How Hundreds Witnessed UFOs During South Wales' "Night Of The Triangles"

On a cold evening in 1983, an extraordinary event took place across South Wales. Dubbed the "Night of the Triangles" by the Swansea UFO Network, as many as 200 people from Milford Haven to Newport reported sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The coastguard initially dismissed the events of January 19 as sightings of meteors, but the witness accounts and newspaper reports that surfaced over the next few days told a very different story.

The incident reportedly caused power outages, halted football matches, reports of people missing time, and countless calls to the police, with witnesses describing a range of mysterious objects moving silently through the sky.

The case has been extensively investigated by the Swansea UFO Network, a local group that has spent years tracking down and interviewing witnesses. Interest in the event was reignited in 2024 when Radio 1 DJ Sian Eleri stumbled upon the case while shooting her documentary series, 'Paranormal: The Village That Saw Aliens', although the series primarily focused on the UFO flap further along the coast in Pembrokeshire during the late 1970s.

The first reports came in around 17:15, when large objects were spotted over Swansea. Many witnesses described triangular crafts with lights of various colours - white, red, blue, green, and more. However, not all sightings described the same thing. Some spoke of elongated or oblong shapes, leading to speculation about whether people were witnessing different objects or seeing the same ones from different angles. Sizes ranged dramatically, from as small as a family car to as large as two football fields. The reported speed also varied. While some reports claimed the objects moved slowly, at speeds around 30 mph or even at a walking pace, others described the objects almost instantaneously shooting from one point in the sky to another.

The weather conditions on the night were ideal for clear visibility. Historical data shows that it was a cold evening, with temperatures hovering around 4°C at around 18:00 during the peak time of sightings. Winds were light, with a gentle westerly breeze recorded at 8mph. The sun had set at 16:27, and by 17:46, the sky had transitioned from dusk into 'evening astronomical twilight', meaning it was fully dark for the majority of the sightings. A crescent moon was visible in the sky, offering minimal light.

One of the earliest and most detailed accounts came from 14-year-old Leanne Gaskins, who described seeing a triangular object hovering over the BP oil refinery near Swansea at around 17:45. She said it had "lights all over it," defining its shape in the dark, but there was no sound. From a different viewpoint, Simon Matthews saw two sets of red lights in triangular formations blinking on and off above the refinery, which suggested the presence of two objects rather than one, something that was also suggested in other reports.

Nearby, at Kilvey Hill, another witness observed a massive oblong object with bright white lights, moving slowly around the broadcast mast. This sighting described the object as split into two parts, again highlighting the varied descriptions that night. Around the same time, another witness reported two objects - one oblong and the other triangular - moving together from Morriston to Kilvey Hill.

By 18:05, a witness in Port Talbot described seeing a silver saucer-shaped object flashing as it hovered over the steelworks, joined soon after by a second object before both moved off towards Swansea. Meanwhile, in Sketty, a driving instructor saw a black triangular craft, about the size of a car, with bright lights at each corner. Despite its small size compared to other sightings, the triangular shape and silent movement were consistent with other reports from the night.

At around 18:30, then-13-year-old Natalie Bowden saw a strange object hovering above her house. In a 2016 interview with the Swansea UFO Network, she described it as being "like a stadium of light," with cream and pink lights, and mentioned that she couldn't see the full shape because "it was immense." However, when she was interviewed by Sian Eleri for her 2024 documentary, her description was different.

"In her interview with Sian, Natalie described the object as "quite angular, not like a spacecraft you'd imagine." The variation in her accounts could raise questions about her credibility as a witness, but equally, the changes could be down to differences in how the interviews were conducted or edited.

The reports weren't limited to Swansea. By 19:00, sightings had spread to Cardiff. Carole Griffiths and her husband, driving near Llandaff Rowing Club, pulled over to watch a stationary triangular object with bright lights hovering over the River Taff. Carole, typically sceptical of UFO sightings, was shocked: "It looked like Concorde taking off, but it was just hanging there, completely still."

Several other witnesses described seeing triangular objects with lights at their corners, and a football match in Llantwit Major was even stopped when one such object flew overhead. In Cardiff, a group of 22 primary school pupils all reported seeing a massive triangular object flying low over Whitchurch, a suburb of Cardiff, further corroborating the range of sightings in different locations.

Swansea Coastguard initially dismissed the sightings as meteors burning up in the atmosphere, though many witnesses strongly disagreed. June Thomas, who saw two large triangular objects near Swansea's South Dock, rejected the meteor theory outright, stating, "What I saw wasn't a meteor. They were moving slowly and without sound." A picture June drew of her sighting was printed in the South Wales Evening Post on January 21.

Some speculated that the falling Russian satellite, Cosmos 1402, could have caused some of the sightings, though the descriptions of silent, hovering objects didn't align with this explanation.

Power outages were reported in the Kittle and Bishopston areas of Swansea, affecting several hundred homes. While this could have been coincidental, many locals connected the blackouts to the strange objects seen that night. The power company told customers the outage was "probably caused by a branch hitting an overhead power line." Many found this response to be a little vague, but since this type of fault is fairly common, on any other night it wouldn't have been questioned.

As the evening progressed, more reports flooded in, with police receiving the bulk of the calls between 18:00 and 19:00. Even two Swansea CID officers observed a pair of objects, describing one as elongated with blue flashing lights and the other as triangular. A subsequently declassified Ministry of Defence (MOD) report noted that lights had been seen over the lifeboat station at Mumbles Head, based on a public sighting passed on to the MOD. While this doesn’t necessarily lend credibility to the reports, it does show that the events were taken seriously enough to be recorded and investigated at the time.

We asked an aviation expert, who we can only identify as "Chris," what he made of the January 1983 sightings. Chris ruled out the possibility of commercial aircraft in service in 1983, "None of them could explain the silent, slow-moving objects described by the witnesses." He further explained that even during landing, commercial aircraft would have been much faster than what was observed. "The slow, almost hovering motion that people reported isn't what you'd see with any commercial aircraft," he added.

Chris also ruled out military jets, stating, "The RAF had aircraft like the Harrier Jump Jet and Tornado in operation, but neither of them are known for silent flight, and they certainly couldn't hover or move at walking speed as these objects were described."

If not a plane, could it have been a coastguard helicopter given the coastal location? "Helicopters are not silent. They have a very distinctive rotor noise, and there are no records of any coastguard activity that evening," Chris explained. A spokesperson from RAF Brawdy has confirmed this, telling the South Wales Echo, "We haven't been flying after 4pm, so the possibility it was one of us is remote."

However, Chris said, "Some witnesses, like Detective Mike Troake, described the object as being shaped a bit like a Zeppelin. This might suggest we're dealing with a blimp." A blimp, or airship, could explain the slow, silent movement and elongated shape, though Chris added, "Blimps are rarely flown at night, and if it was a blimp, given the amount of press the event got, I'm sure someone would have come forward by now to say 'that was me'."

As for the reports of triangular-shaped craft, Chris reminds us that witnesses were looking at the objects in a dark sky, and their primary visual reference were the lights on the objects. He explained, "If people could only see the airship's lights, and they just happened to be aligned in the sky in a triangular formation, it's very possible they might have misidentified it as triangular due to the arrangement of lights rather than the actual shape of the blimp."

While Chris' insights help rule out many conventional explanations, he admitted that the complete silence and reports of the object making sudden, rapid movements remain hard to explain. "We can rule out commercial aircraft, military jets, and coastguard operations as the source of the sightings," he concluded. "But I don't think we'll ever know for sure exactly what people saw."

Although the Night of the Triangles hasn't gained the same widespread attention as the Broad Haven sightings in Pembrokeshire during the 1970s, the sheer number of witnesses arguably makes it a more credible case and one of the most intriguing UFO incidents in Welsh history. Despite the events of January 19, 1983 being observed from multiple locations, under clear weather conditions, and documented in numerous official reports, we are still no closer to understanding what really happened on that cold winter night in South Wales.