Isle of Lewis incident – 1996.

I was reading about the Vela Incident a few days ago, and it jogged a very faint memory for me. When I was young I remembered a news report on the radio stating that people heard a mysterious explosion out to sea, somewhere off the coast of Scotland. Having done a bit of digging online I’ve found reference to a mysterious incident off the coast of Lewis in 1996. Residents reported an explosion on the 26th of October, followed by a burning object crashing into the sea. For their part the RAF reported no such incident, and no missing aircraft.

Things take a turn for the murky, as apparently a French trawler dragged up four helicopter rotor blades some 80 miles off the coast of the ‘Butt of Lewis’ in December 1998. These were apparently Westland blades, though again nobody reported a missing helicopter and they weren’t traced back to any known aircraft.

This is about all I’ve found online. The story is only really preserved in any way on UFO websites of all places , presumably as the patrons of such sites love a conspiracy. Straight away I don’t think anybody on Lewis would see an aircraft crashing into the sea over 80 miles away, so I’m not sure about that the two parts of the story here are linked. I’m wondering if the explosion was something like an meteorite air burst, similar to the Tunguska event. This would explain the falling debris. The helicopter blades seem more suspect, as it seems strange that they were never ID’d beyond being manufactured by Westland. Were these ever positively identified?

Off topic, but I also recall another news story I now cannot find any reference to. From memory, a Stagecoach bus somehow vanished. Remains of it were eventually found on a farm, though these were neither from the chassis or the bodywork. Does this jog any memories? Should I be putting a new battery in my CO2 detector? :rolleyes: