That never happened anywhere and if it did, it would have been on Cader Bronwen, not Cader Berwyn.
Mrs Evans arrived just by 10 pm to see torch lights and UFO converging (Police and poachers), yet, the poachers were on a different mountain and had left the scene almost an hour before Pat Evans arrived at her location and discovered the UFO.
Roberts’ story started to collapse as he seemed totally ignorant of what lamping quarry with a lamp involves; it is a highly mobile activity with a heavy car battery (in those days), with a drain time of about an hour. Yet, the UFO was a static Object known to have been present for at least 90 minutes!!!
Going back to A Covert Agenda, Nick Redfern goes on to write:
‘Prior to the explosion on the Berwyn Mountains, the object had also been seen by a number of amateur astronomers based in both Cheshire and the Isle of Man’.
A meteor had been observed by many people on the Isle of Man, heading towards North Wales plus other atmospheric phenomena. This was also confirmed by Holyhead Coastguard who described it as green in colour. Multiple coastguard stations received calls from the Public about ‘green flares.
Such was reported in the Liverpool Daily Post on 24th of January 1974, the day after the event.
However just a day after that, the same newspaper published a story which included the following:
‘Police and coastguards now believe that many people especially in the Isle of Man actually saw an RAF photo-flash night bombing exercise’.
It is my understanding that the Institute of Geological Sciences gave this suggestion to the Authorities who were quick to accept that.
This was the earliest known reference to a ‘photo-flash’ exercise. This was years later to be used as ‘proof’ by Russ Kellett that a naval operation in the Irish Sea, hunting submerged UFOs, ultimately caused one to crash on Cader Berwyn.
Nick Redfern wisely points out:
‘The ‘meteor’ theory also fails to explain the ‘luminous sphere’ seen by Ken Haughton to descend into the sea near Rhyl’.
Ken Haughton from Betws y Coed in mid North Wales observed this object, some 90 mins after the earth tremor. The UFO was discovered as an aerial object at 8.40 pm by witness Mike Saville from his elevated home above Llandderfel. The author also mentions a Llandrillo witness whose story closely correlates with Mr Saville’s account. Roughly an hour and a half later, circa 10.20 pm, the UFO took off from Cader Berwyn, passed over Llangynog moving towards the English border.
There is an uncanny coincidence here that Mr Haughton saw what he did about the time the Cader Berwyn UFO departed.
Nick refers to Pat Evans who is accredited with first discovering the UFO at approximately 10 pm that night. He does however make a mistake in his text. He writes that she received a call from the Police at Colwyn Bay (Headquarters) ‘informing her of the possibility that an aircraft had crashed on Cader Bronwen’.