Prince Philip's hidden passion for UFOs revealed in new book
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Loading... - Paula Dawson
- 03 Dec 2021
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A lifelong UFO enthusiast, the late Prince Philip firmly believed the truth was out there. He subscribed to the journal Flying Saucer Review, studied military reports about the phenomenon, and collected a vast library of UFO books.
He even gathered a secret royal UFO spotters club. Yet in the interests of avoiding controversy, its members conspired to ensure his interest in unidentified flying objects remained one of the last royal secrets.
Although the Duke of Edinburgh served with distinction with the wartime Royal Navy, his real interest was in all things airborne. In April 1953, a new RAF equerry,
Peter Horsley, joined his private staff. Alongside arranging for Philip to learn to fly, Horsley shared Philip's secret aerial interest.
He was joined by Philip's friend and private secretary, Mike Parker, and the most zealous member of the nascent UFO club, General "Boy" Browning, pioneer of Britain's airborne forces.
After a while, they all became "enthusiastic saucer fans". On long journeys, royal conversation amongst the team would often turn to the latest science.
Prince Philip's mind, Horsley recalled, "Was open to the immense possibilities of new technology leading to space exploration, while at the same time not discounting that, just as we were on the fringe of breaking out into space, so other older civilisations in the universe might have already done so."
The Duke once wrote to UFO hunter Timothy Good: "There are many reasons to believe they exist."
Philip tasked Horsley to investigate UFOs but did not want this quest to involve his office, "in any kind of publicity".
Boy Browning, a distinguished general who had once been head of all of Britain's Airborne Forces, was apt to get carried away though.
As Horsley puts it politely: "Browning began to take it too seriously and perhaps lost some objectivity." Yet while Browning may have lacked objectivity, he was not short of connections.
One of his friends was a wartime Spitfire pilot, Desmond Leslie, a member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy who was related to Churchill.
In 1953, Leslie, now a journalist, co-authored a book entitled Flying Saucers Have Landed which sold more than a million copies. Read More…
