The Pentyrch Incident

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 - Friday 26th February 2016

A UFO incident reportedly occurred in the early hours of Friday 26th February 2016, centred largely around the south-Wales village of Pentyrch (pronounced pen-turk). The incident began a few days prior to the 'main event', and was witnessed by a number of people. Caz Clarke, who lives in Pentyrch, was a primary witness to the incident. She has dedicated the last 10 years to collecting evidence and promoting what is claimed to be ''the greatest UFO cover-up of modern times''. Since 2016, a small and steady stream of witnesses have been coming forward and sharing their stories of the events. There is an annual meeting/conference evening in Pentyrch on the anniversary of the incident, where Caz shares additional evidence. Below is a more detailed description of the events that are claimed to have taken place in late-February 2016:-

The event began on Tuesday 23rd February when Caz, and several of her neighbours, noticed a small propeller aircraft circling Pentyrch village at a very low altitude and slow speed. RAF St Athen is 14 miles away from Pentyrch, and would take an aircraft such as this only a few minutes to travel that distance. The aircraft in question has since been identified as a Hawker Beechcraft 350ER 'Shadow R1', operated by the Royal Air Force. Military aircraft are known to pass through the south-Wales area every so often, so Caz did not pay much attention to this aircraft for the rest of the day. 

By the following day, Wednesday 24th February, a number of other residents had noticed the aircraft, and has started to make complaints to the Ministry of Defence, asking why the aircraft was circling the village. No reply was given by the MoD, and whilst local media was made aware of the aircraft, no story was published. An email was sent to Wales Online, a local news site, on the evening of 24th February, asking if they could find out why the RAF had been flying the aircraft in circles around Pentyrch for the last 9 hours. Later that afternoon, another plane arrived and started circling the village, and the original aircraft left. The second aircraft that arrived has since been identified as a Britten-Norman defender, operated by the United Kingdom Army Air Corps. The Britten-Norman aircraft continued the same flight pattern as the original Beechcraft aircraft, flying low and slow in a route circling Pentyrch. It briefly left the circular flight pattern and flew towards the nearby town of Llantrisant, never going out of earshot, before returning and resuming it's circle flight path. This continued throughout the night of Wednesday 24th February and into the next morning.

By Thursday 25th February, at least one of the two aforementioned aircraft had been flying in circles around Pentyrch, and this had been the case for three days. It was at this point that Caz says it was clear to her that they were watching for something, but she has no idea what. One of her neighbours suggested they were watching for Russian aircraft, as not long before, on 18th February 2016, the Royal Air force has responded to two Russian bomber aircraft flying in United Kingdom airspace. At 7pm, Caz had arranged with one of her neighbours that they would watch that evening in her garden, to see if they could work out why these aircraft were circling. Online aircraft radars were checked and the airspace not only above Pentyrch but across the entirety of Wales, was empty - this was, while there was an aircraft circling overhead. 

At approximately 2:00am on Friday 26th February, as Caz was in the process of going inside, she heard what she thought was ''a missile approaching''. Shortly after, a different and very large aircraft flew very low over the house, banking to the left. Caz's neighbour ''Dave'' (a pseudonym in order to protect his identity) exclaimed ''That's an E3 Sentry plane!''. This is clearly distinguishable from other aircraft due to the large radar disc mounted atop the fuselage. Initially it was thought this aircrarft was circling in order to approach Cardiff International Airport. Caz then drew her neighbour's attention to a bright red light that has appeared high above the fields behind their location. They both then ran towards the gate to enter the field to see what was going on. It was at this point that more red lights appeared and slowly a pyramid-shaped craft ''revealed itself''. The pyramid was very large, and tilted, with one of the extremities closer to the ground than the others. Caz then relates the following events in her book 'The Pentyrch Incident', and the following is quoted from page 17. ''Moments before it was about to touch the ground, it ejected a fire-coloured hand of lightning, as if to prevent itself from touching the earth, but it was not thin lightning like we have here. This was thick like fire-coloured fingers. As this occurred the whole ship lit up extremely brightly. The corner lights on the right-hand side of the pyramid changed from taillight-red to bright white-orange''. In addition to the pyramid-shaped craft, Caz and her neighbour also claim to have witnessed 15-20 ''orbs'' exit the pyramid at it's top peal, as well as a red and green ''barrel-like'' objects that were witnessed in the skies too.

Caz believes an object was shot down and crashed into Smilog Woods. 

Caz has dedicated the 10 years since the incident to collecting and publishing evidence that supports the incident she and a number of individuals witnessed. Through a number of Freedom of Information requests, the general explanation for the events of the days in question was that it was a military exercise. Cas has published a 287-page book:- 'The Pentyrch Incident: The Greatest UFO Cover-Up of Modern Times, in which she documents and explains the evidence she, and a local UFO investigator, Gari Jones, have collected. Caz says she is aware of photographs taken by other witnesses during the incident, but these have not been shared publicly as of February 2026.