From: james.easton@stairway.co.uk (James Easton)
Newsgroups: alt.ufo.reports
Subject: Rendlesham Forest Upd 1/5
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 1994 17:50:00 GMT

Last Friday evening's "Strange But True" program on ITV, in the U.K.,
devoted the entire program to the 1980 Rendlesham forest incident.

Following the program's brief and inadequate coverage of the recent
incidents from Central Scotland, I expected this would be a further
disappointment.

It was not. It was one of the finest, perhaps the finest, reconstructions of
a UFO incident ever broadcast on U.K. national television. Granted, given
that I could probably name the U.K. programs which have addressed the UFO
phenomenon during the last few years, this isn't saying much, however, it
was a welcome surprise and has set the standards for others to follow.

Not only did they allocate adequate time to reconstruct events, more
importantly, they also interviewed many of the main witnesses at length.

Before posting details of this new documentary, it may be useful to compare
the content with that of a Sky News program on UFO's, broadcast in 1993 and
specifically featuring this case. It also contains a particularly important
interview with a local resident.

A brief summary of the 1993 program follows:

[START]
Narrative: It was on the second night, December 27th, 1980, that lights were
seen again, hovering at the end of the runway. At about 11.00 in the
evening, Gerry Harris, whose bungalow overlooks the base, saw what he first
thought was the lights of a plane, but he soon realised that it couldn't be
that because they were on course to miss the runway and crash.


Harris: "They were at a nice steady speed and were moving about, so I undone
the front door of the house and walked out into the yard here where I am now
and just stood watching them. It was all quiet and I listened and I couldn't
hear any sounds at all".

"I stood watching them and they were going up and moving about this way and
that way and they were going up, they were coming down and I watched them
for, three quarters of an hour and, all of a sudden, they disappeared.

But just before they went, before they disappeared, there was a lot of
activity on the base, I could hear vehicles running about, I could see the
flashing lights of vehicles moving about and I could hear people shouting,
it was quiet and the wind must have been in this direction. I could hear
their voices and then they were calling to each other and then I could hear
the roaring of their vehicles, which at that time of night was unusual".


Narrative: It's thought that this is where the craft came down (video shown
of large, desolate clearing). At the time it was heavily wooded but storm
damage has forced the Forestry Commission to clear the area. What happened
that night may never be known but with help from her co-worker Dot Street,
UFO investigator Brenda Butler decided to try and get at the truth. On the
night, Brenda says, there's good evidence for a crash.

Butler: "The tops of the trees were all knocked off, there was (sic) burn
marks on the ground, there was depressions on the ground and very shortly
after that the Forestry Commission came in and knocked all the trees down,
cut all the trees down, really quickly. They told us it was because of
radiation on the trees".


An interview with Jenny Randles then follows: "I appears, now we know, that
a team of about three security officers went out in response to visual
sightings of this object crashing down and saw a small object about the size
of a car manoeuvering in and out of trees and coming down close to the
ground. They got so close to it at one point that one of them tried to climb
on top of it and was literally "spaced out" by the experience".


Narrative: BUFORA investigator and author, Jenny Randles, had the tape
examined by audio experts in America. She says it wasn't a hoax made in a
studio, Colonel Halt just acted on his own initiative and made a recording
of the investigation.


Randles: "Halt appears to have been as surprised as everybody else was, the
British Squadron Leader who was in charge of the base certainly also was
mystified as to why there was no follow up by the Ministry of Defence, as to
why this whole thing was basically left as it was and this is the position
we got in the letters from the Ministry of Defence afterwards, they told us
that they didn't proceed with an investigation because they didn't consider
it to be of defence significance, but how did they know that it wasn't of
defence significance? That implies that someone, somewhere, in the upper
echelons of government, knew exactly what was going on".


Narrative: Ralph Noyes was a senior Civil Servant at the Ministry of
Defence. Among his responsibilities was dealing with the public on the
subject of UFO's. He feels that in this case, the Ministry could have done
more to clear the matter up.


Noyes: "What was peculiar about the Ministry of Defence's response was that
they were asked as early as early 81, what went on around Rendlesham, were
there not funny things seen on radar, didn't something come down near this
important base and they said, "no, no, no, nothing, nothing, nothing", and
in effect, I think they lied, which in my day we didn't, we stalled, we
refused to answer questions".

"If you say nothing happened, were these men mad? If they were mad, why
weren't they posted home? Whose finger is on triggers? That kind of awkward
question would have arisen, should have arisen, and I think probably the MoD
clammed up and actually got to the point of lying, in order to avoid that
embarrassment".


Narrative: Initially it was thought that what the men could have seen was a
nearby lighthouse, shining through the trees. That theory is now in doubt.

So far, no-one has a satisfactory explanation.

Today, 13 years later, Colonel Halt still holds to what he wrote in his
report. The tape, he says, is genuine and the idea that he mistakenly saw
only a lighthouse, is absurd.
[END]


The main content of last Friday evening's version of events now follows.
The program is hosted by Michael Aspel and I have included his accompanying
narrative:

[START]
Aspel: Bentwaters and Woodbridge, twin military bases in East Anglia. The
three miles that divide them are filled by Rendlesham forest.

An RAF radar station nearby (photograph shown). During the monitoring of a
night flying exercise, a strange object was picked up.


Mal Scurrah, former radar operator: "We didn't have the faintest idea what
it was. We checked through the air traffic agencies. There should have been
nothing in that area at the time.

The only thing we could do was send a jet aircraft in to find out what it
was. They got to within about a quarter of a mile and the pilot suddenly
started reporting that they could see a very bright light in the sky in
front of them. It was stationary on the screen and then, in seconds, it
moved off at a fantastic rate of speed. Within the space of five minutes, it
was reaching 90,000 feet and higher and we lost it off the top end of the
radar scope.

There's nothing we have in this day that can perform those kind of
maneuvers, the pilots wouldn't be able to take it.

You tell _me_ what it was".


Aspel: Back on Woodbridge base, near the east gate, Airman John Burroughs
was on security patrol with a colleague.


Burroughs: "There were strange lights out in the forest. To me, it almost
looked like Christmas lights at first, a Christmas display. At that point we
looked at each other and we decided that we'd better go out and take a
closer look 'cause we weren't sure what we were dealing with.

What we were looking at wasn't real".


Aspel: Airman Burrows and his colleague raced back to the gate house. He
contacted the Security Controller.


Burrows: "He had a lot of trouble believing what I was telling him, because
it was Christmas and I had played a lot of jokes on him before".

Eventually persuaded by the Airman's tone, the Controller contacted Sergeant
Jim Penniston.


Penniston: "I received a call from the Control Centre to go on down to the
east gate and contact John Burroughs. And I asked them what was the nature
of the problem down there and they said that they'd rather not tell me,
they'd rather have me go down there and talk to the patrol man on the scene.

The first thing that came to mind was an aircraft crash. I've had at least
30 or 40 crashes that I had been to at that point in time and that's
definitely what I thought it was".

(Having contacted the Control Centre again and reported a possible aircraft
crash): "They notified me that they were tracking an unidentified bogey
about 15 minutes ago and they confirmed it with contact with eastern radar
and Heathrow in London and the approximate location was about 5 miles off
base when they lost contact with it.

It was Christmas time and there was no scheduled flying for that night. I
got permission to proceed off base to investigate".


Aspel: Following military rules, the Americans had to leave their weapons
behind. The men went through the forest towards the lights.


Penniston: "I started to see a defined shape and at that point I realised it
wasn't an aircraft crash, a fire, or anything of that sort.

The air was filled with electricity. You could feel it on your skin as we
approached the object".


Burroughs: "You felt like you were moving in slow motion, your hair on the
back of your head was standing up, you felt like you had very little control
over your body".


Aspel: Then, they saw it.


Burroughs: "I wish I had my weapon because I felt totally defenseless".


Penniston: "It was about the size of a tank, it was triangular in shape.
Underneath the craft, was a high intensity white light emanating out of it
and it was bordered by red and blue lighting, alternating".


Aspel: When nothing happened, the men, deciding the object wasn't hostile,
got up to take a closer look.


Penniston: "On the upper left side of the craft, was an inscription. It
measured six inches high, of symbols. They looked familiar, but I couldn't
ascertain why".


Aspel: The Americans watched for about twenty minutes.


Penniston: "It slowly started moving back, weaving in and around the trees.
It got about 40 feet away, then it raised up into the air and it shot off as
fast as you could blink".


Aspel: On their return to the air base, the men were called in by the
officer in charge.


Penniston: ""Gentlemen", he says, "I need you to go over to the woods and
take a look at the area in daylight to see if you can find any more physical
evidence"".


Burroughs: "We found branches on the ground, we found indentations in the
ground".


Aspel: The local Suffolk police went out too. An officer found the
indentations but reported they'd been caused by animals burrowing.


Penniston: "I asked him why and he said, because he's not going to put
anything other than that in his report. We found that just totally absurd.
The ground was frozen and it was just impossible for that to happen".


Aspel: Then the Airmen remembered that the object they'd seen was
triangular. They measured the distance between the indentations and
discovered that they formed a perfect triangle.

The activities soon came to the attention of the deputy base commander,
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt.


Halt: "I personally knew the individuals that had reported and I knew they
were very credible people. I was sure something had happened, there was
obviously something. I certainly wasn't convinced it was a UFO but I didn't
know what it was".


Aspel: There was only one way to find out. Huge portable floodlights, known
as lightalls (sp), were rigged in the forest, ready for anything which might
appear the next night. But as darkness fell, the lightalls began to
malfunction. Lieutenant Colonel Halt was interrupted at a Christmas dinner.


Halt: "The duty Flight Lieutenant came in and he was quite shaken and
insisted upon speaking to myself and the base commander about a matter of
utmost urgency. He said, "it's back" and I said, "what's back" and he said,
"the UFO is back".

I assembled a small team of experts and we set off in the forest, ready to
debunk it".


Aspel: About 30 men followed the lights into the forest, armed with special
equipment including a night vision scope, geiger counter and a tape
recorder.

Halt: "I'm certainly glad we made the tape, because if we hadn't made the
tape, even I would have trouble believing what happened that night".


Aspel: The early hours of the morning in Rendlesham forest, Suffolk. Deputy
commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt and 30 men of the United States
Air Force, are out to debunk claims of a UFO landing.


Halt: "We had time to put this thing to bed. I knew there was something
there, there had to be something there, but I was also firmly convinced
there was a logical explanation for what was going on".


Aspel: Portable floodlights, known as lightalls, positioned in the forest,
mysteriously refused to work.


Halt: "It's very unusual to have a problem with the lightall. That night,
the lightalls wouldn't work, even when they swapped out and got other ones
from the base. In addition, we had problems with our radios. All three
frequencies we were using were intermittent and did not work properly that
night".


Aspel: But other equipment was working. A night vision scope, a geiger
counter and a tape recorder. The sound in this reconstruction is taken from
the actual tape they claim to have recorded that night.

"There's no doubt about it, there's something like a strange flashing red
light ahead".

"There, it's yellow"

"I saw a yellow tinge in it too".

"Wierd"

"It appears to be maybe moving a little bit this way?"

"It's brighter than it has been"

"it's coming this way, it is definitely coming this way".


Halt: It pulsated, although it were an eye winking at you and around the
edges, it appeared to have molten metal dripping off it, just like falling
to the ground, but I didn't see any evidence of anything on the ground. I
just couldn't believe what I was seeing, none of us could.

Here I am, a senior official that routinely denies this sort of thing and
diligently works to debunk them and I'm involved in the middle of something
I can't explain".


Aspel: The geiger counter was measuring levels twenty five times normal
background radiation. The night vision scope showed strange readings too.

The men stayed in pursuit through the woods for six hours.


Halt: "The object suddenly exploded. A silent explosion and broke into three
to five white objects and rapidly disappeared."


Aspel: A mile away, Airman John Burroughs was with the broken down
lightalls.


Burroughs: "All of a sudden, out of the distance, a blue light streaked past
us. Passing the lightalls, they came on. It passed through the open window
on the truck, going off into the distance, and the lightalls went out".


Halt: "As we moved out of the forest, we noticed three objects in the sky.
The objects in the sky were moving about, sharp angular movements, very high
speed.

I kept getting on the radio and calling the command post. I wanted to know
if they were finding anything on the radar scope. One of the objects in the
sky was sending down beams, beams of light, beams of energy, I'm not sure
what they were. At that same time I could hear on the radio, voices talking
about the beams coming down on the base".


Aspel: Then a beam shone straight at them.


Halt: "At this stage, my scepticism had definitely disappeared. I was really
in awe."


Aspel: Almost as rapidly as it appeared, it went.

An extraordinary story, but what could be behind it?

Some of what the airmen saw can be explained, astronomers say, by a rare co-
incidence of events in the sky that night.

John Mason, presumably an astronomer, is then interviewed: "One of these was
the re-entry of a Russian rocket. This came in and burnt up in the earth's
atmosphere. It was seen by thousands of eye witnesses all over south-eastern
England and the second was a brilliant natural fireball, a piece of
interplanetary rock burning up in the atmosphere".

Another astronomer thinks further confusion was caused by a third factor, a
lighthouse on the nearby coast. Ian Ridpath, the other astronomer, is then
interviewed: "Although it's six miles away, it only looks as though it's a
few hundred yards away in between the trees and as the airmen moved around,
the lighthouse beam too would have appeared to move in between the trees and
in front of them as they moved forward, which is exactly the way they
described it".


Aspel: That theory was backed up when the tape was played against the
flashing of the lighthouse. The two matched. But the Americans were well
aware of the lighthouse and said that wasn't what they saw.

Halt: "A lighthouse doesn't move through the forest, the lighthouse doesn't
go up and down, it doesn't explode, doesn't change shape, size, doesn't send
down beams of light from the sky."


Aspel: The Rendlesham forest encounters became the talk of the air base.
Lieutenant Colonel Halt knew he had to act.


Halt: "I really didn't know quite how to handle it. I reported it to my
superior and was quite concerned, to be honest with you, what his reaction
would be. But he was very supportive".


Aspel: He was told to write a memo to the British Ministry of Defence.


Halt: "I sent the memo, but I never heard. I kept checking and asking but I
never got a response".


Aspel: But other airmen say secret investigations were taking place.

Burroughs: After the incident happened, there seemed to be some strange
activity going on in the base. I'm really not sure what it was but it wasn't
normal activity".


Penniston: "At that time, we noticed that there was many unscheduled flights
coming in. They told me I was supposed to keep it quiet and not to take the
issue any further".


Aspel: According to a former U.S. Military Intelligence officer, the flights
were ordered by his colleagues.

Clifford Stone is then interviewed: "There was a total blackout of any
information leaving the base. Even the senior officials on the base were not
told about these flights coming in and leaving. These flights contained
teams of specialists. They were to gather specific data in their fields of
expertise. All of that information then was to be sent to Washington D.C.
where it would be assessed and accumulated in a finalised, highly classified
report".


Aspel: Whatever conclusions may have been reached, Lieutenant Colonel Halt
wasn't told. He's mystified as to why, as a senior officer, his report never
even received a reply.


Halt: To this day I'm very puzzled why no-one ever came back and asked for
additional information, asked questions, or even interviewed me. It doesn't
really add up.


Aspel: But news of the sightings began to leak out. Local investigators
began to take matters into their own hands.


Brenda Butler is then interviewed: "We asked the local people if they'd
heard anything and seen anything and most of the local people said that
they'd seen the lights over the forest".


Aspel: A few days later though, they seemed less forthcoming.


Butler: "They'd all been told to keep quiet and two of the local people who
lived near the air base told us originally what they'd seen from their
bedroom window and then when we went back they'd got, "MoD (Ministry of
Defence) Property - Private- Keep Out" and they'd got barriers round the
house".


Aspel: The local investigators managed to get a copy, from the U.S.
government, of the Deputy Commander's memo. In Britain, it prompted a
question in Parliament.

The relevant entry in Hansard (the record of parliament) is then shown and
reads:

RAF Woodbridge (Alleged Incident)

Mr Patrick Wall asked the Secretary of State for Defence (1) if he has seen
the United States Air Force memo dated 13 January 1981 concerning
unexplained events near RAF Woodbridge;
(2) whether, in view of the fact that the United State's Air Force Memo of
13 January 1981 on the incident at RAF Woodbridge has been released under
the Freedom Of Information Act, he will now release reports and documents
concerning similar unexplained incidents in the United Kingdom;
(3) how many unexplained sightings or radar intercepts have taken place
since 1980.

Mr Stanley: I have seen the memorandum of 13 January 1981 to which my hon.
Friend refers. Since 1980 the Department has received 1,400 reports of
sightings of flying objects which the observers have been unable to
identify. There were no corresponding unexplained radar contacts. Subject to
normal security constraints, I am ready to give information about any such
reported sightings that are found to be a matter of concern from a defence
standpoint, but there have been none to date.


Aspel: The case intrigued Lord Hill-Norton, a former Chief of Staff at the
Ministry of Defence.


Hill-Norton: "One can't help feeling that something is being concealed.
Either the Americans, and indeed the deputy base commander, were
hallucinating or they believed that something had landed there and they had
taken photographs and records of it. And in either event, it must be of
interest to the defence of the United Kingdom".


Aspel: Sergeant Jim Penniston is not only convinced by what he saw then, a
cover-up could explain what he says happened after he left the U.S. Air
Force.


Penniston: "As time went by a year or two, I had noticed that my mail was
being tampered with, opened and resealed, and we also got to the one point
where we found a listening device within my home".


Aspel: Soon after the story surrounding the Suffolk air bases surfaced, a
large swathe of Rendlesham forest was cut down, locals believe because of
the radiation left behind.


Butler: "When we asked why the trees were cleared so quickly, we were told
because of the traces that were left on them. And we tried to find out who'd
taken the trees away and we were told that they were just taken".


Aspel: The air bases have gone too. With the end of the cold war, the
Americans left. But the mystery won't go away.


Hill-Norton: "The Ministry have doggedly denied that anything untoward
occurred there and I simply don't believe it, therefore somebody, I don't
know who it is, is sitting on information which by now should be public".


Aspel: If a secret report is in Washington, what could it contain?

The former intelligence officer claims he knows.


Stone: "That finalised report, concluded, that real objects were seen, that
these objects were a result of a highly evolved, advanced technology, the
technology was so advanced that we cannot to this day replicate it, that
there was an intelligence involved and that that intelligence did not
originate on earth".


Aspel: And according to the radar operator who first saw an object, it's far
from being the only UFO incident.


Scurrah: "These things are being picked up by radar operators, throughout
the whole world, not just in Britain, and we're not told what they are and
we're not expected to ask questions about what they are".


Aspel: The Ministry of Defence admits they have more than eight thousand
cases of UFO's on file.

As for Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, although he never heard any more
about this UFO report, it didn't, as he feared, damage his career. Soon
afterwards, he was promoted from deputy commander to commander of the air
base. Rather strange you might think, if he'd been suspected of not
telling the truth.
[END]


Conclusions? You should, as always, form your own.

There are known discrepancies on the type of craft or perhaps crafts
reportedly seen and the exact events which transpired. Until we know better,
perhaps we should stick with the content of this latest investigation. At
least we know that the content of the interviews has not been misreported.

The fact that the re-entry of a Russian satellite and a particularly bright
meteor both allegedly occurred around the time of the Rendlesham incidents
must of course be considered as a possible explanation.

Assuming the fireball would be a relatively brief occurrence, that is the
end of that theory. The satellite re-entry does not begin to explain the
eye-witness accounts of the events which occurred on 2 consecutive nights
and must also be wholly discounted.

In offering such explanations, one can only wonder if John Mason has ever
researched this case.

The lighthouse theory must also be objectively examined. I have yet to hear
conclusive evidence that it can been seen from the forest and that it was
even in operation on the nights in question. Assuming that both are
affirmative and we accept that it may have been mistaken as part of the
phenomenon, it can not of course begin to explain the radar sighting, the
independent accounts of lights moving directly above and around the forest,
the accounts of "electricity" in the surrounding environment, the clear
description of a triangular shaped craft with visible markings, the intense
lights beamed down from above, the sudden disappearance of the craft, the
indentations on the ground, the apparent interference to the lightalls and
radio communications, the blue ball of light which appeared to set off the
lightalls and so on.

It is simply not credible to suggest that the presence of the lighthouse is
an explanation of events at Rendlesham forest.


The involvement of Clifford Stone adds further intrigue. I am not familiar
with Mr Stone and would appreciate any information with regard to his
background and specifically his role in the field of UFO research.

His claims are obviously quite fundamental.

There does seem to have been some intense activity following these
sightings. It is also crucial to appreciate that Halt and his colleagues are
still bound by security oaths and know a lot more than they can say.

Halt himself has allegedly admitted that his memo does not contain all of
the facts pertaining to this case and others involved at the scene of the
second night's encounter have also apparently confirmed that photographs
were taken by personnel from the base.

When Halt confirms that he "assembled a small team of experts and we set off
in the forest, ready to debunk it", we could perhaps assume that those
experts were well prepared and that cameras would be standard equipment.

However, the bottom line is that whilst our respective governments continue
to deceive us, we can but form conclusions from the available evidence and
wonder what is so terrible that we cannot be told the truth.

"I think they lied, which in my day we didn't, we stalled, we refused to
answer questions".


Cheers,

James.

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