A couple could not believe their eyes when they both saw what appeared to be a giant bullet zipping across the sky over their Whitchurch home.

The Tavistock area is not know for its extraterrestrial spacecraft or other alien objects in the sky, it is no Roswell (a New Mexico site famous for a crashed military ‘flying saucer’). However, the couple are convinced they have seen, in broad daylight, something unexplained.

Although too fast to snap a photo with her iPad, Carol Cooper had time to alert her partner Mike Ingram and they both reported the same ‘mystery’ object flashing over their garden on a sunny morning.

It was faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and was able to leap over a passenger plane high above it – according to the two eye witnesses on Sunday, October 4 at 11am.

Carol said: “It was a bright cloudless day and we both saw what looked like a very large silver bullet travelling very fast across the sky. It was rounded at the front and back, like a bullet or a capsule. It didn’t have a tail or wings or any prominent marking like a normal plane. Though there were two faint horizontal lines on its side.

“It then veered right and went up even higher and seemed to catch up with a much higher ordinary passenger jet so easily. It followed the vapour trail of the jet and then sort of jumped over it.

“We’re used to seeing ordinary jet liners flying high over this area because we’re obviously under a flight path from airports further east, such as around London and Exeter. But this was really different. Where the passenger jet was a dull grey, this was a dazzling bright shiny metal against a blue sky. It was in sight for only a few minutes. But we both saw the same thing.”

The intrigued couple researched on the internet and accept the most likely, more prosaic answer – that it was a military aircraft ‘allowed’ by aviation rules to fly much faster than civilian jets. Its apparent smooth shape was down to the streamlined design, while the relative bright appearance was due to a radar-cheating reflective surface.

The lack of tail and wings was probably a consequence of the blinding dazzle effect making detail indistinct. The overall design was also part of the craft being made as ‘stealthy’ as possible – hard to detect by enemies. The relative sizes of the aircraft and distances to each other that Mike and Carol observed could be explained by the different heights.