The Global Positioning System (GPS) was first invented in Suffolk, the release of secret Government papers has revealed.

The files, previously hidden in the National Archive under the 60-year rule, shows GPS navigation, now common in all cars and on mobile phones, was first developed in Mendlesham.

For years travellers venturing north on the A140 towards the hostile and almost uninhabited county of Norfolk have passed the huge 1,000-foot mast at Mendlesham, and assumed it was some kind of television or radio transmitter.

But this has now been exposed as a government-sponsored hoax in order to cover up for the vital work of boffins at the former WW2 airfield.

Mendlesham, where GPS was first invented (photo: www.didangliansdream.co.uk)

Honouring the local dialect the project was originally called Grut’old thing Pointen Sky’ards – but Americans on the project just couldn’t get the accent right and changed the name.

But it appears the local population were in on the secret all along. Farmer Bill Hook from Stonham explained: “They made the mast just tall enough that you can see it from anywhere in Suffolk, but not from any surrounding counties.

“By looking in the direction of the mast you can work out where you are to the nearest half a mile. There’s a particular technique – you have to raise your arm horizontally in the direction of the mast, make a fist, extend your thumb upwards and then count how many of the lights on the mast are obscured.

“One light is one mile away and so on. If you can’t see the mast then you’re officially known as ‘Lost’.”

The project was scrapped, however, following a particularly foggy day in 1963 when the whole population of Suffolk was declared ‘Lost’.

Americans on the doomed scheme returned to NASA and developed the successful satellite-based system that so many people rely on today. That same system is now being put to good use in the search for signs of intelligent life in Norfolk.

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Exclusive
By Hugh Dunnett, Crime Correspondent

Police are warning men not to be taken in by an attractive older woman who is trawling Suffolk pubs offering to fulfill drinkers’ fantasies of having sex with a mother and her daughter.

Officers say the shapely blonde, believed to be in her late fifties, targets a vulnerable man sitting alone in a bar and offers to buy him a drink.

After a while of innocent chat, she asks if he has ever fantasised about a threesome with a woman and her daughter.

If the man, fuelled by a few pints of lager, shows interest, she invites him back to her house in Ipswich.

One victim, 27, who was too embarrassed to be named, issued a statement via the Suffolk Police press office to explain what happens.

He said: “I had enjoyed a couple of drinks and this woman, although a mature lady, was strikingly attractive.

“I had often wondered what it must be like to have a threesome with a woman and her daughter, so I couldn’t believe my luck when she suggested just that after sidling up to me in the pub.

“When we got back to her place I was getting very excited, and was told to wait in the sitting room.

“Only then did I discover the terrible truth. As I sat there, the woman went to the bottom of the stairs and shouted up, ‘Mum, are you still awake?’

“I’ve never run out of a house so quick in my life.”

A police spokesman said: “This woman is not breaking any laws, but she is not being entirely truthful with the poor young men she is befriending in pubs.”

Exclusive
By Rob Banks, Crime Editor

Suffolk Police’s controversial Apache gunship helicopter is patrolling the skies again after the force’s pilots completed a rigorous training regime.

The fearsome helicopter was mothballed earlier this year when confused police pilots accidentally blew up a vicarage in Needham Market.

They became baffled by the gunship’s hi-tech weaponry and navigation systems, and fired off a lethal Hellfire sidewinder missile by mistake, causing severe damage to the vicarage while the vicar Evan Elpuss was hosting members of the local Women’s Institute for afternoon tea.

Thankfully no one was seriously hurt in the incident, which occurred while the Apache was chasing down a bicycle thief, although WI treasurer Gladys Worthington-Smyth was injured by a flower pot.

Now Suffolk Police, under pressure to shave more than £125million from its budget, is bringing back the deadly chopper to become the most effective crime deterrent in the country.

View image | gettyimages.com

Fearsome: police pilots have completed training so they don’t fire missiles accidentallyWith policemen on the beat being axed, and community service officers trimmed back, criminals will be terrified to operate in Suffolk knowing that the police Apache helicopter could appear over the treeline at any moment.

A force spokesman pointed out that the gunship would also prove to be highly effective in combatting the waves of country bumpkin migrants trying to get into Suffolk from Norfolk every night.

A police insider said: “The Apache sends a very powerful message to the criminal fraternity, and this will be a great comfort to the law-abiding people of Suffolk.

“Apple scrumpers, speeding motorists, car-tax dodgers – they’ll all be fair game as we crackdown on crime.

“And now our pilots have completed the new training course, there is much less chance of them accidentally firing off a missile towards a primary school, or spraying the main shopping street in Woodbridge with machine gun fire.”

Meanwhile, The Rev Evan Elpuss has forgiven the police for blowing up his beloved Victorian vicarage.

“These things happen,” he said, while writing this Sunday’s sermon from his caravan.