Rendlesham Forest Incident

Rendlesham Forest lies in Suffolk, between two twin bases. RAF Woodbridge and RAF Bentwaters. In 1980 both were RAF stations used by the US Air Force. East of Woodbridge's back gate, the forest runs for about a mile to a farmer's field. Five miles beyond stands the Orford Ness lighthouse.

About 03:00, 26 December 1980. Two USAF security police patrolmen saw unusual lights outside the back gate. Thinking an aircraft might have crashed, they went out to investigate. Staff Sergeant Jim Penniston saw a large yellow glowing light above the trees, and a red light blinking on and off at 5 to 10 second intervals. John Burroughs remembered that "the woods lit up and you could hear the farm animals making a lot of noises."

Halt's memo later set down what they reported. A glowing object, metallic in appearance and triangular. Two to three meters across the base. A pulsing red light on top. Blue lights underneath. It was hovering or on legs. As the men approached, it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared.

Decades later Penniston told a bigger story. A landed craft, black and glassy, etched with symbols he says he touched. In 2010 he added one more claim. "The technology then communicated a series of ones and zeros to me."

Late on 27 December, deputy base commander Lt Col Charles Halt took a patrol into the forest. They found three depressions where the object had been seen, and the radiation readings peaked inside them. Halt recorded it all on a micro-cassette.

Then a red sun-like light appeared through the trees. "It looks like an eye winking at you," he said on tape. It pulsed. It threw off glowing particles. Then it broke into five separate white objects and disappeared. Three star-like objects followed, moving in sharp, angular movements. The one to the south beamed down a stream of light from time to time. "This is unreal."

Halt's memo, dated 13 January 1981, reached the Ministry of Defence through RAF liaison officer Don Moreland. The MoD judged that the event posed no threat to national security. No witnesses were interviewed. The memo surfaced in 1983 through a Freedom of Information request, and the MoD file later went to The National Archives as DEFE 24/1948.

Sceptics built their case piece by piece. A bright meteor crossed the sky around 03:00 on the first night. Police that night said the only light they could see was the lighthouse. Airman Edward Cabansag's own statement concluded they had been chasing "only a beacon light." Forester Vince Thurkettle called the depressions rabbit diggings, and experts called the radiation normal background for a pine forest.

Halt has never accepted it. He says they saw the unknown light and the lighthouse at the same time, and he believes the objects were extraterrestrial in origin. His own base commander, Col Ted Conrad, disagreed. "We saw nothing that resembled Lieutenant Colonel Halt's descriptions either in the sky or on the ground."

Britain's Roswell has since filled books, documentaries and a feature film. A UFO Trail now winds through the forest. Researcher David Clarke summed it up. "We've reached an impasse… it is unlikely we will ever know what really happened."