the city, one of which they described as being oblong in shape with blue flashing lights, while the other was distinctly triangular. Another resident, June Thomas, witnessed two triangular objects moving “slowly and without sound” over the South Dock in Swansea.

As these sightings were being reported, there were several power blackouts in the Kittle and Bishopston areas of Swansea, with several hundred homes being left without power. Incidentally, the power company in question issued a statement offering that the power outage was likely caused by “a branch hitting an overhead power line”. As we might imagine, many people found this explanation hard to accept.

Many Explanation, But No Answers!

As we might imagine, several further explanations were put into the public arena in order to explain the numerous sightings of January 19^th. The Swansea Coastguard, for example, stated that what people likely saw was nothing but meteors that burned up in the atmosphere. There were even discussions in some corners that the object was nothing more than Cosmos 14, the Russian satellite.

Whether the sightings were of otherworldly objects or simply misidentified terrestrial vehicles remains unknown. However, it is perhaps interesting to note that the Ministry of Defense saw fit to keep a report of strange lights reported over the lifeboat station at Mumbles Head.

Perhaps strangest of all, though, and something we mentioned at the beginning of this article, are the reports and claims of a downed craft discovered in a farmer’s field close to where the majority of the sightings were reported. Was there a connection between that alleged downed craft – sometimes referred to as Europe’s Roswell – and the multiple sightings from South Wales that winter’s nights in January 1983? For now, that is a consideration that remains subject to debate.

There are plenty of details for us to consider; however, that would very much suggest, at the very least, that what was witnessed that evening in Swansea and Cardiff was not a conventional aircraft of any kind. There was, for example, no commercial aircraft that was capable of moving across the sky as slowly as some of the witnesses stated the crafts were moving. Moreover, there were no commercial or (known) military aircraft that could move with absolute silence, nor could any helicopters move so quietly.

There were some suggestions that the mystery objects could have been blimps, not least as many of the witnesses claimed the object they had seen was elongated or oblong-shaped. However, it is rare that blimps are flown at night, certainly without wider public knowledge (for special events and such), and we might imagine that if one or more blimps had been in operation on the night in question, it would have been established almost immediately.

“This Was A Gigantic Structure!”

Ultimately, just what was seen over South Wales that cold night in January 1983 remains a complete mystery, although it appears certain that something very strange did take place. After all, hundreds of people in a two-hour span surely can’t all be misidentifications of conventional aircraft or a natural event.

In a newspaper article in the February 20^th, 1983 edition of the Sunday Mirror titled Quick-Draw Kids Track a UFO, Ian Mrzygold of the UFO Research Association stated that, “Simple lights in the sky are easy to explain away, but this was a gigantic solid structure.”

If we accept, for the sake of argument, that what was seen over South Wales that evening was indeed a solid structure, then we have to ask, were these crafts from another world or dimension, or was this some kind of purposeful public display by the military of top-secret aerial vehicles? And if the latter is the case, then what would be the purpose of such a visible display? Given the wealth of reporting on the incident at the time, combined with the many witnesses to the events, we might contemplate if there will be more to surface from this most bizarre and thought-provoking event.

The video below explores this fascinating UFO case in a little more detail.

Expert Opinion

On a chilly evening in January 1983, South Wales residents reported a surge of bizarre lights and enormous triangular objects hovering or cruising above their towns, sometimes described as oblong or elongated. Local media briefly captured public attention, and official police reports corroborated an event of staggering scale. Enthusiasts often connect this eerie episode to a contemporaneous, rumored UFO crash in the area, sparking decades of further inquiry.

Despite substantial firsthand testimony and an alleged reluctance of authorities to delve deeper, skeptics highlight mundane possibilities like malfunctioning satellites, blimps, or meteor activity. Conflicting descriptions of size, movement, and speed leave room for normal aircraft or misinterpretations under poor lighting conditions. Although nothing definitively discredits a more conventional explanation, the sheer volume of independent accounts suggests there may be more to uncover about that winter night’s spectacle.

Verdict: Inconclusive
Multiple witnesses and overlapping reports hint at a genuine mystery, yet earthly explanations have not been fully eliminated.

Marcus Lowth is an expert on this topic and has over 20 years experience studying and reporting in these fields. Marcus has written several books and appeared on TV shows as an expert investigator discussing these topics.