This is a personal sighting that happened in Kidbrook in the 1980's

It must have been between 1986 - 1988, I was working for a Private Ambulance Service. I had been asked to redecorate the kitchen at my Grandmothers and as the Ambulance was being serviced I walked to her house from mine along with my wife and young step-daughter. She lived in Polebrooke Road in Kidbrook London SE3, about a mile from my home.

We had spent the day sanding and painting the doors to the cupboards and it was much later than we had planned to leave but I wanted to finish the last of the gloss painting before I left, being 'on-call' 24/7 I could never guarantee when I would be free next to visit and finish it.

The final piece painted we decided to stop and go into the living room for a cigarette before cleaning the brushes and walking home. My step-daughter was sitting at the table in the rear of the house drawing when she called us and said there was 'funny lights' outside. As this was a small quiet cul-de-sac I walked to the back door which led into the postage sized garden against the road to see what it was, thinking perhaps it was a police car or ambulance.

The sky was full of bright lights, some moving very slowly, others moving at tremendous speeds. I called my wife out to watch and my elderly Grandmother followed behind, soon many other of her neighbours were also outside watching.

There was no sounds of engines, just the occasional 'Whoosh' from the faster objects as they shot overhead. It was impossible to see any shapes from the fast ones, at first I thought it may have been a meteor shower as the objects appeared to glow, but the slower ones appeared to be getting closer and lower, they too 'glowed' but not in the same level of brightness.

Discussing them with the neighbour we thought they might have been helicopters, but as they neared there was still no tell tale noise of a rotor, as the first of the slow ones passed overhead we could definitely rule out that they were helicopters or aeroplanes, these items seemed to be metallic and reflecting the light of the moon.

I remember the neighbour saying 'it looks like Telstar', the shape definitely looked like a 60's satellite with protruding aerial like rods. As more started to pass it was obvious that they were not all the same shape, none were the round saucer shape that everyone expects as UFO's, nor were they the long cylindrical shape I had seen back in the 60's, These were more triangular, diamond or ball shaped craft.

The neighbour commented that he not seen as much in the air at once since the war, and said perhaps we are under attack again. At this time they were passing over two or three at a time. looking over the house in the direction of travel we could see the shapes almost travelling in formation in the same direction.

They were travelling from the south south east to the north north west, in a band estimated to be about a quarter of a mile wide. How many of these we saw I am not sure, but from the time we were watching I guess we saw maybe 60 objects, but it could have been more, anything up to a hundred, you don't count when you are that stunned in amazement.

One of the faster moving objects seemed to suddenly dive downwards at a steeper angle as if it was out of control, it appeared very close  and very low and to us it appeared to crash at the top of the road where there were tennis courts (top right in photo above). There was no crash noise as we expected there to be, just a large glowing from the area of the tennis courts as if something was on fire, I jumped the small low fence and started to run up to the end of the road, the neighbour went indoors to telephone the Emergency Services.

On arrival at the wire fencing beside the tennis courts I could see nothing, the glowing had disappeared and apart from the occasional whoosh overhead there was nothing out of the ordinary to see. It is a dead end, there is no way through to the roads behind and although I stood looking for a bit I could see no evidence of any houses in the distance being damaged or on fire, although by then I could hear sirens coming from that direction. I was not sure if this was due to what we saw, as the Brook General Hospital was over in that direction and the sirens could of been ambulances, although they sounded too close.

I returned to the house and rejoined the others as what appeared to be the last of the slower objects passed over, my Nan had returned inside and was eagerly watching the television for news on what it was. The frequency of the faster objects had now slowed dramatically so we all went back indoors to see if anything had come up on the TV.

With no news on what it was or of any crash we decided to walk back home, it only took us about 25 minutes to walk back along the Rochester Way up to the Well Hall roundabout. there were just the odd one here and there now, stragglers as if they had been left behind. It wasn't far for us to walk but my step-daughter was incredibly jumpy and frightened, covering her ears and squatting down in a ball every time a ball of light shot overhead with a whoosh. Although I wasn't frightened, I felt unusually uneasy, and I could begin to imagine how the wartime children must have felt when planes and the V1 / V2 rockets were passing over their heads.

We sat up late but despite flicking between news channels on TV and also having the radio on to see if anything was mentioned we heard nothing. The next morning I had to collect the Ambulance from the garage, but in the late morning / early afternoon and with no work planned we returned to my Nan's, I took a walk back up to the top of the road to see if I could see anything in the daylight, the grass around the edges of the courts appeared burnt, but my view was from a distance and it may have just been brown and black from a spray of weed killer. We later even drove around to the roads behind to see if there was any damage but we saw nothing.

Quite a mystery in itself considering the speed that object dived down into the ground, but yet there was no sound of a collision. Another neighbour who lived nearer the top of the small square of houses popped in and said they saw it come down too, but then they saw it shoot back off as if it had richocheted off the tennis court or land behind it. Someone suggested it was a meteor shower as he had seen something flash across the previous evening, the skies were clear and if it was it would of been easy to see.

I don't know what it was, but I am sure that this was no meteor shower.