Rendlesham Forest 1980 Pt II - Will There Be An Answer?

The only official USAF statements relate to Night One, not released until 1999.

On Night Three, Colonel Halt stated he saw 20-30 personnel milling about in the forest before he began his investigation

Apologies for being new to all this, but has anyone done a FOI request of the Americans for the other witness statements which were or were likely to have been collected as a result of the other nights. There is also the statement that Penniston alleges he wrote himself.

And one further naive question: has anyone considered that there might have been two nights of incidents involving Halt? The 27th/28th in which Larry Warren was a witness (along with Sgt J.D. Ingalls, SP Dog Handler Wayne ?Surname, Steve Longero and from a distance Gary Collins (civilian)), and then the 28th/29th on which Halt ran around a little aimlessly and made his tape? I have a problem with the dates given by early testimony (aside from the Halt memo, which is a problem in itself).

a reply to: ConfusedBrit

Are you thinking of jumping into this rabbit-hole, beetee?

In my experience one does not simply jump into the rabbit hole, but rather falls down it quite by accident :-)
I certainly know where to start if want to get a handle on this whole jumbled mess, and I guess nearly 400 pages of posts with a myriad of links to various articles, movies and other threads should provide a few months of entertainment.

I have fallen pretty badly down another rabbit hole already so I have to claw myself out of that one first :-)

Cheers,

BT

a reply to: beetee

Goodluck digging.

originally posted by: Sutekh
Again Bruni is the only source, as she interviewed PC King directly. So to quote her:

"On the second night of the sightings (26/27), PC Dave King and PC Martin Brophy were in the Law Enforcement Office at Bentwaters when the report came in. Dave King recalls the incident:

"'It was a frosty night. I was doing my routine check with the Law Enforcement desk on RAF Bentwaters. We did that every night. We checked in with them and exchanged information. While I was there another report came in on the radio, a pocket radio, saying that there were lights in the forest at the exact same spot as the previous night. This would now be the early hours of the 27th. I was just about to go and have a look, thinking I might see something this time, when I got an emergency call to attend to a post office break-in about ten miles away at Otley.'

"I asked King if there was a report filed in the police log for this sighting.

"'No, we didn’t bother with it; we just thought they were bored watching their planes, and besides we
had an emergency on.'"

So if this is reliable, the call into the base was on the night of 26th/27th, the shift after PC Creswell had visited the presumed landing site. And PC King did not make a report, which is why we have no log entry. There should, of course, be a log entry about the suspected break in, in Otley. So that could be asked for under FOI, I suppose. If it is there in the log, then it happened as PC King suggested. If there is no such entry, then there might be a suggestion of police logs for 26th December evening to 30th December morning being suppressed.

I am not sure that I would assume that the police are suppressing information. King's statements to Bruni are a little contradictory indicating that while he was personally curious about the lights, he had no professional interest in them. If they didn't consider the incident to have been "reported" then there was no need for them to do the paper work. I don't know that any suppression need be involved, just a case of it not seeming that important at the time...and the power of hind-sight.

Would these routine visits by the local police have been logged at the Law Enforcement Office? Presumably everyone in and out of the base had to be accounted for in some kind of visitors book or the such like??

originally posted by: Sutekh
This seems to be a faithful reproduction of the copy in Bruni. The light through the trees is clearly brighter than the foreground, which has been lit by flash. There is more light evident to the right, suggesting that the camera is pointed to the North-East if the landing site is where it is alleged to have been. The edge of the forest looks like it is not that far distant. As for the low level of light penetration, that is not unusual for a managed pine forest. I go walking in a number near where I live. Because the trees are in regular lines and tending to be equidistant from each other, unless you are looking directly down a row the trunks seem to form an almost constant barrier to the light as they diminish to the vanishing point. The picture is consistent with this.

I'm not sure if it is a better picture BUT I can see what you're seeing now, and, I stand corrected.

originally posted by: Sutekh
So when did Penniston go back into the forest? (I don't believe Burroughs did later that day; as I said that was likely just poetic licence to keep Penniston's part anonymous in 1991). Well it looks like it was before sunset which was just before 4 pm. It was obviously sometime after 10:30 am that he met PC Creswell, though he could have gotten there earlier. Ipswich was an hour return journey. I suppose the determining factor would be PC Creswell's response time to the call out. Can I ask why this timing is so critical?

I think it is quite sometime before sunset. My guess would be no later than 2-ish.

The timing isn't critical, just interesting, I'm just interested in this part of the story at the moment and following through on Conrad's claim that the police visit was at 7 pm. I think that the general concensus is that he was mistaken. I'm still exploring his comment that AFOSI wouldn't have been interrogating personnel over lights in the woods because they were far too busy investigating "security leaks" and "drug trafficking". Penniston rolling up with his crafting supplies stuffed into a back pack and strolling off into the woods doesn't indicate that any of that alertness was directed towards the woods.

It doesn't mean anything, that I know of, it's just how my curiousity works and I find that saying/writing such things out loud brings clarity, one way or another, sooner or later.

Cheers

originally posted by: Sutekh

Apologies for being new to all this, but has anyone done a FOI request of the Americans for the other witness statements which were or were likely to have been collected as a result of the other nights. There is also the statement that Penniston alleges he wrote himself.

If statements for Nights 2 and 3 exist, one would assume they'd have been released with Night 1's in 1999. Rather than immediately embracing a 'cover-up', we need to consider that Night 1 was a genuine investigation of a suspected aircraft crash, supported by radar and followed up by two visits from Suffolk police. The other nights do not have such foundations - in stark terms, a bunch of curious airmen were just chasing lights in a forest. Whatever the interpretations of each airman regarding the lights, that is pretty much the official story, hardly requiring further statements after night 1's covered pretty much the same story but with a genuine objective attached (a potential downed aircraft).

If one dismisses that view, the alternative is indeed a cover-up. But we need to consider such an option very carefully.

Re Penniston, his versions of how his statement came about are as confusing as the rest of his growing story, unless we take at face value what he said at the start - ie, he deliberately wrote a watered-down version of events so as to protect his future career in the USAF. Why should we disbelieve that? He said it after all.

And one further naive question: has anyone considered that there might have been two nights of incidents involving Halt? The 27th/28th in which Larry Warren was a witness (along with Sgt J.D. Ingalls, SP Dog Handler Wayne ?Surname, Steve Longero and from a distance Gary Collins (civilian)), and then the 28th/29th on which Halt ran around a little aimlessly and made his tape? I have a problem with the dates given by early testimony (aside from the Halt memo, which is a problem in itself).

Everyone was confused by Halt's memo (Did Warren use the memo's faulty date, thereby exposing a fabricated story? Did Penniston use it for his notebook, exposing the lie that his description of the craft was written at the time of the incident?) until the dates were clarified, helped in no small way by Suffolk Constabulary documents and RAF Watton's logged call from Halt at 0325 on Night 3.

Colonel Conrad said Halt went out twice, but admits he used the memo as his main source of info, which puts that belief into doubt. One other airman, Chris Armold (who went out with Burroughs during the day on 26th, and was with him on night 3 whilst Halt's party was in the forest) also claims he went out with Halt and others on the night of 26th/27th, recounting a similar trek albeit without any encounters. Personally I think Armold is mistaken or deliberately obscuring events.

Armold is also one of the RFI's greatest critics, disgusted by what he regards as a "hoax", but also rather too aggressive in his approach, exemplified by his comments in November 2010 on the Justice For Bentwaters website:

I love how the sheep element of this silly UFO fan club want me to prove that something didn't happen. For those of you who think that calling people liars is offensive, well it's my opinion and I'm entitled to my opinion. These idiots calling for justice for the 81st SPS Rendlesham story-tellers are a disgrace to the unit, the wing and the USAF. Let me make it exceptionally clear that no one in officialdom gives them any credence.

Justice... jesus christ, justice for what? Why can't anyone explain just what is the injustice done to these guys? When these guys prove their story I'll be happy to apologize and retract my opinion that they are just blowing smoke up people's asses. You wanna be a serious student of UFOlogy, then do your job and ask serious, hard, probing questions. Don't accept fuzzy, twisted, contorted rambling theories. The credibility of your little hobby is at stake.

And there's much more where that came from. Someone clearly got out of the wrong side of the bed that day.

originally posted by: ConfusedBrit
Rather than immediately embracing a 'cover up', we need to consider that Night 1 was a genuine investigation of a suspected aircraft crash, supported by radar...

Is it supported by radar?

I know this has been discussed before but I perhaps went away with the wrong end of the stick. I didn't think that there was any evidence that anything had been sighted on radar for the period in question.

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

KG, I've sent you a PM that should satisfy your curiosity to a small extent. Rather than waffle away on here with information that we've already posted recently.

As far as radar returns go. There are a lot of people who mention them. But no one ever actually confirmed it with any documented evidence from Eastern Radar, Heathrow or USAF radar.

EDIT: Oh, I see MM has already tackled this. Glad to see you back in the thread, MM! Apologies if the following is already well-known (I did my own quick research for KT rather than plunder this thread, if that's any consolation, but I'm happy to delete it if you prefer).

originally posted by: KilgoreTrout

Is it supported by radar?

I know this has been discussed before but I perhaps went away with the wrong end of the stick. I didn't think that there was any evidence that anything had been sighted on radar for the period in question.

Hi, KT - wrong ends of sticks are arguably a prime feature of the RFI!

On Night 1, Nigel Kerr at RAF Watton claims he received a call from Bentwaters Tower about "a flashing light in the sky". Georgina Bruni (Page 60 of YCTTP) spoke to him:

On checking the radar he realized there was indeed something on their approach line, and at first he thought it was a helicopter. However, it remained stationary long enough for it to show up for three to four sweeps across their screens before it dissipated.

Hmmm.

On Night 3, nothing was detected on radar when Halt made his 0325 call to RAF Watton. In 2001, Squadron Leader Derek Coumbe, duty commander at RAF Watton, recalled Halt’s call:

“They were very jumpy and panicky on the phone…but I personally checked the radar picture and there was absolutely nothing to be seen. They kept coming back and implying there should be something but we kept a watch on it through the whole period and nothing was seen.”

drdavidclarke.co.uk...

a reply to: mirageman

&

a reply to: ConfusedBrit

Ah, good, I did have the right end of the stick - much talk of radar but nothing to hold that talk up.

Thanks for clarifying that chaps.

Would these routine visits by the local police have been logged at the Law Enforcement Office? Presumably everyone in and out of the base had to be accounted for in some kind of visitors book or the such like??

My understanding is that they had a go to desk/office in the base. So a visit was just a passing routine and would not warrant any log being kept. So I am not assuming they are suppressing anything. However the FOIA request re any Otley break in log would confirm this. If no entry is present then they were no diverted elsewhere. Therefore why claim as much. It is just a minor point to clarify at this moment.

I think it is quite sometime before sunset. My guess would be no later than 2-ish.

The timing isn't critical, just interesting, I'm just interested in this part of the story at the moment and following through on Conrad's claim that the police visit was at 7 pm. I think that the general concensus is that he was mistaken. I'm still exploring his comment that AFOSI wouldn't have been interrogating personnel over lights in the woods because they were far too busy investigating "security leaks" and "drug trafficking". Penniston rolling up with his crafting supplies stuffed into a back pack and strolling off into the woods doesn't indicate that any of that alertness was directed towards the woods.

I would concur with you about the timing being about 2pm or before. Conrad's testimony is suspect in a number of areas (which is no surprise). And the AFOSI interest in the incidents is much greater than Conrad admitted to. I can buy Penniston rolling up early on the 26th, as this was the first day after the initial sightings. Civilian witnesses (i.e. Collins) have made it clear that the area was closed down by the 27th or 28th (probably the latter).

a reply to: Sutekh

It is my understanding that the military is all about maintaining routines and procedures. Suffolk police would have no authority on the base, and in terms of health, fire and safety regulations, it is quite routine to make a note of all visitors to and from a large facility in case of emergency whoever they are.

A FOIA should confirm when the call was received to report the post office burglary and which officers attended but it is unlikely to state where those officers were when they received the call to attend.

My in-depth Summary of a Recent 2hr Gary Heseltine Interview on the forthcoming "Capal Green" "documentry";

* there are lots of trolls, trolls, trolls, trolls
* Larry was actually there...
* Lots of trolls, I don't like trolls, don't like the queen of trolls.......
* Peter Robbins sold out... because of the trolls
* I cant say anymore, watch the documentary
* trolls...

That is my summary of a recent 2 hour radio interview that he did, so don't waste your time with it....like I did and I am not trolling either.

a reply to: pigsy2400

That's two hours of my life potentially saved, then. A shame you can't get yours back!

Why does Heseltine harp on about an infinitely tedious online flame-war that interests NOBODY in the real world aside from the miserable cerebrally-intense participants themselves? These squabbles will likely persist until they're all six-feet-under. The amount of energy wasted by people on both sides beggars belief, so much so that the actual product being hawked by Heseltine, 'Capel Green', becomes almost a secondary sideshow.

Anyway, well done, Pigsy - you have done your duty and suffered for the rest of us.

a reply to: ConfusedBrit

I have at last got around to re-watching Twin Peaks.

I was going to wait until I had worked my way through to the third season before commenting but I have just got to the episodes with the night fishing, the Major and his subsequent return.



It's soooo good, I can't believe I left it this long.

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

The fact that Lynch has a charity foundation just outside the twin bases makes it even more curious!

originally posted by: KilgoreTrout
a reply to: ConfusedBrit

I have at last got around to re-watching Twin Peaks.

It's soooo good, I can't believe I left it this long.

It was groundbreaking in 1990-91, and remains so today IMO.

Series Three (2017) is an entirely different beast in my book - just as groundbreaking for the modern age, and sometimes taking Lynch's surreal concepts to remarkable levels of darkness and horror rarely seen since his 'Eraserhead' debut in 1977. The soap-opera-parody flavour of the original has given way to an astonishing examination of identity and multi-layered realities that is alternately terrifying, VERY funny and ultimately quite moving.

The episode 'Gotta Light?' is one of the most remarkable hours in TV history.

a reply to: ctj83

Why exactly?