Mysterious Helicopter?

A strange event occurred back in 1973 and to this day no explanation of what caused it has been forthcoming. In the small village of Harpur Hill which lies South East of the town of Buxton in the county of Derbyshire can be found a limestone quarry called Hillhead.

The photograph below is of the Harper Hill area which I took from the Leek to Buxton road and which is the area where the helicopter was initially seen.

It was in the early hours of a September morning in 1973 when a woman who lived opposite Hillhead quarry witnessed a helicopter rising out of part of the excavated site, because of this unusual activity she alerted the local police force. At the same time a security guard at the quarry whose name was Simon Crowe witnessed the same helicopter and also earlier in the night at 10pm and 12pm. The interesting fact regarding his sighting is that he couldn’t positively identify it as a helicopter, he went on to state that it did hover and there was a sound similar to rotor blades. He went on to say that on his first sighting the craft hovered about 50ft from the ground and was seen to shine what appeared to be spotlights onto the quarry floor as if searching for something. When he approached it in his landrover it flew towards the part of the quarry designated as Mines Research, the second time he saw it was when it rose out of the quarry with its lights on and disappeared in the direction he had seen it take previously.

In the Derbyshire Times dated 18th of January 1974 it was reported that the police were baffled by the same mystery helicopter as it had been seen in the Macclesfield area where they had kept it under constant observation before it disappeared towards the High Peak area. The Macclesfield Police force contacted the Derbyshire Police and alerted them to the elusive helicopter and which was sighted by Patrol men heading over Mam Tor in the vale of Edale. The police set off in pursuit of it, however they lost sight of it when it changed its heading and disappeared in the direction of Sheffield. There was another report at the same time that the helicopter had made a landing close to Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope in the small village of Goostrey.

Seven police forces were involved in tracking down this mysterious helicopter by January 1974 and although many more sightings were made of this mysterious night flying helicopter, no civilian or army helicopters were found to be responsible and to this day the incidents remain unexplained.

One possible explanation I propose is that it could have been a prototype of the XH-75D or XH Shark antigravity helicopter which is manufactured byTeledyne Ryan Aeronautical Corporation of SanDiego (now part of Northrop Grumman) and which uses advanced technology. More information regarding this can be found at www.drboylan.com/xplanes2.html. As to why America would be testing advanced aircraft 40 years ago over the Derbyshire countryside is an even greater mystery!