UFO sightings

Rendlesham Forest UFO incident

The Rendlesham Forest incident took place in late December 1980 in US Air Force base RAF Woodbridge in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England. Dozens of USAF personnel were eyewitnesses to various events over a 2 or 3 days involving strange lights and what seemed to be landings of unknown flying objects in the dense forest. British Ministry of Defence denied that the events in Rendlesham Forest posed any threat to national security, and stated that it was therefore never investigated as a security matter, but evidence that later were revealed proved otherwise - Ministry of Defence did gather large number of informations about the incident, although most of them were internal correspondence and public inquiries. But this led many people to believe that it is all just cover-up operation to keep the real nature of UFO a secret. One person to take this view was eyewitness of the incident and Deputy Base Commander Colonel Charles Halt, another was former NATO head and UK Chief of the Defence Staff Lord Peter Hill-Norton, who stated whatever happened at this USAF base was necessarily of national security interest. From the files released to the public the conclusion was that there was no Rendlesham Forest UFO incident, just misinterpretation of a series of nocturnal lights - a fireball, the Orford Ness lighthouse and bright stars.





But what actually happened seems far from the official explanations. Around 3 AM 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. Penniston states that "directly to the east [of East Gate] about one and a half miles in a large wooded area... a large yellow glowing light was emitting above the trees. In the centre of the lighted area directly in the centre 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". Sgt. Jim Penniston, Burroughs and Cabansag drove into the forest in search of the source of the lights. Servicemen initially thought it was a downed aircraft, but upon entering the forest to investigate they saw a strange glowing object, metallic in appearance, with coloured lights. As they approached, it moved through the trees, and "the animals on a nearby farm went into a frenzy". The craft left three depressions in the ground that were visible the next day. 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 that were present on its surface. The object allegedly flew away after their brief encounter. Penniston also claimed to have seen triangular landing gear on the object. 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. His report and associated sketches are neither signed nor dated, nor are they representative of AF Form 1169, Statement of Witness. Also during TV interview Jim Penniston claimed that he did a 45 minutes full investigation of the craft while it was on the ground, touched the craft surface and took photos of it, but John Burroughs contradicts this statement and claims that after suddenly encountering the craft on the ground, "We all hit the ground, and it went up into the trees".

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 before we could [see] it was coming from a lighthouse".

Shortly after 4 AM 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. 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 AM 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.

Several servicemen (including Colonel Charles Halt) returned to the site again in the early hours of 28 December 1980 with radiation detectors which detected radiation with the peak value in the three depressions and on the near side of a tree. The deputy base commander Lt Col Charles Halt investigated this sighting personally and recorded the events on a micro-cassette recorder. 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, star-like 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.

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 feet of the object and "it was definately mechanical 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, which does not accord with the date and time given by the other witnesses for the incident, although the date does accord with Halt’s memo. 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 "Halt memo" is first piece of primary evidence to be made available to the public. It was a memorandum written by the deputy base commander, Lt. Col. Charles Halt, to the Ministry of Defence, dated "13 Jan 1981" 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. In the memo Halt did described the events as described above without any conclusions and naming himself and numerous other servicemen as witnesses to the strange events.

Suffolk Constabulary 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 UFO 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 lighthouse. Search made of area ’ negative".

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". 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 numerous inquiries from public.

mystery games mystery books movies darmowe ebooki ww2 movies