This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 17, Issue 2-3, from 2006.
Interest in the Rendlesham Forest ‘UFO’ case began some years ago, when the Internet was evolving from computer ‘bulletin boards’. These formative discussion forums were a source of otherwise unobtainable information and featured a serious-minded, worldwide community, interested in the eclectic subject of ‘UFOs’.
Participants in Britain’s ‘Roswell’ were members of the 81st Security Police Squadron (SPS), serving at RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge. It was a joint base, operated by the US Air Force and separated by a two-mile stretch of Rendlesham Forest. Some of the witnesses, long since returned to the United States, began to release details of their involvement via the fledging Internet and, gradually, I began to set in context various pieces of the puzzle.
Following Yonder Christmas Light
There were two separate incidents that gave rise to this classic ‘UFO’ mystery. At around 3:00 a.m. on Friday 26 December, 1980, three members of the 81st SPS, Staff-Sergeant Jim Penniston, Airman First Class John Burroughs and Airman Ed Cabansag, were on routine patrol when some unfamiliar lights were noticed as apparently within the forest, due east of the ‘east gate’, or ‘back door’, entrance to RAF Woodbridge. Receiving permission to investigate, it was claimed they had encountered a small, triangular-shaped, craft, which moved backwards through the forest before silently taking off.
On the night of Saturday 27 December 1980, there was a belated officers’ Christmas party, during which the Deputy Base Commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Halt, was alerted by Lieutenant Bruce Englund to yet another ‘UFO’ sighting within Rendlesham Forest. As Halt recalled in a previously online interview, “…it had been, how shall I say, the centre of a lot of activity and controversy within the police squadron and they seemed to be more focused on UFO activity than their primary duty”. (This interview, on The Return of the UFOs to Bentwaters, December, 1980, was dated 13 May 1987, and was hosted by A. J. S. Rayl on behalf of the Microsoft Network.)
Many of the participants were young, had not been in England for long and were already enthralled by tales such as the ghost of ‘East End Charlie’, a WWII airman alleged to haunt the east gate runway. Another popular anecdote was about witchcraft in the forest.
In the same interview, Halt states that he decided he would, “put the whole thing to rest” and assembled a team of five other officers. He also took his microcassette recorder, to make any necessary notes. They entered the forest near east gate and, after a while, one of the officers detected a distant flashing light. Halt was using a ‘starlight scope’, or ‘starscope’, night-image intensifier, certainly not intended for viewing bright lights. He documented on his tape recorder:
It looks like an eye winking at you. Still moving from side to side. And when you put the starscope on it, it sorta has a hollow centre, a dark centre, it’s like a pupil of an eye looking at you, winking. And it flashes so bright to the starscope that it almost burns your eye.
Looking back towards east gate, Halt then described some puzzling ‘beams of light’, seemingly being directed downwards from unidentified aerial craft: “Now we’re observing what appears to be a beam coming down to the ground”. The shafts of light were visible for an astonishing 45 minutes, from 3:15 a.m. until 4:00 a.m., with Halt finally recording, “0400 hours. One object still hovering over Woodbridge base at about five to ten degrees off the horizon, still moving erratic and similar lights and beaming down as earlier”.
What next transpired was perhaps defining, as Halt explained in the same interview:
The Wing Commander at that time was not present. He was at another social event. He and I discussed this incident the day after, which was a day or two after which was a Saturday morning. I remember running into him in the hallway of the building — we shared a common office building — and I told him about it. He knew a little bit, but I told him some details and told him I made the tape and he was very interested and asked to hear the tape. I gave him the tape and played it for him and he said, ‘May I take this to the Third Air Force, to the staff meeting next Tuesday or Wednesday?’ I said, ‘Certainly.’ Well, I couldn’t tell him, no. And he took it down and played it to the staff and the General looked at the staff and said … first, the Wing Commander said, ‘Is he a credible witness?’ and the answer was, ‘Yes.’ So he turned to the staff and said, ‘What do we do now?’ And nobody knew what to do. So there was some chuckling in the room and I understand the comment was, ‘Well, it’s a British affair. Let’s give it to them.’
This timing was, in hindsight, critical.
As Halt’s adventures began on the night of Saturday 27 December, he is clearly mistaken about meeting Wing Commander Gordon Williams on a Saturday, “a day or two after”. However, if that already scheduled staff meeting was to take place the following Tuesday or Wednesday, it could be no later than Wednesday 31 December, 1980. Halt also confirmed, “Around New Year’s Eve, I took statements and interviewed the men who had taken part in the initial incident. The reports were nearly identical”. “I also took them from the Flight Commander and … a Master Sergeant” (Rayl, 1994). Although Burroughs’, Cabansag and Penniston’s affidavits are undated, those from Flight Commander Fred Buran and Master-Sergeant J. D. Chandler are dated 2 January 1981. The delay in obtaining formal statements, Halt explained, was due to the holiday period. As we shall see, that delay was perhaps a crucial factor why the inherent ‘UFO’ mythology evolved.
Halt’s stated recollection continues (interview dated 13 May, 1987):
The R.A.F. Liaison Officer or the R.A.F. Base Commander, as we called him, was Don Moreland. I went and approached him, and I said, ‘You know, this happened off base.’ Well, I did discuss this through our channels and the real answer from our channels was, ‘Hey, we don’t want to touch this with a pole. This was a British incident. It happened off the installation. Let them handle it.’ So, I contacted him. In fact, I contacted him earlier and the only reason the memo was dated that late was that he was on vacation and I wasn’t able to find out what he wanted and how much detail he wanted and what he wanted to do with the information. When I finally caught up with him on the, about the 10th or the 12th, he said, ‘Well, write a brief memo … We’ll see what happens.’ So, that’s what I did.
On 13 January, 1981, both nights’ events were reported by Halt in a memorandum to the Ministry of Defence. Within days of the initial incident, there were local rumours of a ‘UFO’ landing and this sparked endeavours to uncover the true facts. Although the Ministry of Defence subsequently indicated their files held nothing of consequence, in the United States researcher Robert Todd made a speculative enquiry under the Freedom of Information Act. He received a response from the 513th Combat Support Group, which provided document management services to the Third Air Force. They had located Halt’s memo. As the USAF’s own copy had been “properly disposed of in accordance with Air Force Regulations”, the copy now provided to Todd had been obtained with the “gracious consent of Her Majesty’s Government, the British Ministry of Defence and the Royal Air Force” (Fawcett & Greenwood, 1984, pp. 217 – 218).
For some, such palpable reticence by the Ministry to earlier disclose the memo’s existence did little to inspire confidence that ‘something’ wasn’t being covered-up. When the ‘Halt memo’ eventually became public knowledge, its contents catapulted both the UFO story and central witnesses to celebrity status.
‘UFO LANDS IN SUFFOLK – AND THAT’S OFFICIAL!’, proclaimed the News of the World front page, on 2 October, 1983.
The Lighthouse Illumination
In search of a rational explanation, science writer Ian Ridpath proposed that the witnesses had been deceived by Orford Ness [aka Orfordness] lighthouse and the Shipwash lightship, both visible due east from within Rendlesham Forest. Because of the undulating terrain, these coastal lights, some six miles distant, appeared to be at eye-level when intermittently visible between trees.
Halt rejected this, claiming that all involved knew where the lighthouse was located. Yet, in his recording, the ‘UFO’ is sighted again and Halt states, “We’re at the far side of the second farmer’s field and made sighting again about 110 degrees. This looks like it’s clear off to the coast. It’s right on the horizon. Moves about a bit and flashes from time to time”.
The riddle may have remained definitively unsolved, except for a dramatic discovery I made – copies of those five witness statements Halt had requested in early January, 1981. They were devastating to any credibility this ‘UFO’ legend had, as surely Halt must have recognised. These fundamental
testimonies exposed that the initial ‘flying saucer’, a catalyst for all that followed, had, in truth, been discovered by Burroughs, Cabansag and Penniston to be Orford Ness lighthouse, exactly as Ridpath suggested.
Burroughs’ affidavit affirmed:
We got up to a fence that separated the trees from the open field and you could see the lights down by a farmer’s house. We climbed over the fence and started heading towards the red and blue lights and they just disappeared. Once we reached the farmer’s house we could see a beacon going around so we went towards it. We followed it for about 2 miles before we could see it was coming from a lighthouse.
I have corresponded with Burroughs for over a year and he acknowledges this is what truly occurred. Consequently, when on the night of 27 December, Halt personally investigated continued sighting reports, he possibly did not yet realise the deceptive role already known to have been played by Orford Ness lighthouse.
By the time he was alerted, in early January, his tape-recorded ‘UFO’ incursion had already merited serious consideration at a staff meeting of the Third Air Force. Worse yet, the General who attended was none other than General Charles A. Gabriel, Commander in Chief, United States Air Forces in Europe. We can imagine Halt’s abject horror. What was he to do now? Absolutely nothing.
Beam Me Up, Conde
If those strange flashing lights had a mundane explanation, then what of the ‘light beams’. A rational explanation for them remained intangible, until I was contacted from the U.S. by former 81st SPS Command-Sergeant, Kevin Conde [pronounced cond-eh]. Surfing the ‘net, Conde had come across my related web site and recognised a striking similarity between some aspects of the UFO incidents and a hoax he perpetrated, “just after Christmas”, in 1980. Conde elucidated:
I was a Security Policeman at RAF Bentwaters/Woodbridge from mid-1978 to mid-1981. I arrived at Bentwaters as a Staff-Sergeant and departed as a Tech-Sergeant. I was a Law Enforcement specialist. While there I worked as a patrolman, desk sergeant, assistant Flight Chief, Flight Chief, training NCO and QA evaluator. My Shift Commander was Lieutenant Englund, and the Security Flight Chief at the time was Master-Sergeant Bobbie Ball. If I left QA six months before I left Bentwaters in the summer of 1981, and my Shift Commander was Lieutenant Englund … then my incident is right in the ball park.
Security worked the back gate during late hours even though gates were normally the responsibility of the LE [Law Enforcement] flight. That post was not a well liked one, and Master-Sergeant Ball did not usually assign his favourite troops. One particular kid was afraid of the dark, noises, etc. He was constantly calling for the patrol to swing by. That patrolman was usually me. I remember having to constantly go out to that gate and hold this guy’s hand. He was a perfect target for a practical joke. Our jokes were not malicious, but they did tend to be inventive and aimed at those troops that were most likely to fall for them.
We used at least three flashlights pointing upwards rolled up in the windows of the patrol car. These lights were red, blue, green, and possibly amber. The patrol car itself had the American style square red and blue emergency rack on top with revolving high intensity red and blue lights. It also had bright white alley lights – these are lights that point to the side in order to light up buildings as you drive past them at night. It also had a bright white spotlight that I pointed as close to straight up as I could. I had everything except my headlights on.
The flashlights, which were green, and maybe amber, were nowhere as bright as the red, blue and white emergency lights, which really lit up the night. One of the lights directed upwards was the patrol car’s spotlight. It is a very bright light that throws a beam a long way.
We then proceeded to drive the car in slow circles while making weird noises over the PA [public address] system. There was a light fog, which was the key to the joke’s success, as each light appeared in the fog as a moving beam of light. The kid on the gate freaked. The response to his call for help was quite gratifying. Since I was the patrolman on Woodbridge at the time, I was detailed to respond to the gate guard’s call. We just shut off the lights and waited a little while, to make the kid think we were coming from the main part of Woodbridge, before rolling up to the gate to see what was wrong.
The joke would have had to have happened late – after all the initial patrol duties like relieving the main gate for chow [food], and getting the first round of building checks done, and before things began to pick up again, and we got bored and started looking for a way to cause trouble. I cannot say for sure, but I would guess between 1:00 and 4:00 a.m. The night I did it I remember it as slightly foggy, probably low-lying fog. The lights lit the fog quite nicely, I should think making a nice halo effect. The fog was, in fact, critical for my prank, as you could see the light beams. Try shining a bright spotlight in fog – you get the light sabre effect. This was one of the more successful and hysterical practical jokes I participated in during my eleven years as a cop. One thing: I frankly don’t remember if we ever told the guy what really happened.
Ian Ridpath has copies of contemporary base weather records that record ground fog on the night of 27 December.
In UFO Crash Landing?, Jenny Randles (1998) documents a witness, Sarah Richardson (only 12 at the time), who reportedly watched enigmatic bands of light, at the same time Halt was making a similar observation. If it correlates with Conde’s east gate hoax, directly adjacent to the runway, we should find the witness observed at least three multicoloured and ever-changing beams of light in that location. Sarah remembers, “Three bands of light appeared over the woods to the side of the runway”. She adds, “But the oddest thing was the colour changes, blue, green, yellow and so on”. Jenny also notes that on the same night, a local garage owner, Gerry Harris, reportedly observed, near the east gate, “three separate lights” which sometimes “moved around in circles”.
In July, 2001, Tracy Williams, Director of the regional BBC Inside Out local news series, asked if I could assist with a documentary concerning the ‘UFO’ events. In early 2003, Conde’s confession had evidently resolved key aspects and I discussed a proposal with BBC East Inside Out producer, Clive Dunn. Once familiar with the overall evidence, it was clear that BBC East intended to produce a hard-hitting feature and this was duly achieved, the program being broadcast on 30 June, 2003 (see BBC online). It had a dramatic impact, with newspaper coverage including a full page in the Daily Mail, headed ‘UFO OLED!’ (Wednesday, 2 July 2003, p. 10).
Sod This For a Game of Soldiers
Although there’s a humorous angle, it should perhaps be remembered that the Weapons Storage Area at RAF Bentwaters contained nuclear ordnance. As former US Air Force employee at Bentwaters, Kathy Smith, was prepared to place on record, “In 1980 there were small, ‘hot’, tactical nuclear weapons at Bentwaters, as used on an F-16, not large as used on B-52s and B-1s. Bentwaters ‘hot row’ bunkers would look like small hills. They were covered with dirt and had grass growing on them sloped front to back. From the back to front, it was 30-40 feet and there were about 10 bunkers total. All of these contained nuclear weapons”.
Incredibly, Halt believed the Weapons Storage Area was under threat (as revealed in an undated previously online interview hosted by A. J. S. Rayl, on behalf on Microsoft Network): “Then it [the UFO] moved back toward Bentwaters and continued to send down beams of light, at one point near the weapons storage facility. We knew that, because we could hear the chatter on the radio”.
However, I’ve located and spoken with many personnel from the Weapons Storage Area, including some, such as Kathy’s husband, Sergeant Randy Smith, who were actually on duty that night. Not one of them had ever even heard a story about beams of light endangering munitions. Next day, it was ‘business as usual’.
Perhaps that’s just as well, as Halt seemed oblivious what action to take. Did he call the Third Air Force for aerial support, or send an SOS to the RAF for fighter cover? He explained how the drama ended: “It was a cold winter night, the wind was blowing, we were wet and I just ordered everybody back to the base. I saw no reason to stay out there any longer. We left those objects up there” (previously online interview, undated).
Of the officers not partying, Halt and five others had travelled an astonishing two miles off-base and consequently outside USAF jurisdiction, in search of ‘UFOs’. Halt noted, “There were probably 25 to 30 security policemen there … and all excited” (previously online interview, 13 May, 1987).
In late December 1980, RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge were on “Alert Condition” because of the Solidarity crisis in Poland. Amidst fears the Soviet Union might invade, A-10 ‘tankbuster’ aircraft, based at RAF Bentwaters, would be deployed to the 81st Tactical Fighter Wing at Alhorn, Germany.
Thankfully, the only danger arose from perceived ‘UFOs’, apparently concluded to be on a benign mission and nothing more sinister, such as crack Soviet Spetsnaz commandos making a pre-emptive strike.
During the night and early morning of 27/28 December, who, we might enquire, was minding the store?
‘Rendlesham’ was once regarded as Britain’s most significant demonstration of the nefarious, global, government ‘UFO’ cover-up. A complex and eclectic episode, when unravelled, it is a landmark and provides fascinating insight, revealing infinitely more about terrestrial predilections when confronted with ‘UFO’ perceptions, especially if anticipated, than any remote substantiation why ET dropped in on Suffolk.
References
- Fawcett, L., & Greenwood, B. J. (1984). Clear Intent: The Government Coverup of the UFO Experience. New York: Simon & Schuster.
- Randles, J. (1998). UFO Crash Landing? London: Blandford.
- Rayl, A. J. S. (1994). Baffled at Bentwaters. OMNI Magazine, April 1994.
