HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT UK’s ‘Area 51’ revealed where ‘alien abductions’ happened, flying saucers were monitored and UFO-style aircraft were tested

OVER a million alien enthusiasts recently signed up to a Facebook event to storm Area 51 — the secretive US military base believed by some to hold the wreckage of crashed UFOs.

But if Brits want to don tin foil hats and look for evidence of extraterrestrials in the UK, where should they go?

The Facebook plan to storm the American base to “see them aliens” began as a joke which is now being taken seriously — deadly seriously.

Not only did Facebook pull down the page, the Air Force issued a chilling warning to potential raiders that: “The US Air Force always stands ready to protect America and its assets.”

It’s not known exactly what secrets the shadowy base has that authorities are desperate to defend.

Ufologists — who study unidentified flying objects — believe the site holds alien spacecraft being studied for their technology, a claim famously repeated by a former engineer at the site, Bob Lazar.

But conspiracy theorists in the UK don’t need to look as far afield as the States for mysterious government facilities linked with UFOs.

Nick Pope ran the Ministry of Defence’s UFO project in the 1990s, looking into reports of flying saucers, crop circles, and even abductions.

Here he reveals the secret spots that might be “Britain’s Area 51”.

UFO investigation centre

RAF Rudloe Manor, Wiltshire

Theory: Alien technology being kept in secret underground lab

For years, conspiracy theorists believed the government was hiding something at RAF Rudloe Manor in Corsham, Wiltshire.

And to some extent, they were right — documents made public in 2010 admitted that the base WAS used in UFO investigations.

That’s because Rudloe Manor was home to the Flying Complaints Flight, a unit of the RAF Police which gathered reports of UFO sightings from RAF bases and passed them to the MoD HQ.

And the secret site came under even more scrutiny when it was revealed there was a vast network of underground tunnels beneath the base.

Ufologists had suspected this for years but instead of the tunnels being used to hide alien technology they were nuclear bomb shelters.

The vast subterranean bunkers would be where government ministers and royals would’ve been evacuated to if there was a nuclear strike on Britain.

Even though Rudloe Manor was closed in 2000, it still attracts conspiracy theorists — some have been arrested by MoD Police for breaking in.

Nick himself had a brush with the authorities when he was filming a documentary there with presenter Giorgio Tsoukalos a few years ago.

He said: “As a former MoD employee I didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to approach the site, so Giorgio went alone.

“Within moments, military police turned up and halted filming, further fuelling the conspiracy theories.”