Rendlesham Forest Incident
Encyclopedia
The Rendlesham Forest Incident is the name given to a series of reported sightings of unexplained lights and the alleged landing of a craft or multiple craft of unknown origin in Rendlesham Forest
, Suffolk
, England, in late December 1980, just outside RAF Woodbridge, used at the time by the U.S. Air Force. Dozens of USAF personnel were eyewitnesses to various events over a two- or three-day period. Some ufologists believe it is perhaps the most famous UFO event to have happened in Britain, ranking amongst the best-known UFO events worldwide. Along with the Berwyn Mountain UFO incident, it has been compared to the Roswell UFO incident
in the United States, and is sometimes referred to as "Britain's Roswell".
The Ministry of Defence
(MoD) denied that the event posed any threat to national security, and stated that it was therefore never investigated as a security matter. Later evidence indicated that there was a substantial MoD file on the subject, which led to claims of a cover-up; some interpreted this as part of a larger pattern of information suppression concerning the true nature of unidentified flying objects, by both the United States and British governments (see the UFO conspiracy theory
). One such person to take this view was eyewitness and Deputy Base Commander Colonel Charles Halt (see below). When the file was released in 2001 it turned out to consist mostly of internal correspondence and responses to inquiries from the public. The lack of any in-depth investigation in the publicly released documents is consistent with the MoD's earlier statement that they never took the case seriously. Included in the released files is an explanation given by defence minister Lord Trefgarne as to why the MoD did not investigate further. Sceptics regard the sightings as misinterpretation of a series of nocturnal lights – a fireball, the Orford Ness lighthouse and bright stars.
Rendlesham Forest is owned by the Forestry Commission and consists of about 5.8 square miles (15 km²) of coniferous plantations, interspersed with broadleaved belts, heathland and wetland areas. It is located in the county of Suffolk
, about 8 miles (12.9 km) east of the town of Ipswich
.
The incident occurred in the vicinity of two former military bases - RAF Bentwaters
, which is just to the north of the forest, and RAF Woodbridge
which extends into the forest from the west and is bounded by the forest on its northern and eastern edges. At the time, both were being used by the United States Air Force
and were under the command of wing commander Colonel Gordon E. Williams. The base commander was Colonel Ted Conrad, and his deputy was Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Halt. Halt's memo to the Ministry of Defence on the incident, and his personal involvement in the second night of the sightings, has given the case credibility.
The main events of the incident, including the supposed landing or landings, took place in the forest, which starts at the east end of the base runway or about 0.3 miles (0.5 km) to the east of the East Gate of RAF Woodbridge, where guards first noticed mysterious lights appearing to descend into the forest. The forest extends east about 1.0 mile (1.6 km) beyond East Gate, ending at a farmer's field, where additional events allegedly took place.
Orford Ness
lighthouse, which sceptics identify as the flashing light seen off to the coast by the airmen, is along the same line of sight but 5 miles (8 km) further east of the forest edge.
All these locations are shown on the adjacent map. Commentators have published more detailed maps of the location and a modern aerial view of the region can be found on Google Maps.
but, upon entering the forest to investigate, they saw strange lights moving through the trees, as well as a bright light from an unidentified object. One of the servicemen, Sgt. Jim Penniston, later claimed to have encountered a "craft of unknown origin" and to have made detailed notes of its features, touched its "warm" surface, and copied the numerous symbols on its body. The object allegedly flew away after their brief encounter. Penniston also claimed to have seen triangular landing gear on the object, leaving three impressions in the ground that were visible the next day. While undergoing regression hypnosis in 1994 Penniston subsequently claimed that the "craft" he encountered had come from our future, and was occupied by time travellers, not extraterrestrials. Sgt. Penniston's report made shortly after the incident contains no mention of physically encountering an unknown craft, nor of interacting with it. This report and associated sketches are neither signed nor dated, nor are they representative of AF Form 1169, Statement of Witness.
Shortly after 4 a.m. local police were called to the scene but reported that the only lights they could see were those from the Orford Ness
lighthouse, some miles away on the coast. Some reports claim that local farmyard animals had been behaving in a state of fear and panic.
After daybreak on the morning of 26 December, servicemen returned to a small clearing near the eastern edge of the forest and found three small impressions in a triangular pattern, as well as burn marks and broken branches on nearby trees. Plaster casts of the imprints were taken and have been shown in television documentaries. At 10.30 a.m. the local police were called out again, this time to see the impressions on the ground, which they thought could have been made by an animal.
It was during this investigation that a flashing light was seen across the field to the east, almost in line with a farmhouse. The Orford Ness lighthouse is visible further to the east in the same line of sight.
Later, starlike lights were seen in the sky to the north and south, the brightest of which seemed to beam down a stream of light from time to time.
There are claims that the incident was videoed by the USAF; but, if so, the resulting tape has not been made public.
, on 2 October 1983, beneath the sensational headline UFO lands in Suffolk – and that's official. The story was based on an account by a former US airman, using the pseudonym Art Wallace (supposedly to protect himself against retribution from the USAF), although his real name was Larry Warren
.
The first piece of primary evidence to be made available to the public was a memorandum written by the deputy base commander, Lt. Col. Charles I. Halt, to the Ministry of Defence
(MoD). Known as the "Halt memo", this was made available publicly in the United States under the US Freedom of Information Act
in 1983. The memorandum (left), was dated "13 Jan 81" and headed "Unexplained Lights". The two-week delay between the incident and the report might account for errors in dates and times given. The memo was not classified in any way.
Dr David Clarke has investigated the background to this memo and the reaction to it at the Ministry of Defence. His interviews with the personnel involved confirmed the cursory nature of the investigation made by the MoD, and failed to find any evidence for any other reports on the incident made by the USAF or UK apart from the Halt memo.
These documents describe the sightings of strange lights. Penniston, for instance, states that "directly to the east [of East Gate] about 1 miles [2.4km] in a large wooded area...a large yellow glowing light was emitting above the trees. In the center of the lighted area directly in the center ground level, there was a red light blinking on and off 5 to 10 sec intervals. And a blue light that was being for the most part steady." Burroughs, Penniston and Cabansag drove into the forest in search of the source of the lights.
They heard strange noises, too. Burroughs reported a noise "like a woman was screaming" and also that "you could hear the farm animals making a lot of noises". Halt heard the same noises two nights later. In a CNN interview in January 2008 he said: "The livestock around the barn seemed to be going crazy". Such noise could also have been made by Muntjac deer in the forest, which are known for their loud, shrill bark when alarmed. Cabansag said: "We figured the lights were coming from past the forest since nothing was visible when we passed through the woody forest. We would see a glowing near the beacon light, but as we got closer we found it to be a lit-up farmhouse. We got to a vantage point where we could determine that what we were chasing was only a beacon light off in the distance.” Burroughs' statement also states that "We could see a beacon going around so we went towards it. We followed it for about two miles [3 km] before we could [see] it was coming from a light house."
Penniston's statement is the only one that positively identifies a mechanical object as the source of the lights. He states that he was within 160 foot of the object and "it was defidently mechaniclal in nature". Penniston has subsequently claimed that, contrary to his statement at the time, he actually encountered a landed craft in the forest which he circled, touched and made notes of for 45 minutes, although there is no corroborating evidence of this from other witnesses. Penniston has shown on television a notebook in which he claims to have made real-time notes and sketches of the object. The notebook is headed with the date 27 December and the time 12:20 (00:20 GMT), which does not accord with the date and time given by the other witnesses for the incident. Penniston claims that he saw the object at a different landing site from the one investigated by Halt, much closer to RAF Woodbridge. This is inconsistent with his initial assessment that the light lay a mile and a half from East Gate.
The witnesses were unnerved by their experience and believed that they had witnessed something, as Buran expresses it, "out of the realm of explanation".
acquired the original recording, which documents Halt and his patrol investigating a UFO sighting in Rendlesham Forest in December 1980. This tape not only reveals much more of the background conversations but features names that could not be heard on the poor-quality 1984 dub. The tape has also been transcribed by researcher Ian Ridpath
, who includes a link to an audio download.
Halt also dismissed claims that he and his men had confused a UFO with a lighthouse beam:
Contradictions between this affidavit and the facts as recorded at the time in Halt's memo and tape recording have been pointed out.
In 2010 base commander Colonel Ted Conrad provided a statement about the incident to Dr David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University
, UFO adviser to the UK National Archives. Conrad stated that "We saw nothing that resembled Lieutenant Colonel Halt's descriptions either in the sky or on the ground." and that "We had people in position to validate Halt's narrative, but none of them could." In an interview, Conrad, criticized Halt for the claims in his affidavit, saying "he should be ashamed and embarrassed by his allegation that his country and England both conspired to deceive their citizens over this issue. He knows better.” Conrad also disputed the testimony of Sergeant Jim Penniston, who claimed to have touched an alien spacecraft; he said that he interviewed Penniston at the time and he had not mentioned any such occurrence. Conrad also suggested that the entire incident might have been a hoax.
have a record, dated 26 December 1980, of a report from the law Enforcement Desk of RAF Woodbridge, stating that "We have a sighting of some unusual lights in the sky, we have sent some unarmed troops to investigate, we are terming it as a U.F.O. at present". The police investigated this report and the result is recorded as follows: "Air Traffic Control West Drayton checked. No knowledge of aircraft. Reports received of aerial phenomena over southern England during the night. Only lights visible this area was from Orford light house. Search made of area – negative." Skeptic Ian Ridpath has speculated the reported "aerial phenomena" refers to the re-entry of the Soviet Cosmos 749 satellite's final stage rocket, which was widely seen over southern England shortly after 9 p.m. on the evening of 25 December. A letter in the police file notes that one of the PCs returned to the site in daylight in case he had missed something. "There was nothing to be seen and he remains unconvinced that the occurrence was genuine. The immediate area was swept by powerful light beams from a landing beacon at RAF Bentwaters and the Orfordness lighthouse. I know from personal experience that at night, in certain weather and cloud conditions, these beams were very pronounced and certainly caused strange visual effects." A scan of the report is available at Suffolk Constabulary's website.
visited Rendlesham in 1980 after the Rendlesham Forest Incident. No evidence has been presented and there seems to be confusion with other alleged UFO incidents.
Admiral Lord Hill-Norton, the former Chief of the UK Defence Staff, argued that an incident like this at a nuclear weapons base was necessarily of national security interest. As a member of the House of Lords, Lord Hill-Norton asked Her Majesty's Government: "Whether they are aware of any involvement by Special Branch
in the investigation of the 1980 Rendlesham Forest Incident [HL303]". Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean gave the reply that "Special Branch officers may have been aware of the incident but would not have shown any interest unless there was evidence of a potential threat to national security. No such interest appears to have been shown." Hill-Norton commented, "Either large numbers of people were hallucinating, and for an American Air Force nuclear base this is extremely dangerous, or what they say happened did happen, and in either of those circumstances there can only be one answer, and that is that it was of extreme defence interest."
In 2001 the British Government released its file on the incident to researchers following a request from Dr David Clarke under the Code of Practice for Access to Government Documents, a precursor to the Freedom of Information Act. The Ministry of Defence has since made these documents available online. The United States continues to remain silent despite the SciFi Channel
-sponsored investigation entitled "UFO Invasion at Rendlesham", the History Channel's "UFO Files – Britain's Roswell" and Coalition for Freedom of Information
inquiries.
on 9 November 2007, Jim Penniston claimed that he did a 45 minutes full investigation of the craft on the ground, touched the craft and took photos of the craft. John Burroughs apparently contradicts this in a separate interview in Robert Stack's Unsolved Mysteries. He states that after suddenly encountering the craft on the ground, "we all hit the ground, and it went up into the trees". The interviews with Jim Penniston and John Burroughs have subsequently been made available on Youtube.
Science writer Ian Ridpath
investigated the incident in 1983, initially for BBC TV
's Breakfast Time
news programme, and on 5 January 1985 wrote an article for The Guardian which did much to discredit the accounts of the UFO sightings at Rendlesham. Ridpath asked local forester Vince Thurkettle about the flashing light, and he indicated that it originated from the lighthouse at Orford Ness, which as seen from the forest edge appears to hover slightly above the ground and would appear to move as the witnesses moved between the trees. At that time, the Orford Ness lighthouse was the second-brightest in England with an intensity of 5 million candelas. In the Halt tape (mentioned above), one can hear an unidentified airman call out "There it is again ... there it is" with an interval of 5 seconds, the same frequency at which the Orford Ness lighthouse flashes. Had a UFO been present, the airmen should have reported a second source of light (the lighthouse) in the same line of sight.
Video footage of the lighthouse as seen from Col Halt's vantage point at the edge of the forest shows it flashing at this rate.
Thurkettle saw the alleged "landing marks", as did the local police, and believed them simply to be old "rabbit diggings" covered with pine needles. USAF photographs of the marks discovered by researcher Georgina Bruni were sent to the MoD by Lord Hill-Norton in 2001 and released under the Freedom of Information Act in 2007. Moreover, the supposed burn marks in the trees were actually axe cuts made by foresters that indicated the trees were ready to be felled. To give further pause to accepting the alleged UFO sighting, a meteor "almost as bright as the full Moon" was spotted over southern England at exactly the time of the initial reports of a bright object "landing" in the forest, according to Dr John Mason, who collects reports of meteor sightings for the British Astronomical Association. "Nothing came down in Rendlesham Forest," concludes Ridpath.
Crucial amongst the evidence is the interpretation of the levels of radiation in the area (clearly heard on the "Halt tape"). Experts at the UK’s National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) have pointed out that the equipment used for this measurement was not intended to measure background radiation and therefore the readings at the low end of the measurement scale are meaningless.
Steuart Campbell
proposes an alternative explanation. He agrees with the standard explanation that the incident began with the sighting of a fireball (bolide) which was interpreted by guards at the base as an aircraft falling in flames in the nearby forest. In fact it would have been hundreds of miles away over the North Sea. Campbell argues that the object subsequently seen by Halt and his men on their nocturnal expedition was the lightvessel
Shipwash and that the supposed "spacecraft" were actually bright planets, such as Venus. Campbell is critical of the USAF's abilities with their equipment.
Another theory is that the incident was a hoax. The BBC
reported that a former US security policeman, Kevin Conde
, claimed responsibility for creating strange lights in the forest by driving around in a police vehicle whose lights he had modified.
Conde has since withdrawn the claim that he was responsible for the incident. "It is my impression that I pulled my stunt during an exercise. We would not have had an exercise during the Christmas holiday [when the UFO sightings occurred]. That is a strong indication that my stunt is not the source of this specific incident". It remains possible that the coloured lights seen in the forest on the first night of the incident were due to a hoax by a perpetrator who has never come forward.
Other explanations for the incident have included a downed Soviet
spy satellite or a nuclear
incident.
in her book "Sky Crash", and Nick Redfern
in his books "Cosmic Crashes" and "A Covert Agenda".
Georgina Bruni
has researched the subject and in her book You Can't Tell the People publishes a photograph of the supposed landing site taken on the morning after the first sighting. The late Lord Hill-Norton, (Admiral of the Fleet
and former Chief of the Defence Staff
of the UK) also believed that a UFO landed at Rendlesham and repeatedly questioned the UK Government on the issue.
Larry Warren
who was the source of the original News of the World article has written extensively on the subject and is a firm believer in an extraterrestrial explanation. Warren was certainly a USAF airman at the Woodbridge base, but his own claims that he was a witness to the incident are disputed by others, notably by Col. Halt.
Bruni and Warren do not agree on the details and have clashed publicly over the supposed inaccuracies of their respective accounts.
Prominent amongst the sceptics is Ian Ridpath (mentioned above). Much of his research is available on his website, which also includes much of the raw evidence, including the original eyewitness statements.
Jenny Randles
, who originally brought the case to prominence, wrote an extensive article in her book with David Clarke
and Andy Roberts
, (The UFOs That Never Were) entitled "Rendle Shame Forest" where she came to the conclusion that "While some puzzles remain, we can probably say that no unearthly craft were seen in Rendlesham Forest. We can also argue with confidence that the main focus of the events was a series of misperceptions of everyday things encountered in less than everyday circumstances."
One of the most prominent believers in the extraterrestrial origin of the Rendlesham UFOs is Nick Pope
who worked for the MoD, researching and investigating UFO phenomena between 1991 and 1994. He discussed the Rendlesham Forest Incident in his various books and in his articles: "Selected Documents", which relates to the MoD documents on the Rendlesham Forest incident, "Rendlesham – The Unresolved Mystery", "The Rendlesham Files Reviewed" (a detailed commentary and analysis of the MoD documents) and "Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident". He has gone on record as saying that "the Rendlesham Forest Incident is bigger than Roswell" (quoted on Sci Fi Channel – see TV documentaries below).
Lieutenant Colonel (later Colonel) Charles I Halt
, the former Deputy Base Commander of USAF Bentwaters and Woodbridge, who was a major witness to these events, is also a firm believer and contributor to books and documentaries. As stated in his recent affidavit above, Halt believes he witnessed an extraterrestrial event that was then covered up. Halt was also a speaker at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on 27 September 2010, one of half a dozen former Air Force officers testifying on the subject of "U.S. Nuclear Weapons Have Been Compromised by Unidentified Aerial Objects."
Today, the forest looks quite different: the Great Storm of 1987
(winds equivalent to a category 3 hurricane) caused extensive destruction of trees, and the Forestry Commission
undertook a massive replanting programme in its aftermath. Some of the locations associated with the supposed incident are still identifiable and the Forestry Commission have marked a trail (the UFO Trail) for walkers, which includes the principal locations such as the small clearing where the object allegedly landed.
At the start of the UFO trail, there is a large triangular shaped metal information board. It features a map of the forest, clearly marking the UFO trail and gives a basic account of what happened in 1980, although with an erroneous date for the initial sighting:
"In December 1980 several sightings of UFOs were reported in Rendlesham Forest. Many think these mysterious events are the most significant UFO incident to have occurred in the UK.
"During the evening of 26 December a resident of Sudbourne, a village approximately 6 miles (10 km) to the North East of Rendlesham Forest, reported a mysterious shape (like an upturned mushroom) in the sky above his garden.
Later that night two USAF patrolmen at the East Gate of RAF Woodbridge spotted unusual lights in the forest, and were given permission to investigate. What they reported was very strange.
"This was the time of the 'Cold War' and because of the sensitive military situation at the time, the incident was officially reported to the Military Authorities by the Deputy Base Commander Lt. Colonel Charles Halt, USAF.
"There is, of course, no tangible evidence of a UFO on the ground – no debris was found apart from some broken tree top branches. We can, however, piece together, from transcripts and recordings which were taken at the time, an intriguing picture."
Rendlesham Forest
Rendlesham Forest is a 1500-hectare mixed woodland in Suffolk owned by the Forestry Commission with recreation facilities for walkers, cyclists and campers. Catering to enthusiasts of the 1980 Rendlesham Forest incident, there is a special UFO trail....
, Suffolk
Suffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
, England, in late December 1980, just outside RAF Woodbridge, used at the time by the U.S. Air Force. Dozens of USAF personnel were eyewitnesses to various events over a two- or three-day period. Some ufologists believe it is perhaps the most famous UFO event to have happened in Britain, ranking amongst the best-known UFO events worldwide. Along with the Berwyn Mountain UFO incident, it has been compared to the Roswell UFO incident
Roswell UFO incident
The Roswell UFO Incident was the recovery of an object that crashed in the general vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico, in June or July 1947, allegedly an extra-terrestrial spacecraft and its alien occupants. Since the late 1970s the incident has been the subject of intense controversy and of...
in the United States, and is sometimes referred to as "Britain's Roswell".
The Ministry of Defence
Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)
The Ministry of Defence is the United Kingdom government department responsible for implementation of government defence policy and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces....
(MoD) denied that the event posed any threat to national security, and stated that it was therefore never investigated as a security matter. Later evidence indicated that there was a substantial MoD file on the subject, which led to claims of a cover-up; some interpreted this as part of a larger pattern of information suppression concerning the true nature of unidentified flying objects, by both the United States and British governments (see the UFO conspiracy theory
UFO conspiracy theory
A UFO conspiracy theory is any one of many often overlapping conspiracy theories which argue that evidence of the reality of unidentified flying objects is being suppressed by various governments around the world...
). One such person to take this view was eyewitness and Deputy Base Commander Colonel Charles Halt (see below). When the file was released in 2001 it turned out to consist mostly of internal correspondence and responses to inquiries from the public. The lack of any in-depth investigation in the publicly released documents is consistent with the MoD's earlier statement that they never took the case seriously. Included in the released files is an explanation given by defence minister Lord Trefgarne as to why the MoD did not investigate further. Sceptics regard the sightings as misinterpretation of a series of nocturnal lights – a fireball, the Orford Ness lighthouse and bright stars.
Location
Suffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
, about 8 miles (12.9 km) east of the town of Ipswich
Ipswich
Ipswich is a large town and a non-metropolitan district. It is the county town of Suffolk, England. Ipswich is located on the estuary of the River Orwell...
.
The incident occurred in the vicinity of two former military bases - RAF Bentwaters
RAF Bentwaters
RAF Bentwaters, now known as Bentwaters Parks, is a former Royal Air Force station about 80 miles NE of London, 10 miles ENE of Ipswich, near Woodbridge, Suffolk in England...
, which is just to the north of the forest, and RAF Woodbridge
RAF Woodbridge
Royal Air Force Station Woodbridge, more commonly referred to as RAF Woodbridge, is a former Royal Air Force military airbase situated to the east of Woodbridge in the county of Suffolk, England...
which extends into the forest from the west and is bounded by the forest on its northern and eastern edges. At the time, both were being used by the United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
and were under the command of wing commander Colonel Gordon E. Williams. The base commander was Colonel Ted Conrad, and his deputy was Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Halt. Halt's memo to the Ministry of Defence on the incident, and his personal involvement in the second night of the sightings, has given the case credibility.
The main events of the incident, including the supposed landing or landings, took place in the forest, which starts at the east end of the base runway or about 0.3 miles (0.5 km) to the east of the East Gate of RAF Woodbridge, where guards first noticed mysterious lights appearing to descend into the forest. The forest extends east about 1.0 mile (1.6 km) beyond East Gate, ending at a farmer's field, where additional events allegedly took place.
Orford Ness
Orford Ness
Orford Ness is a cuspate foreland shingle spit on the Suffolk coast in Great Britain, linked to the mainland at Aldeburgh and stretching along the coast to Orford and down to North Wier Point, opposite Shingle Street. It is divided from the mainland by the River Alde, and was formed by longshore...
lighthouse, which sceptics identify as the flashing light seen off to the coast by the airmen, is along the same line of sight but 5 miles (8 km) further east of the forest edge.
All these locations are shown on the adjacent map. Commentators have published more detailed maps of the location and a modern aerial view of the region can be found on Google Maps.
Date
Retired Sgt. John Burroughs (LE) states that the events took place over three successive nights (pm into am); 24–25, 25–26 and 26–27 December 1980. One of the key pieces of primary evidence (the "Halt memo", described below) suggests that the first sightings were on the 26th, rather than 25th. The memo was written almost two weeks after the event and its author later agreed that he had probably made a mistake in his recollection of the dates. This discrepancy in dates has not only confused subsequent researchers but also led to confusion at the time, for example in the MoD's investigation and analysis of contemporaneous radar records.26 December
Around 3 a.m. on 26 December 1980 strange lights were reported by a security patrol near the East Gate of RAF Woodbridge apparently descending into nearby Rendlesham Forest. Servicemen initially thought it was a downed aircraftFixed-wing aircraft
A fixed-wing aircraft is an aircraft capable of flight using wings that generate lift due to the vehicle's forward airspeed. Fixed-wing aircraft are distinct from rotary-wing aircraft in which wings rotate about a fixed mast and ornithopters in which lift is generated by flapping wings.A powered...
but, upon entering the forest to investigate, they saw strange lights moving through the trees, as well as a bright light from an unidentified object. One of the servicemen, Sgt. Jim Penniston, later claimed to have encountered a "craft of unknown origin" and to have made detailed notes of its features, touched its "warm" surface, and copied the numerous symbols on its body. The object allegedly flew away after their brief encounter. Penniston also claimed to have seen triangular landing gear on the object, leaving three impressions in the ground that were visible the next day. While undergoing regression hypnosis in 1994 Penniston subsequently claimed that the "craft" he encountered had come from our future, and was occupied by time travellers, not extraterrestrials. Sgt. Penniston's report made shortly after the incident contains no mention of physically encountering an unknown craft, nor of interacting with it. This report and associated sketches are neither signed nor dated, nor are they representative of AF Form 1169, Statement of Witness.
Shortly after 4 a.m. local police were called to the scene but reported that the only lights they could see were those from the Orford Ness
Orford Ness
Orford Ness is a cuspate foreland shingle spit on the Suffolk coast in Great Britain, linked to the mainland at Aldeburgh and stretching along the coast to Orford and down to North Wier Point, opposite Shingle Street. It is divided from the mainland by the River Alde, and was formed by longshore...
lighthouse, some miles away on the coast. Some reports claim that local farmyard animals had been behaving in a state of fear and panic.
After daybreak on the morning of 26 December, servicemen returned to a small clearing near the eastern edge of the forest and found three small impressions in a triangular pattern, as well as burn marks and broken branches on nearby trees. Plaster casts of the imprints were taken and have been shown in television documentaries. At 10.30 a.m. the local police were called out again, this time to see the impressions on the ground, which they thought could have been made by an animal.
28 December
The servicemen returned to the site again in the early hours of 28 December 1980 with radiation detectors, although the significance of the readings they obtained is disputed. The deputy base commander Lt Col Charles I. Halt investigated this sighting personally and recorded the events on a micro-cassette recorder (see "The Halt Tape", below). The site investigated by Halt was near the eastern edge of the forest, at approximately 52° 05’ 20” N, 1° 26’ 57” E.It was during this investigation that a flashing light was seen across the field to the east, almost in line with a farmhouse. The Orford Ness lighthouse is visible further to the east in the same line of sight.
Later, starlike lights were seen in the sky to the north and south, the brightest of which seemed to beam down a stream of light from time to time.
There are claims that the incident was videoed by the USAF; but, if so, the resulting tape has not been made public.
Primary and secondary sources
The first public report of the incident was published in the tabloid newspaper News of the WorldNews of the World
The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...
, on 2 October 1983, beneath the sensational headline UFO lands in Suffolk – and that's official. The story was based on an account by a former US airman, using the pseudonym Art Wallace (supposedly to protect himself against retribution from the USAF), although his real name was Larry Warren
Larry Warren (Rendlesham)
Larry Warren , who used the pseudonym Art Wallace, was a member of the US Air Force Security Police stationed at an American base on British soil...
.
The Halt memo
Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)
The Ministry of Defence is the United Kingdom government department responsible for implementation of government defence policy and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces....
(MoD). Known as the "Halt memo", this was made available publicly in the United States under the US Freedom of Information Act
Freedom of Information Act (United States)
The Freedom of Information Act is a federal freedom of information law that allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States government. The Act defines agency records subject to disclosure, outlines mandatory disclosure...
in 1983. The memorandum (left), was dated "13 Jan 81" and headed "Unexplained Lights". The two-week delay between the incident and the report might account for errors in dates and times given. The memo was not classified in any way.
Dr David Clarke has investigated the background to this memo and the reaction to it at the Ministry of Defence. His interviews with the personnel involved confirmed the cursory nature of the investigation made by the MoD, and failed to find any evidence for any other reports on the incident made by the USAF or UK apart from the Halt memo.
Statements from eyewitnesses on 26 December
The Scottish researcher James Easton succeeded in obtaining the original witness statements made for Col. Halt by Fred A. Buran, 81st Security Police Squadron, Airman First Class John Burroughs, 81st LE, Airman Edward N. Cabansag, 81st Security Police Squadron, Master-Sergeant J. D. Chandler, 81st Security Police Squadron and Staff-Sergeant Jim Penniston, 81st Security Police Squadron. These documents are now in the public domain and scans of them are available on Ian Ridpath's website.These documents describe the sightings of strange lights. Penniston, for instance, states that "directly to the east [of East Gate] about 1 miles [2.4km] in a large wooded area...a large yellow glowing light was emitting above the trees. In the center of the lighted area directly in the center ground level, there was a red light blinking on and off 5 to 10 sec intervals. And a blue light that was being for the most part steady." Burroughs, Penniston and Cabansag drove into the forest in search of the source of the lights.
They heard strange noises, too. Burroughs reported a noise "like a woman was screaming" and also that "you could hear the farm animals making a lot of noises". Halt heard the same noises two nights later. In a CNN interview in January 2008 he said: "The livestock around the barn seemed to be going crazy". Such noise could also have been made by Muntjac deer in the forest, which are known for their loud, shrill bark when alarmed. Cabansag said: "We figured the lights were coming from past the forest since nothing was visible when we passed through the woody forest. We would see a glowing near the beacon light, but as we got closer we found it to be a lit-up farmhouse. We got to a vantage point where we could determine that what we were chasing was only a beacon light off in the distance.” Burroughs' statement also states that "We could see a beacon going around so we went towards it. We followed it for about two miles [3 km] before we could [see] it was coming from a light house."
Penniston's statement is the only one that positively identifies a mechanical object as the source of the lights. He states that he was within 160 foot of the object and "it was defidently mechaniclal in nature". Penniston has subsequently claimed that, contrary to his statement at the time, he actually encountered a landed craft in the forest which he circled, touched and made notes of for 45 minutes, although there is no corroborating evidence of this from other witnesses. Penniston has shown on television a notebook in which he claims to have made real-time notes and sketches of the object. The notebook is headed with the date 27 December and the time 12:20 (00:20 GMT), which does not accord with the date and time given by the other witnesses for the incident. Penniston claims that he saw the object at a different landing site from the one investigated by Halt, much closer to RAF Woodbridge. This is inconsistent with his initial assessment that the light lay a mile and a half from East Gate.
The witnesses were unnerved by their experience and believed that they had witnessed something, as Buran expresses it, "out of the realm of explanation".
The Halt Tape
Also, in 1984, a copy of what became known as the "Halt Tape" fell into the hands of researchers. Unfortunately, because of static electricity and the fact that the tape had been dubbed on an old machine, much of its background conversations could not be discerned. The US Sci Fi ChannelSci Fi Channel (United States)
Syfy , formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel and SCI FI, is an American cable television channel featuring science fiction, supernatural, fantasy, reality, paranormal, wrestling, and horror programming. Launched on September 24, 1992, it is part of the entertainment conglomerate NBCUniversal, a...
acquired the original recording, which documents Halt and his patrol investigating a UFO sighting in Rendlesham Forest in December 1980. This tape not only reveals much more of the background conversations but features names that could not be heard on the poor-quality 1984 dub. The tape has also been transcribed by researcher Ian Ridpath
Ian Ridpath
Ian William Ridpath is an English science writer and broadcaster made famous for his investigation and explanation of the Rendlesham Forest Incident of December 1980....
, who includes a link to an audio download.
The Halt Affidavit
In June 2010, retired Colonel Charles Halt signed a notarized affidavit, in which he again summarized what had happened, then stated he believed the event to be extraterrestrial and it had been covered up by both the US and UK:- "I believe the objects that I saw at close quarter were extraterrestrial in origin and that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted—both then and now—to subvert the significance of what occurred at Rendlesham Forest and RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practiced methods of disinformation."
Halt also dismissed claims that he and his men had confused a UFO with a lighthouse beam:
- "While in Rendlesham Forest, our security team observed a light that looked like a large eye, red in color, moving through the trees. After a few minutes this object began dripping something that looked like molten metal. A short while later it broke into several smaller, white-colored objects which flew away in all directions. Claims by skeptics that this was merely a sweeping beam from a distant lighthouse are unfounded; we could see the unknown light and the lighthouse simultaneously. The latter was 35 to 40-degrees off where all of this was happening."
Contradictions between this affidavit and the facts as recorded at the time in Halt's memo and tape recording have been pointed out.
In 2010 base commander Colonel Ted Conrad provided a statement about the incident to Dr David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield Hallam University is a higher education institution in South Yorkshire, England, based on two sites in Sheffield. City Campus is located in the city centre, close to Sheffield railway station, and Collegiate Crescent Campus is about two miles away, adjacent to Ecclesall Road in...
, UFO adviser to the UK National Archives. Conrad stated that "We saw nothing that resembled Lieutenant Colonel Halt's descriptions either in the sky or on the ground." and that "We had people in position to validate Halt's narrative, but none of them could." In an interview, Conrad, criticized Halt for the claims in his affidavit, saying "he should be ashamed and embarrassed by his allegation that his country and England both conspired to deceive their citizens over this issue. He knows better.” Conrad also disputed the testimony of Sergeant Jim Penniston, who claimed to have touched an alien spacecraft; he said that he interviewed Penniston at the time and he had not mentioned any such occurrence. Conrad also suggested that the entire incident might have been a hoax.
Suffolk Police log
Suffolk ConstabularySuffolk Constabulary
Suffolk Constabulary is the territorial police force responsible for policing Suffolk in East Anglia, England.Suffolk Constabulary is responsible for policing an area of , with a population of...
have a record, dated 26 December 1980, of a report from the law Enforcement Desk of RAF Woodbridge, stating that "We have a sighting of some unusual lights in the sky, we have sent some unarmed troops to investigate, we are terming it as a U.F.O. at present". The police investigated this report and the result is recorded as follows: "Air Traffic Control West Drayton checked. No knowledge of aircraft. Reports received of aerial phenomena over southern England during the night. Only lights visible this area was from Orford light house. Search made of area – negative." Skeptic Ian Ridpath has speculated the reported "aerial phenomena" refers to the re-entry of the Soviet Cosmos 749 satellite's final stage rocket, which was widely seen over southern England shortly after 9 p.m. on the evening of 25 December. A letter in the police file notes that one of the PCs returned to the site in daylight in case he had missed something. "There was nothing to be seen and he remains unconvinced that the occurrence was genuine. The immediate area was swept by powerful light beams from a landing beacon at RAF Bentwaters and the Orfordness lighthouse. I know from personal experience that at night, in certain weather and cloud conditions, these beams were very pronounced and certainly caused strange visual effects." A scan of the report is available at Suffolk Constabulary's website.
Other military installation involvement
Some researchers have claimed that personnel from Porton DownPorton Down
Porton Down is a United Kingdom government and military science park. It is situated slightly northeast of Porton near Salisbury in Wiltshire, England. To the northwest lies the MoD Boscombe Down test range facility which is operated by QinetiQ...
visited Rendlesham in 1980 after the Rendlesham Forest Incident. No evidence has been presented and there seems to be confusion with other alleged UFO incidents.
Admiral Lord Hill-Norton, the former Chief of the UK Defence Staff, argued that an incident like this at a nuclear weapons base was necessarily of national security interest. As a member of the House of Lords, Lord Hill-Norton asked Her Majesty's Government: "Whether they are aware of any involvement by Special Branch
Special Branch
Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security in British and Commonwealth police forces, as well as in the Royal Thai Police...
in the investigation of the 1980 Rendlesham Forest Incident [HL303]". Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean gave the reply that "Special Branch officers may have been aware of the incident but would not have shown any interest unless there was evidence of a potential threat to national security. No such interest appears to have been shown." Hill-Norton commented, "Either large numbers of people were hallucinating, and for an American Air Force nuclear base this is extremely dangerous, or what they say happened did happen, and in either of those circumstances there can only be one answer, and that is that it was of extreme defence interest."
In 2001 the British Government released its file on the incident to researchers following a request from Dr David Clarke under the Code of Practice for Access to Government Documents, a precursor to the Freedom of Information Act. The Ministry of Defence has since made these documents available online. The United States continues to remain silent despite the SciFi Channel
Sci Fi Channel (United States)
Syfy , formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel and SCI FI, is an American cable television channel featuring science fiction, supernatural, fantasy, reality, paranormal, wrestling, and horror programming. Launched on September 24, 1992, it is part of the entertainment conglomerate NBCUniversal, a...
-sponsored investigation entitled "UFO Invasion at Rendlesham", the History Channel's "UFO Files – Britain's Roswell" and Coalition for Freedom of Information
Coalition for Freedom of Information
The Coalition for Freedom of Information is a group which seeks the release of classified governmental UFO files as well as scientific, congressional and media credibility for the study of this subject....
inquiries.
Scepticism
Jim Penniston and John Burroughs went to investigate the craft together. In an interview with Larry KingLarry King
Lawrence Harvey "Larry" King is an American television and radio host whose work has been recognized with awards including two Peabodys and ten Cable ACE Awards....
on 9 November 2007, Jim Penniston claimed that he did a 45 minutes full investigation of the craft on the ground, touched the craft and took photos of the craft. John Burroughs apparently contradicts this in a separate interview in Robert Stack's Unsolved Mysteries. He states that after suddenly encountering the craft on the ground, "we all hit the ground, and it went up into the trees". The interviews with Jim Penniston and John Burroughs have subsequently been made available on Youtube.
Science writer Ian Ridpath
Ian Ridpath
Ian William Ridpath is an English science writer and broadcaster made famous for his investigation and explanation of the Rendlesham Forest Incident of December 1980....
investigated the incident in 1983, initially for BBC TV
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...
's Breakfast Time
Breakfast Time
Breakfast Time was British television's first national breakfast show, beating TV-am's flagship programme Good Morning Britain to the air by two weeks.The show was revolutionary for the time...
news programme, and on 5 January 1985 wrote an article for The Guardian which did much to discredit the accounts of the UFO sightings at Rendlesham. Ridpath asked local forester Vince Thurkettle about the flashing light, and he indicated that it originated from the lighthouse at Orford Ness, which as seen from the forest edge appears to hover slightly above the ground and would appear to move as the witnesses moved between the trees. At that time, the Orford Ness lighthouse was the second-brightest in England with an intensity of 5 million candelas. In the Halt tape (mentioned above), one can hear an unidentified airman call out "There it is again ... there it is" with an interval of 5 seconds, the same frequency at which the Orford Ness lighthouse flashes. Had a UFO been present, the airmen should have reported a second source of light (the lighthouse) in the same line of sight.
Video footage of the lighthouse as seen from Col Halt's vantage point at the edge of the forest shows it flashing at this rate.
Thurkettle saw the alleged "landing marks", as did the local police, and believed them simply to be old "rabbit diggings" covered with pine needles. USAF photographs of the marks discovered by researcher Georgina Bruni were sent to the MoD by Lord Hill-Norton in 2001 and released under the Freedom of Information Act in 2007. Moreover, the supposed burn marks in the trees were actually axe cuts made by foresters that indicated the trees were ready to be felled. To give further pause to accepting the alleged UFO sighting, a meteor "almost as bright as the full Moon" was spotted over southern England at exactly the time of the initial reports of a bright object "landing" in the forest, according to Dr John Mason, who collects reports of meteor sightings for the British Astronomical Association. "Nothing came down in Rendlesham Forest," concludes Ridpath.
Crucial amongst the evidence is the interpretation of the levels of radiation in the area (clearly heard on the "Halt tape"). Experts at the UK’s National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) have pointed out that the equipment used for this measurement was not intended to measure background radiation and therefore the readings at the low end of the measurement scale are meaningless.
Steuart Campbell
Steuart Campbell
Steuart Campbell is an Edinburgh-based sceptic and investigative science writer born in Birmingham. Campbell trained as an architect and worked as one until the mid-1970s. He then gained a degree in mathematics and science from the Open University .He has written books on science and...
proposes an alternative explanation. He agrees with the standard explanation that the incident began with the sighting of a fireball (bolide) which was interpreted by guards at the base as an aircraft falling in flames in the nearby forest. In fact it would have been hundreds of miles away over the North Sea. Campbell argues that the object subsequently seen by Halt and his men on their nocturnal expedition was the lightvessel
Lightvessel
A lightvessel, or lightship, is a ship which acts as a lighthouse. They are used in waters that are too deep or otherwise unsuitable for lighthouse construction...
Shipwash and that the supposed "spacecraft" were actually bright planets, such as Venus. Campbell is critical of the USAF's abilities with their equipment.
Another theory is that the incident was a hoax. The BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
reported that a former US security policeman, Kevin Conde
Kevin Conde
Kevin Conde was a former US security police officer near RAF Woodbridge and RAF Bentwaters in England, best known for an alleged prank on fellow security personnel relating to a UFO sighting known as the Rendlesham Forest Incident. The incident was covered by the BBC documentary program 'Inside Out'...
, claimed responsibility for creating strange lights in the forest by driving around in a police vehicle whose lights he had modified.
Conde has since withdrawn the claim that he was responsible for the incident. "It is my impression that I pulled my stunt during an exercise. We would not have had an exercise during the Christmas holiday [when the UFO sightings occurred]. That is a strong indication that my stunt is not the source of this specific incident". It remains possible that the coloured lights seen in the forest on the first night of the incident were due to a hoax by a perpetrator who has never come forward.
Other explanations for the incident have included a downed Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
spy satellite or a nuclear
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
incident.
Researchers and commentators
Some of the first people to examine the event in detail were the British Ufologist Jenny RandlesJenny Randles
Jenny Randles is a British author and former director of investigations with the British UFO Research Association , serving in that role from 1982 through to 1994.-Career:Randles specializes in writing books on UFOs and paranormal phenomena...
in her book "Sky Crash", and Nick Redfern
Nick Redfern
Nicholas "Nick" Redfern born 1964 in Pelsall, Walsall, Staffordshire is a British best-selling author, Ufologist and Cryptozoologist now living in Dallas, Texas, U.S.....
in his books "Cosmic Crashes" and "A Covert Agenda".
Georgina Bruni
Georgina Bruni
Georgina Bruni was a British-born businesswoman and a UFO researcher best known for her book on the Rendlesham Forest incident, You Can't Tell the People...
has researched the subject and in her book You Can't Tell the People publishes a photograph of the supposed landing site taken on the morning after the first sighting. The late Lord Hill-Norton, (Admiral of the Fleet
Admiral of the Fleet (Royal Navy)
Admiral of the fleet is the highest rank of the British Royal Navy and other navies, which equates to the NATO rank code OF-10. The rank still exists in the Royal Navy but routine appointments ceased in 1996....
and former Chief of the Defence Staff
Chief of the Defence Staff (United Kingdom)
The Chief of the Defence Staff is the professional head of the British Armed Forces, a senior official within the Ministry of Defence, and the most senior uniformed military adviser to the Secretary of State for Defence and the Prime Minister...
of the UK) also believed that a UFO landed at Rendlesham and repeatedly questioned the UK Government on the issue.
Larry Warren
Larry Warren (Rendlesham)
Larry Warren , who used the pseudonym Art Wallace, was a member of the US Air Force Security Police stationed at an American base on British soil...
who was the source of the original News of the World article has written extensively on the subject and is a firm believer in an extraterrestrial explanation. Warren was certainly a USAF airman at the Woodbridge base, but his own claims that he was a witness to the incident are disputed by others, notably by Col. Halt.
Bruni and Warren do not agree on the details and have clashed publicly over the supposed inaccuracies of their respective accounts.
Prominent amongst the sceptics is Ian Ridpath (mentioned above). Much of his research is available on his website, which also includes much of the raw evidence, including the original eyewitness statements.
Jenny Randles
Jenny Randles
Jenny Randles is a British author and former director of investigations with the British UFO Research Association , serving in that role from 1982 through to 1994.-Career:Randles specializes in writing books on UFOs and paranormal phenomena...
, who originally brought the case to prominence, wrote an extensive article in her book with David Clarke
David Clarke
-Entertainment:* David Clarke , motion picture and Broadway actor* Dave Clarke * Dave Clarke , techno DJ from England-Sport:* David Clarke , English footballer...
and Andy Roberts
Andy Roberts
Anderson Montgomery Everton "Andy" Roberts is a former West Indian cricketer. He was an excellent fast bowler, twice taking seven wickets in an innings of a Test match...
, (The UFOs That Never Were) entitled "Rendle Shame Forest" where she came to the conclusion that "While some puzzles remain, we can probably say that no unearthly craft were seen in Rendlesham Forest. We can also argue with confidence that the main focus of the events was a series of misperceptions of everyday things encountered in less than everyday circumstances."
One of the most prominent believers in the extraterrestrial origin of the Rendlesham UFOs is Nick Pope
Nick Pope
Nick Pope worked for 21 years at the British Government's Ministry of Defence from 1985 to 2006. He is best-known for a job that he did from 1991 to 1994, where his duties included investigating reports of UFO sightings, to see if they had any defence significance...
who worked for the MoD, researching and investigating UFO phenomena between 1991 and 1994. He discussed the Rendlesham Forest Incident in his various books and in his articles: "Selected Documents", which relates to the MoD documents on the Rendlesham Forest incident, "Rendlesham – The Unresolved Mystery", "The Rendlesham Files Reviewed" (a detailed commentary and analysis of the MoD documents) and "Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident". He has gone on record as saying that "the Rendlesham Forest Incident is bigger than Roswell" (quoted on Sci Fi Channel – see TV documentaries below).
Lieutenant Colonel (later Colonel) Charles I Halt
Charles I Halt
Charles I. Halt is a retired United States Air Force colonel and the former base commander of RAF Bentwaters, near Woodbridge, Suffolk. After serving in Vietnam, Japan and Korea, he was assigned to Bentwaters as deputy commander....
, the former Deputy Base Commander of USAF Bentwaters and Woodbridge, who was a major witness to these events, is also a firm believer and contributor to books and documentaries. As stated in his recent affidavit above, Halt believes he witnessed an extraterrestrial event that was then covered up. Halt was also a speaker at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on 27 September 2010, one of half a dozen former Air Force officers testifying on the subject of "U.S. Nuclear Weapons Have Been Compromised by Unidentified Aerial Objects."
Rendlesham Forest today
Great Storm of 1987
The Great Storm of 1987 occurred on the night of 15/16 October 1987, when an unusually strong weather system caused winds to hit much of southern England and northern France...
(winds equivalent to a category 3 hurricane) caused extensive destruction of trees, and the Forestry Commission
Forestry Commission
The Forestry Commission is a non-ministerial government department responsible for forestry in Great Britain. Its mission is to protect and expand Britain's forests and woodlands and increase their value to society and the environment....
undertook a massive replanting programme in its aftermath. Some of the locations associated with the supposed incident are still identifiable and the Forestry Commission have marked a trail (the UFO Trail) for walkers, which includes the principal locations such as the small clearing where the object allegedly landed.
At the start of the UFO trail, there is a large triangular shaped metal information board. It features a map of the forest, clearly marking the UFO trail and gives a basic account of what happened in 1980, although with an erroneous date for the initial sighting:
"In December 1980 several sightings of UFOs were reported in Rendlesham Forest. Many think these mysterious events are the most significant UFO incident to have occurred in the UK.
"During the evening of 26 December a resident of Sudbourne, a village approximately 6 miles (10 km) to the North East of Rendlesham Forest, reported a mysterious shape (like an upturned mushroom) in the sky above his garden.
Later that night two USAF patrolmen at the East Gate of RAF Woodbridge spotted unusual lights in the forest, and were given permission to investigate. What they reported was very strange.
"This was the time of the 'Cold War' and because of the sensitive military situation at the time, the incident was officially reported to the Military Authorities by the Deputy Base Commander Lt. Colonel Charles Halt, USAF.
"There is, of course, no tangible evidence of a UFO on the ground – no debris was found apart from some broken tree top branches. We can, however, piece together, from transcripts and recordings which were taken at the time, an intriguing picture."
Official government sources
- MoD Documents covering the UFO incident at Rendlesham Forest in 1980 were first released in May 2001 to Dr. David Clarke of Sheffield University who had requested them under the Code of Practice for Access to Government Information (which preceded the UK's Freedom of Information Act). Dr Clarke discusses them on his website In 2008 the files were transferred from MoD to The National Archives (TNA) and removed from the MoD website.
- As of August 2009, all documents relating to the incident are available on the National Archives UFO section under reference DEFE 24/1948. These documents include the request above, along with details of the Ombudsman judgment which followed. For a few months, access to this file, and other files released on the same date were free to view and download. As of January 2011, these documents are available for a fee of €3.50.
- On March 02, 2011 it was revealed that several MoD files relating to the incident had been disposed of as part of a policy to destroy files of no historical interest. However, their contents were mostly duplicates of the Rendlesham files released in August 2010.
- The Halt Memo
TV documentaries
- Lifetime Television's Unsolved MysteriesUnsolved MysteriesUnsolved Mysteries is an American television program, hosted by Robert Stack, from 1987 until 2002, and later by Dennis Farina, starting in 2008...
: "Bentwaters UFO", 18 September 1991 (US) - London Weekend Television's Strange But True?Strange But True?Strange But True? was a British supernatural documentary television series, presented by Michael Aspel, which explored supernatural phenomena and unexplained mysteries. It was produced by LWT and broadcast in the United Kingdom on ITV between 1993 and 1997...
, 1994 December 9 (UK) - BBC3's Britain's Closest Encounter, 2003 March 15 (UK)
- SciFi Channel's UFO Invasion at Rendlesham, 12 December 2003 (US), 1 December 2005 (UK)
- British UFO Files, 2004 (Five (TV), UK)
- National Geographic Channel's Naked ScienceNaked ScienceNaked Science is an American documentary television series that premiered in 2004 on the National Geographic Channel. The program features various subjects related to science and technology.-External links: ***...
: "Close Encounters", 17 December 2005 (US) - History Channel's UFO FilesUFO FilesUFO Files was an American television series that was produced from 2004 to 2007 for The History Channel. The program covered the phenomena of unidentified flying and submerged objects, close encounters with alleged extraterrestrial life, and alleged military and government cover-up conspiracies.In...
: "Britain's Roswell", 17 December 2005 (US), 22 January 2006 (UK) - History Channel's UFO HuntersUFO HuntersUFO Hunters is an American television series that premiered on January 30, 2008 on The History Channel, produced by Motion Picture Production Inc., and ran for three seasons....
, 27 February 2008 - History Channel's I know What I Saw (sequel to Out of the BlueOut of the Blue (2002 film)Out of the Blue is a feature-length documentary on the UFO phenomenon.The film is narrated by Peter Coyote and attempts to show, through interviews with members of the scientific community, eye witnesses and high-ranking military and government personnel, that some unidentified flying objects could...
), December 2009 - HIstory Channel's Ancient AliensAncient AliensAncient Aliens is an American television series that premiered on April 20, 2010 on the History channel. Produced by Prometheus Entertainment, the program presents theories of ancient astronauts and proposes that historical texts, archaeology and legends contain evidence of past...
season 2 episode 10, "Alien Contacts", 30 December 2010
See also
- Lakenheath-Bentwaters incidentLakenheath-Bentwaters incidentThe Lakenheath-Bentwaters Incident was a series of radar and visual contacts with Unidentified Flying Objects that took place over airbases in eastern England on the night of 13 - 14 August 1956, involving both RAF and USAF personnel...
- UFO conspiracy theoryUFO conspiracy theoryA UFO conspiracy theory is any one of many often overlapping conspiracy theories which argue that evidence of the reality of unidentified flying objects is being suppressed by various governments around the world...
- Unidentified flying objectUnidentified flying objectA term originally coined by the military, an unidentified flying object is an unusual apparent anomaly in the sky that is not readily identifiable to the observer as any known object...
- List of major UFO movies/tv shows
- Paulding LightPaulding LightThe Paulding Light is a light that appears in a valley that lies outside of Paulding, Michigan. Reports of the light have appeared since the 1960s, with popular folklore providing such explanations as ghosts, geologic activity, or swamp gas...
- List of UFO sightings
- UFO sightings in United KingdomUFO sightings in United KingdomThis is a list of notable alleged sightings of unidentified flying objects or UFOs in the United Kingdom. Many more sightings became known since 2008, when the National Archives have gradually released MoD UFO sighting reports...
External links
- James Penniston and John Burroughs, an updated website and forum regarding all information and media events related to the UFO case from 1980.
- The Rendlesham forest incident Website – An up-to-date information repository, containing articles, evidence and media related to the case.
- Ian Ridpath's analysis of the incident – A sceptical view, with explanations for all the main aspects of the case.
- The National Archives UFO Files section.
- Photos and detailed maps of area with discussion
- 2005 Nick Pope Interview at 28:25 minutes and 32:15 minutes he talks about Rendlesham.
- Skeptoid podcast attempts to categorically debunk the Rendlesham incident.