My Aunt lives i Cambeltown next the the air base. The only extraordinary thing she ever saw was Concorde landing there, back in the 1980’s I believe.

A400. We’ve had the RAF test aircraft over here the last few weeks out of Brize and yes, they do sound different, but they are still very turbopropish. i videod the amazing demonstrator A400m at RIAT last month and it is not a candidate.

And I agree about any flight over water needing a flight plan. But military flights don’t always announce themselves on civil ATC networks although I would expect them to squawk something or other. I once visited London ATC at the old West Drayton base (now at Swanick) and we spent a time in the RAF military cell. All communications to military flights were by UHF and not ‘visible’ to the civil side of the ATC system which uses purely VHF (as we probably all know). There was inter-communications between the military cell and the main ATC but civil ATC is about safe separation and anything not posing a hazard to civil traffic in controlled airspace could well be unannounced to civil controllers. As i recall the military cell was primarily interested in RAF flights and border control and when I was there it was mostly stuff in the Upper FIR and the ADIZ. long time ago though.

It was 01:15 on night of 4th/5th and 01:38 on night of 6th/7th August. Also flew past a few days before the 4th and I got a look at it through binoculars. It was not descending but in level flight at about 1500 – 2000 feet. It does sound big, mrmalay, but it looked smaller than a B2 to me. And it seemed to be no higher than 1500 feet. (Were it higher on that day it would have flown through the Salisbury Plain danger area which goes up beyond the height any aircraft can fly at that point.) The shape I saw the first day (when it flew past about 10pm) was blocky at the front. A bit like an F117 really and not sleek. But I could not really see it clearly except for the military on-off style bright nav lights (and no strobes). I doubt it would have shown up on Flight24 as no military traffic seems to appear there.

My reasoning for it being a new type of secret aircraft was purely the noise and its routing. It never went outbound southwest but on all three occasions was seen on the same course coming sw to ne and this track would have taken it to the military bases in the east of the UK, Lakenheath / Mildenhall complex in a direct line. I wondered if it was something secret on a long test flight coming out of the Nevada range to a USAF base in Europe and the UK would be perfect as there would be no overflights of France or other Euro countries. The low altitude I thought may have been so it would be able to stay off of the ATC system as airspace for the London Control Area begins 30 miles up track at 5000 feet upward. So if I were flying this route I might choose to descend below airspace and VFR it to destination just on the principle that the less I appear officially the better. A route like this would need no ATC flightplan. And nobody would ‘see’ it in the dead of night, just hear the haunting howl and some aircraft lights going overhead. I wanted to record the approaching sounds as it is most awesome to hear but it hasn’t flown over again after that one week. So the sound I posted here is a whimper going away in the distance. and what’s weird is that when you hear the sound dissapear on the video this was when it simply faded out in reality. The sound doesn’t seem to have much range to it and appears and dissapears within maybe 5 miles of the listener. Guess I will never know.

Not anything like any conventional jet aircraft. Heard most of them at some time or other. Sounded a bit like an A310 descending as throttles are retarded but hugely louder. I was under the impression Aurora was a project name for one or more hyperspace aerospace craft in the last couple of decades and there are definitely some unorthodox projects out there now, photographs to prove it. The military-industrial complex doesn’t go after something for 20 years without something to show (or in this case to hide). IMHO 🙂