This is not another programme about flakes and weirdos – it’s a true story about how real flying saucers were developed secretly ………right under our noses.

The first “flying saucer” was spotted by an American pilot over Mount Washington in 1947. He coined the phrase to describe the disc-shaped craft which hovered above him and heralded the age of UFOs (unidentified flying objects). Many UFO spotters became convinced these were space craft flown by aliens, others just blinked – bewildered. Governments and the media scoffed at the idea of alien transport – but others knew better.

Under cover of the popular hysteria that fuelled sensationalist newspaper reports and Hollywood movie scripts – there were small teams of brilliant scientists secretly designing, building and piloting real flying saucers.

This is the story of the Real Saucermen and man-made flying saucers. A story of more than 50 years of development during which governments invested heavily in the promising future of anti-gravity flying machines. From these secret projects came the mysterious lights seen in the skies.

Attempts at building flying saucers had been made in the 1920’s and in 1944, Allied pilots reported strange circular lights buzzing their bombers on missions over Germany. Christened ‘Foo Fighters’, these were the first modern ‘Unidentified Flying Objects’. Hitler announced ‘Germany will lead the way in a new type of aircraft and engineers were conscripted to develop prototypes behind the wire of a concentration camp.

As the Allies overran Nazi Germany, young and brilliant aircraft designers were dispatched to learn the secrets of the Third Reich’s “saucer development” as part of the post-war military effort to win the Cold War.

Secret design headquarters were set up. The British Ministry of Defence issued dismissive statements of “flying saucer” sightings whilst the Government poured millions of pounds into a secret project, known as Project Y. It was described by military chiefs as ‘amazing and war-winning.’

By 1960 the first “Avro” saucers were flying. Declassified footage shows the two-man ‘flying jeep’ saucer on test flights. The military denied further development but flying machines matching the description and performance of these supersonic craft were recorded all over the United States.

The US government began a public relations exercise called Project Blue Book. Its sustained campaign to discredit flying saucer sightings provided a smokescreen for the funding of an even more remarkable anti-gravity project which is now credited by many experts with being the forerunner of the formerly top secret “Stealth Bomber”.

Latterly there’s been official recognition for anti-gravity-driven space craft. Experiments at laboratories in the USA have developed a craft known as “The Lifter”. Footage recently released demonstrates uncanny similarities to early “UFO footage” and eye-witness reports since the 1950s. NASA has patented the “Lifter” technique and announced it will develop it for space drives. Further evidence that humans rather than aliens deserve to be credited with the imagination and ingenuity to fly without wings.

Secrets of the Saucermen includes interviews with the men who made the real flying saucers and “secret” photographs, plans and movie footage.