To date, the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident is considered one of the strangest stories in the UK.
On December 28, 1980, Deputy Commander of the British Air Force Base, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, received reports of strange scenes near and around RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge air bases.
Staff Sargent Jim Penniston, Officer John Burroughs, Budd Stevens and others gave vague descriptions of sightings ranging from unusual supernatural lights, thick triangular spaceships and burn marks On the ground.
Although Penniston and Burroughs maintained that they were completely clear about what they saw, their commanding officer requested silence and did not mention the full story in the report.
Until reports of strange occurrences continued to be sent to the base’s deputy commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, who was having a meal in the hallway. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt had no choice but to put aside dinner and his suspicions, take the tape recorder and see for himself what was happening outside.
The Rendlesham Forest UFO incident is one of the most famous UFO sightings ever recorded, almost as famous as the famous Roswell incident of 1947. The Rendlesham incident spawned a series of eye-witnesses, audio recording, multiple reports and continuous testimony.
This has caused UFO enthusiasts to return to this jungle area more and more. But with so many angles and perspectives to this story, which one is actually true and what exactly happened?
Among all the information related to the UFO incident, the most notable information comes from Jim Penniston, John Burroughs and Charles Halt. They reported seeing bright multicolored lights coming from a mysterious plane.
This event took place over two consecutive days starting on December 26, 1980 for Penniston and Burroughs, and then on December 28, 1980, for Charles Halt and his group of soldiers. During both encounters, the mysterious plane reflected light, hovered, landed, and took off at alarming speeds. Then it seemed to vanish or fade away in a strange way.
First incident: What did Penniston and Burroughs see?
On December 26, 1980, at the east gate of RAF Woodbridge base, security patrols Budd Stevens and Sargent Jim Penniston saw strange, bright red lights shining through the trees of the forest. Rendlesham.
When they reported sighting the guard shack, their commanding officer confirmed that something had been spotted from a small clearing near the eastern edge of the forest. At about 3 a.m., Penniston was ordered to investigate what he had seen.
Although Stevens stayed at his post, Penniston was accompanied by John Burroughs in a jeep to the place where the strange object was said to have landed. It was here that Burroughs and Penniston saw a mysterious glowing object whose movement and speed defied the laws of physics.
Despite its very fast speed, there was hardly any sound made by the object. Of the two, only Penniston provided a sighting report. In his statement, Penniston said:
“The ship is 3 meters high and about 3 meters wide at the base. It had no obvious landing gear, but appeared to be stationary. I moved a little closer and circled the ship. I noticed the fabric of the case was more like a smooth, opaque, black glass.”
But as they observe the mysterious plane, it suddenly takes off at top speed, heading towards a warehouse, causing even greater destruction as its bright light disturbs the animals. local wild and farmed. Burroughs and Penniston followed, climbed over a fence, and then watched as the blue and red lights disappeared as the object passed through the barn.
When both Penniston and Burroughs returned to base, they were careful to write reports of the incident to their commanding duty officer. The two decided to write a downplayed version of what they had seen. In their testimony, they only said: “A mechanical object with red, blue and white light was seen, but the device disappeared before we could see more clearly…”.
Both Penniston and Burroughs were ordered to keep absolutely silent about what they saw. However, this order did not prevent Penniston from returning to the area the next day to examine the landing zone.
On the forest floor, Penniston discovered circular impressions made by a heavy object, spaced 3 meters apart. Burroughs and Penniston also revealed that burn marks appeared near depressions in the ground.
Second incident, what did Lieutenant Colonel Halt see?
On December 28, base deputy commander Lt. Col. Charles Halt was informed that the UFO had returned, near the site of the original sighting. Although Burroughs and Penniston’s claims were refuted, Lt. Col. Halt decided to assemble a team of personnel equipped with searchlights, night scopes, recording equipment, and radiation detectors to be ready to record everything is happening.
When ordering searchlights to be installed around the perimeter of the site, Lieutenant Halt told his men to measure radiation in the area. However, a malfunctioning headlight forced his men to use night vision equipment. With the help of the necessary equipment, they discovered that abrasion marks on the tree produced heat signatures, which were signs related to radiation. And then the UFO appeared again, approaching from the south, flying at incredible speeds and emitting a bright red light through the branches.
One of the quotes from Halt’s recording captures the emotion of that experience: “It seemed like an eye was winking at you. It’s coming from the south here, coming towards us. Now we’re observing what happens when a beam hits the ground. This really cannot be real.”
The lights glimmered invitingly through the trees, but as it moved, it seemed to disintegrate. The light shining from the device was so intense that the sensors on the night scope burned out. The lights continued to hover and shine across the forest and fields. Lieutenant Colonel Halt and his team confirmed the UFO sighting.
When Halt shared his story with the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), like Boroughs and Penniston, he was told to remain silent to protect his own reputation and, more importantly, the reputation of the Air Force. Older brother.
Although Boroughs and Penniston were sworn to secrecy, Lieutenant Colonel Halt was allowed to write a memorandum to the Ministry of Defense about the events that had occurred. Thanks to the Information Act, Lieutenant Colonel Halt’s memo was made public for everyone to read.
Soon after, others went into the field and analyzed the UFO sightings in Rendlesham Forest. Before long, there were some puzzling contradictions between the tape recording and the testimony of an anonymous informant, and the memo that Lieutenant Colonel Halt had written.
Conflicting information
On 25 January 1985, The Guardian published an article discussing what was seen during the UFO incident at Rendlesham Forest. Before attracting the attention of The Guardian, a mysterious pilot using the alias “Art Wallace”, gave numerous interviews on television and local newspapers about what he saw on the 26th and December 28, 1980.
Art Wallace, who was later identified as Larry Warren, claimed to be a witness along with Burroughs, Penniston and Halt. However, this person’s information seems more colorful than the other three.
In Wallace’s version, he claims that Lieutenant Colonel Halt and several other key officers met the landing craft and introduced themselves to the tiny aliens who had landed on our planet. This account contradicts what Lieutenant Colonel Halt had stated as he only mentioned that he and his staff witnessed strange forest lights. Halt never mentioned any information regarding alien encounters in the audio reports or memos he reported to the Department of Defense.
Wallace also claimed to have been brainwashed and that he was forced to watch UFO movies to frame him as mentally disturbed to refute the story leaked to the press.
Because of these conflicts, Halt, Burroughs, and Penniston distanced themselves from Wallace, as they felt his inaccuracies were downplaying what really happened that night.
In another extraordinary incident, in June 2010, former Lieutenant Colonel Halt agreed to record his memories of the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident in a two-page statement. Unfortunately, his memories were also inconsistent regarding the direction of the light, the location of the “landing spot” and the number of objects appearing in the sky.
Although he intended to authenticate the original events of December 26 and 28, he unintentionally added confusion and doubt to the entire story. In 2015, the elderly Lieutenant Colonel Halt attempted to reestablish his reputation with texts collected from RAF Brentwater radar officers working on the nights in question.
In their statement, the radar operators admitted to tracking the subjects on December 26 and 28. But they only felt comfortable discussing what they were tracking after their discharge. Anonymous radar operators said they saw the lights travel a distance of 96 kilometers in three seconds, rotate and come to an abrupt stop by a water tower, and return again to the area. forest where Lieutenant Colonel Halt’s team was present. This additional information from the radar operators supports the earlier statements of Halt, Burroughs, and Penniston.
However, even with convincing statements from many retired soldiers, skeptics still doubt eyewitness accounts.
After nearly forty years retired British soldiers continue with more contradictory details in the story of UFOs in Rendlesham Forest. There have been many alternative explanations that cause further confusion about what actually happened on those days in December 1980.
In another possibility, many people have mentioned that what the pilots saw was, in fact, a meteor shower in southern England. The British Astronomical Society reported that an extremely bright meteor shower occurred at the time Lieutenant Colonel Halt was searching for UFOs. The intensity and brightness of the meteor shower may have caused blinding hot spots that burned out nighttime sensors.
Another view is that, at the same time as the meteor shower, soldiers may have seen the light from Orfordness lighthouse, considered the brightest lighthouse in the UK at that time.
Meanwhile, according to UFO researcher Dr. David Clark, his anonymous sources believe that the entire UFO incident in Rendlesham Forest could be a hoax by the British Special Air Service (SAS). .
With all the different alternative explanations, the UFO incident in Rendlesham Forest seems unsolvable.
In a statement, several sources said that Britain’s Ministry of Defense believes the sightings were due to mass confusion created by the Orfordness lighthouse due to its luminescent power and proximity to the viewing points. see “UFO” lights. Therefore, the Ministry of Defense believes that this event is insignificant and does not threaten national security, so there is no need for further investigation. But this does not answer the question of why the reports were presented to the Ministry of Defense by Lieutenant Colonel Halt, the senior officer at the base.
Up to now, even though the event happened a long time ago, there is still no most accurate explanation. More specifically, UFO sightings continued to be reported in Rendlesham forest, making this area more mysterious than ever.
