The subject of the book is the claim that on the same night as the Berwyn Mountains' UFO event, 23/Jan/1974, a military operation was underway in the Irish Sea codenamed Operation Photoflash. Apparently, military vessels including warships were engaged in illuminating the Irish Sea waters to visually expose one or more USOs which one assumes had come to the attention of the Authorities. In due course, the USOs were tracked to a very specific location (Puffin Island) off the North Wales coast where two alien vehicles were forced out of the water into flight. During that emergence, an altercation took place whereby one of the now airborne UFOs retaliated and seemingly severely damaged one warship (the book claims it melted the bow.) One of the UFOs apparently damaged was then chased by military jets which between them crossed Anglesey, then re-crossed this large Welsh island reaching the mainland and then, roughly following the route of the A5 road, was eventually struck by an air to air missile forcing the UFO to crash some miles further on. The crash site was aside the B4401 near Llandderfel, a road linking Bala with Corwen via Llandderfel, Llandrillo and Cynwyd. According to an informant who befriended UFO investigator Russ Kellett, 'Five Wise Men' - or sometimes 'Five Professional Gentlemen' - travelling near Corwen decided to turn back towards Llandderfel after experiencing the earth tremor which struck the Bala area of North Wales that night. Most agree that was at 20.38 hrs. These five men then witnessed the recovery of a crashed alien space ship from a field aside the B4401 road along with aliens both dead and alive. The somewhat intact spaceship was removed on the back of a lorry and the aliens removed also. I refute this scenario because of evidence that has emerged over the last few years which seems to make the claim untenable even impossible. Notwithstanding the fact that a certain man - one Steve Bale who has a video production studio at Conwy on the North Wales coast - confessed to Margaret Fry that he knew the whole story was a hoax (apparently hatched in a pub in Rhyl.) The claim of warships engaging in a military operation, presumably within a generous 5 miles of the Welsh coastline specifically centred on Puffin Island - an islet 500 yards off the coast of the Isle of Anglesey - and the fact that in the area of sea claimed where this event occurred is far too shallow even at the highest tides possible for such vessels to operate. In fact much of it dries out on an ebbing tide. Russ Kellett has clung to the story that the event did in fact happen. What indeed has happened is despite that tenacity, a huge chunk of the story simply cannot be true based on the tidal information alone. Therefore, the whole story is compromised. Had it not been for the specifying of a particular location (Puffin Island), this story would have been a bit more difficult to tackle. However, there is no question that it is the Puffin Island aside Anglesey. The claims of a damaged UFO crossing and re-crossing Anglesey and then crossing to the mainland is damning enough in identifying this limestone blob in the Irish Sea as a specific location. Those behind the hoax cannot now alter this to escape any debunking of their hoax and it can be debunked. I aim to show that below. Firstly, I'll show the claimed location of where the USOs were allegedly forced out of the water. Puffin Island is indicated in the image below:

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As is observable in the image above, at low tide large expanses of sand are exposed due to the shallow nature of the sea here. In fact, the largest vessels - including all medium to large warships - can only use the shipping channel into Liverpool which is ten miles or so north of Puffin Island, and the nearest permanently deep water allowing free unrestricted passage of large vessels is a minimum 15 miles north of Puffin Island. It is also the case that even in 1974, the coastal area as seen in this image was quite heavily populated, yet not one person has ever come forward publicly to claim that flashes or bangs were seen or heard. For scale, this image shows the distance between two points namely, Puffin Island and the Great Orme headland a distance of just 5.5 miles.

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Somewhere near Puffin Island it is claimed that warships forced USOs out of the sea and an altercation took place with both sides firing on each other. Again, no one seems to have seen or heard anything. In the following image we get to see just how difficult it would be for any large ship to operate freely in the waters here off the southern east coast of Anglesey. The exposed sandbank areas are in green. The darker blue which in this image is some twice as large in area as the images above is clearly marked in depth. The lighter blue area is more deeper water. However, the largest ships need to use the shipping channel marked purple. Only further north of this is any water found deep enough where the likes of tankers, warships and the like operate freely. Note the shipwrecks which are scattered across the area.

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From the chart above, it is clear that no large ships of the calibre suggested could operate in the green and darker blue areas and only with extreme caution in the lighter blue area. The touch of white is indicative of water deep enough to operate in at all states of the tide. For those unfamiliar with tides, essentially the tide comes in and goes out (flows and ebbs) twice a day. The lowest a tide can be is 00.00 ft/metres. Although the sea is deepening at the average rate of 6mm/annum, a 10.5 m tide in Britain is the highest we will get. Approximately 34 ft. That means that when the tide goes out to its lowest possible point 00.00 ft, if it was a 34 ft tide 6 hours later, the water would be 34 ft deep directly above that 00.00 point at maximum high tide, where after it will start to ebb again and the water will shallow. This is crucial to the claim that warships hunted and forcibly exposed USOs anywhere near Puffin Island on January 23rd 1974. In the image above, when the tide is in, the green bits are under water and when the tide goes out, the sand is exposed again. You can see clearly that 0 ft or m is at the edge of the green. This shows that at those points, the tide will be at its maximum lowest point. So, if the highest tide possible was to occur, directly above those 0 points, the water can only be 34 ft deep. In the darker blue areas, the water can only be 34 ft deeper and also for the two other shades. In the lighter blue area, only the shipping lane is regarded as the safest area for shipping, benefitting from deeper water as each tide increases depth. Depth throughout the month varies as tides are dependent on the Moon's gravity and to a lesser extent, the Sun's gravity. But generally, the further away the Moon, the less height in the tide. So the highest tides of the month occur when the Moon is closest to the Earth. Now that might sound basic, but in this case, it is quite crucial. Take a look at the image here:

The image above is of the local tide times affecting the area claimed in the book. The 23rd of January 1974 not only shows the times of the tides at both high and low water points at Beaumaris, just two miles from Puffin Island, but it shows that the tide did not turn to flow until 17.20 hours. It was dark then, but crucially, all the green area on the chart image above would have been green. The water would have deepened at the rate of some 3.5 ft/hour over the six hours to high water, making high tide at 23.02 hours. At high water at that time, the depth of water above 0 on the edge of the green areas was just under 23 ft. That tide coincided with a New Moon which produces only the lowest of the high tides, so this tide was only 23 ft deeper than at low tide. The water in the darker blue area also could only have been 23 ft deeper at 23.02 hrs than at 17.20 hrs. As soon as that maximum is reached, the tide turns to ebb and starts to shallow over the next 6 hour period. Not only was it impossible for shipping to be present at the location claimed, but the tide was also out anyway making the water as shallow as it almost could be. The Berwyn Event on Cader Berwyn technically started at 20.38 hours when an earth tremor occurred and the 'Five Wise Men' in the book - who allegedly witnessed their event - could only have done so after 8.38pm as it is stated that they turned back (for some inexplicable reason) to investigate after experiencing the tremor and low and behold discovered the UFO crash aside the road. However, the tremor was only three hours 18 mins after low water at 17.20. Simple arithmetic shows that the tide was rising (coming in) at just about 3.5 ft/hour, so even if that alleged shoot out took place an hour earlier say, 19.39h, the water in which the ships were operating could only have been about 7 ft deeper which wouldn't make the slightest difference to an area of water such vessels couldn't access anyway. The author of the book - as well as Russ Kellett - is asking readers to believe that this story is true when in fact the very circumstances of how a UFO/ET vehicle came to crash simply cannot be. Even if there was such a crash, the part about the military flotilla hunting the USOs and exposing them in the manner described is total rubbish. It is also my contention that the Operation Photoflash exercise never happened or existed simply because, as far as I'm aware, Russ Kellett is the only person anywhere who has a letter purporting to come from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) seemingly confirming such an operation yet, when asked, the MCA flatly denied any knowledge of the event or the existence of the letter. Of course, Russ Kellett has not to my knowledge ever allowed the alleged original to be examined. So, make of the above what you will, but the evidence tells a damning story that undermines the story as told in the book. The information on local tide times for Puffin Island and surrounding area was kindly supplied by the Centre For Applied Marine Science at Bangor University. Those behind this hoax forgot to factor the tides and water depths into their purported evidence and that has been the undoing of this story. The North Wales coast - and offshore areas including the Menai Strait - is one of the most intensively studied pieces of seawater in the world. The University operates its own small oceanography study vessel and it can regularly be seen offshore. Had the clowns who thought up this hoax said the Great Orme instead of an ultra specific location like Puffin Island for instance, then they might have gotten away with it a little more but I think they shot themselves in the foot. Scott L. Felton 31st July 2014