Edinburgh residents were woken up last night by what appears to have been two large military helicopters flying over the city with their lights off.
Residents reported hearing the noise of the massive aircraft at around 10.30pm last night.
Social media was abuzz with reports of 'army stealth helicopters' and 'gunships' flying over the city centre.
The machines, reportedly double-rotor Chinook heavy lift helicopters, caused such a racket that many people took to twitter to try and find out what the noise was.
Gillian Webster posted: “Two black helicopters flying slowly and in tandem back & forth over the New Town with no lights on”.
User Marie said: “Did anyone else just here the loudest helicopter ever? Honestly thought the world was about to end.”
The path of the CH-47 Chinook over Edinburgh can be seen on online flight tracker websites, one of the aircraft, identified as Lifter11and recorded as British in origin, flew into Edinburgh from the east yesterday evening.
It then performed a loop around the city centre rattling some windows before heading north over the Firth of Forth into Fife.
Some speculated that it the late-night visitors might be connected to a massive military training exercise currently taking place off the coast of Scotland.
Operation Joint Warrior will see elite F-35 stealth fighters in the air over eastern Scotland as the Royal Navy flagship the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth is put through her paces in the North Sea.
The massive aircraft carrier will be joined by around 28 warships, two submarines, 81 aircraft and more than 6000 military personnel as forces attend military ranges across the country and undertake maritime exercise areas off the east, west and north coasts of Scotland.
