The Berwyn Mountains UFO Incident - 23rd January 1974

This is the letter that was sent from the Holyhead Coastguard station to Russ Kellett and dated 2nd April 2000. The image is a screen shot taken of the MCA letter as it appears in the Kindle version of Steven Lumley's book "The Berwyn Mountains Incident: Revealed" published in April 2014.
Please click on the image to see a full-sized version.

The text content of the letter, in italic font, with no sender details or file reference, was as follows:

Further to you enquiry regarding possible UFO sightings or other information I have
now checked through the information that we have available at this station. There are not
a great many log books here for that period and I have only been able to find one entry of
any vague interest. During the late afternoon and early evening of 23rd January 1974
there was an exercise from Jerby Range on the Isle of Man. The exercise was called
'photoflash' and coastguards were advised to expect at least ten aircraft taking part and at
least 80 flashes anywhere around the Liverpool Bay area and the North Wales coastline.
I realise this is probably not what you hoping for but it's all I came up with. Sorry I
couldn't be more help but I would be interested to hear if you solve your mystery as I
often look skyward in the hope of seeing something myself.

Yours sincerely

This image is of part of Eileen Buckle's article that was published in Supplement 18 of Flying Saucer Review in September 1974.  In this article we read:

"Also, coastguards at Holyhead saw a flaming object shaped like a tadpole about an hour later"

Reference:  Supplement 18, Flying Saucer Review September 1974

On 24th January 1974 The Liverpool and North Wales Daily Post published information about the celestial events of the previous evening/night:

"....Wales and this was confirmed by Anglesey coastguard who described it as green in colour. Coastguards in Formby, the Isle of Man, Anglesey and Cumberland all received calls reporting "green flares". But a spokesman from Formby said 'we are pretty certain it was a meteorite shower. We ourselves witnessed. The end of one of them it was too bright to have been lightening. And the weather conditions don't point to the likelihood of of lightening'. Emergency services were inundated with calls throughout North Wales. But there were no reports of any injuries or damage".

"Isle of Man police reported observations of a meteorite seen travelling in the direction of North Wales, and this was confirmed by Anglesey coastguards, who described it as green. Coastguards elsewhere, in the Isle of Man, Formby (Lancashire) and as far away as Cumbria, received reports of green flares"

Holyhead Coastguard is not specifically mentioned in the above quote from Musson's paper but could have been one of the stations on Anglesey witnessing the celestial events of that night.
In another news cutting from January 1974 we read the following:

"The coastguard at Holyhead reported seeing a ball of white light flashing across the sky heading east"