Frankly A. Davin-Wilson: The Unknown Ufologist

 

Franklyn Angus Davin Wilson c 1938-New Year's Day 1984

Franklyn served in the Royal Army Medical Corps and was a student at Bristol Grammar School. Franklyn had sighted two unusual objects while on holiday and this piqued his interest in the subject of UFOs and mysteries in general. He joined the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA) and the British Flying Saucer Bureau (f 1952) -it was at a meeting of the latter that I met Franklyn. He came up and said "Hello" and shook my hand and added "You're the new chap -welcome" and gave a big smile revealing long vampiric fangs. Apparently my non reaction to the fangs was not what he expected as most people usually stepped back or their smiles vanished. They were artificial fangs but quite impressive. Taking them out, Franklyn looked at me and said "I think we are going to get along well"!

For a large part of the time that he was a member of BUFORA he tried to convince them how useful a computer would be for data analysis. Computers in their early days were mainly using punch cards and Franklyn (a founding member of the British Computer Society)  devised a system for BUFORA. It was rejected as being "too far off" before they could think of computer usage and despite much effort in the end he gave up as it was obvious BUFORA were not willing to go beyond paper filing of reports.

At some point Franklyn asked himself "Why don't astronomers see UFOs?" this set him off on years of gathering reports from astronomers including Clyde Tombaugh and going back to the very6 start of astronomy as a science.  As with computers and UFO research, Franklyn's Astronomers and Anomalous Observational Phenomena was a couple decades ahead of Ufology as a whole.

Another facet of research he undertook was into Unknown Orbital Objects and although UFO related it involved far more.  Then there were "Mars Mysteries" (again before the Ufologists caught on to things such as 'the face on Mars'); Mysterious Space Malfunctions (of satellite and other craft) and the KLEE TV signal mystery. The Space Signals work was interesting and I even took part in early morning ventures to detect signals.

Franklyn, rather like Dave Cowdy (a founder of Manchester Flying Saucer Research in the 1950s) was one of the original Anomalous Observational Phenomena Bureau members.  Dave died of a heart attack circa 1977.  Franklyn had kidney problems and waiting for an operation for some years and also developed respiratory problems where he struggled to breath and I had to help him a few times. Eventually he took a doctors advice (illegal at the time) to smoke cannabis when the problem was in its early stage. Franklyn was quite aware of my dislike of drugs but I did see how the inhalation worked fairly quickly and stopped him getting to the purple face stage! On one occasion I visited while he was going through an attack and as much as I hated doing so "fixed a joint" for him and observed how it affected his condition which led to my looking at cannabis and medicinal uses.

At one point Franklyn was in accommodation with no bath or shower facilities so once a week he would visit, get a meal and a bath. One one occasion he very sheepishly returned from his bath and I asked what was wrong? He had been reading an issue of Flying Saucer Review and one article put him to sleep and gave FSR a bath at the same time. My question was "What was the post that put you to sleep?" He looked at the soggy FSR and said "The one by Jenny Randles" at which point I burst out laughing and Franklyn looked at me as if I had gone a bit crazy. He did replace the FSR issue.

He was a big supporter of compiling the CE3K/Alien Entity Archive  and would often annotate magazines or books to see whether I had those reports. Franklyn was also a big supporter after the BFSB had descended into chaos amid the whole UFO International/Southern UFO Network mess that quite literally made some UFO groups decide to cease activities. It was Franklyn's correspondence with Lord (Brinsley) Clancarty that eventually led to the creation of the AOP Bureau.

In 1983 I helped Franklyn update many of his files including Astronauts and UFOs and we prepared the data for release in 1984 and Lord (Brinsley) Clancarty had offered to set up a lecture/talk for the House of Lords members interested in UFOs. We discussed this over a Christmas meal I had cooked especially for him as things were a tad difficult for him at that time. I waved him off with a smile on his face and a promise to meet up in the new year and get the papers fully sorted.

Just after New Year I received a visit from one of Franklyn's friends to inform me that he had been unwell on New Year's eve 1983 but had gone to bed early after cracking a joke. Franklyn passed away from a heart attack caused by a blood clot from an earlier kidney operation on New Years Day 1984. He was 46 years old.

I did manage to get to Franklyn's files as they were about to be dumped in a skip and rescued all I could and at one point was walking with them across Bristol in a wheel barrow -some old gent decided that the large bags I had everything in would not last long so lent me the wheelbarrow (thankfully). Rather than stories of some obscure Ufologist and his lost files I have at least got the files!