Were aliens the source of UFOs spotted above Norway in the 1950s? No, says the CIA: ‘That was us’

In the 1950s Norwegians were left stunned by a series of seemingly inexplicable UFO sightings.

Throughout the decade numerous lights in the sky were reported by members of the public and pilots alike, with some suggesting they were of extraterrestrial origin.

But now the mystery has apparently been solved, as the CIA has revealed it wasn’t ET at all – rather, it was the agency flying their secretive U-2 aircraft high in the atmosphere.

In a tweet the CIA said: ‘Remember reports of unusual activity in the skies in the ‘50s? That was us.’

The revelation originally came about through something known as Operation Blue Book in 1969

This was a systematic study of various UFO reports that sought to discover if the sightings were a threat to national security

‘High-altitude testing of the U-2 soon led to an unexpected side effect – a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects (UFO’s),’ the CIA says in their book ‘The CIA and the U-2 Program’.

‘In the mid-1950s, most commercial airliners flew at altitudes between 10,000 and 20,000 feet [3,000 and 6,000 metres] and military aircraft like the B-47s and B-57s operated at altitudes below 40,000 feet.

‘Consequently once U-2s started flying at altitudes above 60,000 feet [18,000 metres], air-traffic controllers began receiving increasing numbers of UFO reports.’

The CIA reports how these sightings in turn led to Operation Blue Book, which ultimately found that one-half of all UFO reports in the late 1950s and most of the 1960s were caused by UFOs.

But, at the time, they could not reveal this to the public.