Streams of fire and streams of blood — Ilford, Essex, November 1660
THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP SIGHTINGS REPORT
1660: The Ilford Aerial Dogfight | Essex, England
From beneath a fiery cloud in the pre-dawn southwest, two objects the size of the moon emerge and appear to engage one another directly — one dimming, the other brightening — for two full hours, streaming what witnesses described as both fire and blood, before the diminished object shrinks to the size of an ordinary star.
Date: November 30, 1660
Sighting Time: Very early morning, pre-dawn
Day/Night: Night
Location: Ilford, Essex, England
Urban or Rural: Rural/semi-rural Essex countryside
No. of Entity(‘s): Not Applicable
Entity Type: Not Applicable
Entity Description: Not Applicable
Hynek Classification: NL (Nocturnal Light)
Duration: Approximately two hours
No. of Object(s): Two, emerging from beneath a fiery cloud
Description of the Object(s): Two bright objects, each as large as the moon, appearing to engage each other directly in the sky (“a dogfight”)
Shape of Object(s): Not specifically described beyond round, moon-like brightness
Size of Object(s): Each as large as the moon initially; the diminishing object eventually reduced to the apparent size of an ordinary star
Color of Object(s): Fiery; streaming both fire (orange/red) and what witnesses described as “streams of blood” (implying a deep red coloration)
Distance to Object(s): Not recorded
Height & Speed: Not recorded — objects appeared to maneuver relative to one another rather than transiting the sky
Number of Witnesses: Two named-status witnesses (“two men”), exact identities not recorded in the surviving text
Special Features/Characteristics: One object progressively dimmed while the other grew larger and brighter, described using the same “dogfight” and combative framing later echoed in this archive’s account of the 1665 Stralsund Air Battle; witnesses reported streams of fire and streams of blood-red material extending from the brightening object during a significant portion of the two-hour observation
Case Status: Unexplained
Source: Mirabilis Annus, or, The Year of Prodigies and Wonders (London, 1661)
Summary/Description: Very early in the morning, two men saw a fiery cloud in the southwest. From beneath it appeared two bright objects as large as the moon, which began what the source describes as a “dogfight” in the atmosphere. One of them eventually grew dimmer while the other increased in size and remained in view for two hours, “a great part of which time they saw streaming from it streams of fire and streams of blood.” It then diminished until it was no larger than an ordinary star.
Related Cases: 1665: Stralsund Air Battle, Germany
Detailed Report
This account is drawn from Mirabilis Annus, the 1661 London compilation that stands as the single richest documentary source for English aerial phenomena in the entire pre-modern archive. The Ilford sighting is among the most vivid entries in that collection — the source’s own framing of the event as a “dogfight” between two objects, one prevailing over the other, reflects a martial interpretive lens common to the period, but the specific two-hour duration and the described streaming emissions (“streams of fire and streams of blood”) give the account an unusual degree of behavioral specificity beyond a simple static light or transiting fireball.
The sequential brightness change described — one object dimming as the other brightens, sustained over roughly two hours before the diminished object shrinks to star-like size — does not correspond to any single well-known celestial or atmospheric phenomenon of the period. Two genuine astronomical bodies do not typically exchange brightness in this coordinated fashion, and a meteor or comet would not typically remain visible, changing in this specific paired manner, for a full two hours. The account’s emphasis on visible “streaming” material further complicates any single straightforward natural explanation.
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
The Ilford Dogfight — Essex 1660 and Two Hours of Streaming Fire and Blood
- Source chain assessment: Mirabilis Annus is the best-known and most widely cited primary source for English aerial phenomena of this period, though the two witnesses in this specific entry are not individually named, weakening the account relative to other Mirabilis Annus entries (such as the Hull sighting) that cite named or institutionally identified observers.
- Pattern context / comparative cases: The “aerial combat between two objects” framing recurs strikingly in this archive’s 1665 Stralsund Air Battle account five years later — both cases describe a sustained, sky-spanning confrontation between luminous forms rather than a single transiting light, suggesting either a genuine recurring phenomenon type or a durable period interpretive template applied to genuinely different underlying events.
- Classification issues / corrections: The paired, inversely correlated brightness change over a sustained two-hour period does not match standard celestial or meteorological behavior, and the case remains classified Unexplained rather than attributed to any specific candidate phenomenon.
- Geographic or historical context: This sighting falls within the dense November–December 1660 cluster of Mirabilis Annus entries documented in the same general London-adjacent region within a matter of weeks, alongside the Westminster fire-dropping cloud and the Houndsditch light, suggesting either a period of genuinely unusual regional atmospheric activity or a concentrated wave of report-making activity following the political upheaval of the Restoration.
The Ilford dogfight is the single account most explicitly quoted elsewhere in this archive’s broader treatment of the 1650–1669 period, and for good reason — a sustained, two-hour, behaviorally specific confrontation between two luminous objects, streaming fire and blood-red material, that resists easy explanation even within the period’s own dense record of aerial prodigies.
“They saw a fiery cloud, and two objects as large as the Moon — the one of them did seem to encounter the other, one of them grew dimmer and the other greater and brighter, and continued so about two hours, a great part of which time they saw streaming from it streams of fire and streams of blood.”
