Rendlesham Forest…, A Christmas Story from 1980 - Can We ‘Let it Be’?

mirageman
I was thinking of the night Halt's team were out reporting all sorts of strange lights and how he described them as "losing altitude". It would be interesting to see how the start moved across the sky during that time.
I found a freeware program "Stellarium" which for nothing seems like a really good application and am going to have a tinker with that.

Stellarium is good. You might also try this basic chart from heavens-above.com, which is better known as the site for checking satellite passes
www.heavens-above.com...
The above link is set up for the position of Woodbridge.

Here's a fireball of a very similar kind to that which would have been visible that night. Now, you might ask yourself, given it took me all of 5 seconds to find this one on YouTube quite why Ridpath doesn't happily have this on his site and why he's not providing you with a link to a video like this. Could it be that, when most people see this their first thought is. "So let me get this right, a whole bunch of trained personnel mistook something that lasted for mere seconds for something that was clearly visible and hovering for some considerable length of time? Just how would they do that?



Why is it that, to my knowledge, not one member of the service personnel that night has ever stepped forward and said something along the following lines " Oh god, what right royal cock up that was, there was hell to pay about personnel going off base and spending hours wombling about looking for a lighthouse and meteor"?

Why is it that, the USAF, which has a notorious record for "forced fit" explanations has never come out and said. "Err right well , actually it was a lighthouse and meteor and given the tensions of the period it happened in everyone became a little carried away for over 72 hours and a whole bunch of professionals made a right mess of it? Why is that, the USAF basically holds a... "not sayin' nuffin" brief, about the incidents that winter?

See, Ufology is as much about "context" as it individual reports of sightings. Ridpath and his ilk who will bang on about context forever and day if it suits their argument are e totally absent without leave in terms of context, when it comes to Rendlesham that winter. Anyone who has the slightest background in the way the USAF deals with such sightings can;t help to notice how "quiet" they are and how in reality, "Err well we simply don't talk about it". The reason I suspect this might be so I will come to later however for the moment a diversion if you will.

Well, here's where the intellectual dishonesty comes into play, a classic tactic used by debunkers not sceptics. Ridpath says he's an astronomer meaning the statement is loaded. It says to those who are not astronomers "I'm an expert, I know exactly what I'm talking about and you can trust my judgement on a given situation in that particular field". Only isn't it quite obvious to most now that, Ridpath's use of the fireball explanation is actually rather, lets be generous with our language and say, "overcooked"? In reality he using his claimed profession to give extra gravitas to his position and his view and maybe Ian, you'd like to give us your employment record as a professional astronomer so we can all see, cos I'm having a devil of a time finding a single professional post as an astronomer you have ever held. Your wikipedia page contains no mention of any paid job within the profession, or of any formal qualifications you might hold as an Astronomer. Patrick Moore both edited and wrote hundreds of books on the subject yet, he never called himself anything other than an "Amateur" and was most keen to make that differentiation quite clear time and time again.

See, call me paranoid, call me honest, call me Ishmael, if I were spouting forth on TV on a subject I claim to be an expert on, my own webpage would have my academic qualifications clearly listed and spread across it in big type so as to make it plain, exactly what and who I am. The only reference to any possible paid work as a qualified astronomer seems to be this one sentence

"I worked at the University of London Observatory", Well, I've worked at Wembley Stadium is doesn't make me Michael Buble, I could have been selling soft drinks. So why so shy Ian? Are you actually qualified to call yourself an Astronomer or are you, like me, a dedicated amateur? If you are an amateur, why do you not make that absolutely plain on your websites and on TV? On the other hand, if you are a professional, why are you so shy about letting us see your actual work record and your qualifications within the field?

Funny isn't it? How it's one rule for Bob Lazar and another for the likes of Ian Ridpath? Can you imagine the hoohah and the accusations flying if it were say, Bob Lazar's professional credibility under scrutiny? Those self same people who claim to be , oh so rational and only interested in the truth, would be hanging Ridpath out to dry if he were on the other side of the UFO spectrum and yet, here they are, happy to take Ridpath's word for it that he is what he claims he is, an Astronomer meaning, someone paid to study the subject in a proactive manner and yet nowhere, even on his own site, can I find anything in detail, that actually backs that assertion up. Now lets make it plain here Ian, with my background and my hobbies, I too could edit Astronomical books and I too could handle editing a quarterly publication yet, never have I ever referred to myself as an "Astronomer"as in my eyes, to do so, would be a fraud. Again, it's that intellectual dishonesty that so many debumkers use to beat others with and yet are so loathe to point out in their own kind. Just to make it plain, I was being paid to write sports reports for papers such as "The News of the World, South Wales Echo, Birmingham Post, Yorkshire Post, by my journalist father as a 14 year old and by 19, I was Arts Editor of my college's magazine.

Anyway, I am sure Ian will be able to assuage our concerns over all this and show us his professional and academic qualifications that allow him to call himself an astronomer, so let's return to the context part of this post.

Yes context, the all important word when considering a case and what makes Rendlesham different? What is it about Rendlesham that seems to stop the USAF from their usual, "Well we were holding an exercise in that area, we simply didn't notice at the time/forgot that, there were a dozen or so aircraft dropping flares and the 30 odd armoured personnel carriers using their own signal flares" excuse? Where's the 400 page report, going into specific detail about a balloon that wasn't launched yet, somehowe crashed into a ranch even though, the wind was blowing in the wrong direction? After all in the public's mind and the pantheon of Ufology as portrayed by the media, this is the number two incident ever. Yet nothing? nada, zilch. So what is different about Rendlesham? In a word, Halt or more correctly Colonel Charles Halt.

So why is Halt different? Well, he's a colonel and he's the only witness of anything close up that winter, who seems not to have been debriefed in what one might call "an adversarial manner". Why is that? Given Halt, according to the gospel of Ridpath, committed the greatest faux pas. He not only went wombling around for hours he made exactly the same mistake as the grunts did and yet, he was a colonel. Surely, to exhibit such a level of utter incompetence when in charge of military airbase, would have seen his immediate removal and posting to a desk job in Anchorage? Yet nothing of the sort occurred, Halt remained in post as did the vast majority of the personnel who were so damnably incompetent those nights.

Now, a little speculation, I contend it's almost certain that, Halt was not debriefed in the same manner as Penniston e al becasue he was a colonel and that, by debriefing him in the same way the mere grunts were, they would rike some sort of catastrophic "accident". Ergo, one cannot muck about with a commander's mind without rsking them starting say, a shooting match some months/years down the line. By this I mean, imagine someone commanding a front line airbase having weird dreams about binary codes and other associated nightmares, it could all go seriously pear shaped?

There's your huge difference and why this case is truly fascinating. For once, the USAF is stuck between a rock and hard place in dealing with it. If they move in any proactive manner to lock it down, it cries foul ahhhhhh something did happen at the base didn't it, that's why you moved everyone so quickly?. So, they were probably forced into just leaving Halt in place and hoping he'd play the game. It's one thing to undermine a few grunts, hell that's what they are there for cannon fodder, you start pulling the rug out from under a colonel, then other ranking officers start feeling damknably insecure in their own positions and that simply can't be allowed to happen as you risk destroying the morale of a front line operations group.

See, to me, if you were really actually well versed in the field of Ufology rather than just a noisy empty vessel, this would be the very crux of your investigation. The fall out is actually probably more important in establishing something strange happened than any other evidence. Again, if you know your stuff about Ufology you'd be well aware that, experiences that suggest, note suggest not confirm, or prove, contact with another intellgence, have a habit of having witnesses who really can't quite remember what happened olthough, they are sure something weird did happen and that, two people standing next to each other, might have seen totally different things. That the USAF have at their disposal, a mundane explanation for the night's events, even if it is over cooked and shot full of inconsistencies, yet they have never run with it, tells anyone with any experience of Ufology, something pretty damned weird happened in those woods over those three nights.

reply to post by The GUT

What if--and I usually hate "what ifs"--someone figured out how to induce such high-strangeness and threw a bunch of soldiers in the middle of it and sat back and watched? Think about it.

Not a far fetched idea whatsoever. "High-strangeness" can mean a lot of things and is a term thrown around a lot without any clear definition. To me it is another word for "altered state". It's is certainly not beyond the military to experiment on their own people. My feeling is that it's not always needed to introduce a foreign component to induce such states. It's also not so far fetched that being in the Forrest in the middle of the night with your adrenaline pumping could cause this as well.

So whether it was intentional or unintentional...who knows.

reply to post by ianrid

Well, anyone can say that they saw something well after the event. As draknoir has indicated, the "Me, too" effect may be at work here. Where's the documentation?

Could Kevin Conde's statement that he hoaxed it - coming, I believe, 21 years after the fact in 2001 - be the "Me too" effect?

Or was he telling the truth?

Depends on your persuasion, I suppose.

The GUT
Surprises me not.

Passive aggression. Revealing choice.

Speaking in riddles only gives one the appearance of depth.

The GUT
Did I proffer an explanation? Nope. Food for thought, yes.

Not being a breatharian I require substance to sustain me.

My colleague Dave Clarke has written more about this on his page here:
drdavidclarke.blogspot.co.uk...
Search on the word "radar".

Ahem, to anyone who knows their stuff about what's been revealed this last few months, that statement alone and the use of the term "colleague", should see alarm bells flashing.

reply to post by FireMoon

Surely, to exhibit such a level of utter incompetence when in charge of military airbase, would have seen his immediate removal and posting to a desk job in Anchorage? Yet nothing of the sort occurred, Halt remained in post as did the vast majority of the personnel who were so damnably incompetent those nights.

I didn't come across anyone accusing anyone of being incompetent except for this straw man argument, of course. Why would they be incompetent? Halt and his me did exactly what they were supposed to do. They made sure the base was secure by following up on and investigating reports of possible incursions. Dismissing these reports because of family dinners during the holidays would have been incompetent. Did he do anything inappropriate? Absolutely not.

If he was so sure unidentified spacecraft were shooting beams at a nuclear base, why didn't he do more to prevent this from happening? Certainly a barrage of SAM's would have been justified. No?

He did exactly what was appropriate. He investigated some odd lights and determined there wasn't a threat. Now if he believes those lights were due to space people from the future, that is his own business.

reply to post by draknoir2

Speaking in riddles only gives one the appearance of depth.

My impression of Yoda has just be altered. Thanks a lot.

ZetaRediculian
reply to post by draknoir2

 

Speaking in riddles only gives one the appearance of depth.

My impression of Yoda has just be altered. Thanks a lot.

PSST... He's just a puppet for a multi-billion dollar franchise.

reply to post by ZetaRediculian

I didn't come across anyone accusing anyone of being incompetent except for this straw man argument, of course. Why would they be incompetent?

You think spending several hours off base chasing a lighthouse about is anything other a than an accusation of gullibility and incompetence?

If he was so sure unidentified spacecraft were shooting beams at a nuclear base, why didn't he do more to prevent this from happening? Certainly a barrage of SAM's would have been justified. No?

He did exactly what was appropriate. He investigated some odd lights and determined there wasn't a threat. Now if he believes those lights were due to space people from the future, that is his own business.

Halt's dialogue on the tape of experience he had, has been analysed by a specialist in recognising "stress patterns" and their opinion is that. he was stressed and then some, which sort of boots the idea "nothing to worry about" into touch for good?

As for why you wouldn't fire at it? Great idea. something sat right over your head, why not fire on it and see if you can kill yourself at the same time? Were the base's defences even active or had they been knocked out and they've never told us? Questions and more questions. Is there a no fire protocol already in place? Was the meeting in the field that night triggered quite deliberately by someone else's actions and Halt stumbled into it and upset the whole shebang? Questions and more questions . See, several people insist that by the time of Halt's experience they were fully tooled up in the woods should it happen again and that, not only did radios not work properly, neither did the arc lighting they had dragged into the forest.

Was the whole incident a black op to test how it would all pan out? Did Halt bungle into something he wasn't meant to as it was aimed at grunts alone and they couldn't simply brain wash him with the "alien ship people from the future" meme?

What if as some are beginning to suggest ever more strongly that. The whole thing was a bait to try and trap the intelligence behind the phenomenon, or try to talk to them on our terms and it all went seriously pear shaped and that , the light into the bunker wasn't interested in nukes at all, rather simply shutting down the gear the USAF black ops were using to cause the incident? more question and yet more questions.

reply to post by ianrid


I cannot be 100% sure on the date Nigel Kerr is talking about as it isn't stated in the book quoted and it's not clear in the interview. In the clip Kerr states that reports were coming in around midnight from Bentwaters and the TV show implies that it occurred on the night Penniston and Burroughs were in the forest.

Other sources corroborate that a call to RAF Watton was made around 3:00 am. However I cannot jump to conclusions and assume this was the one and same incident Nigel Kerr is talking about.

There are also equally unverifiable dates from the accounts of two USAF radar operators here:

ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.co.uk...

CJCrawley
Could Kevin Conde's statement that he hoaxed it - coming, I believe, 21 years after the fact in 2001 - be the "Me too" effect?
Or was he telling the truth?

Except that he's not claiming to have seen anything out of the ordinary. And he does now agree that his little joke wasn't the cause of the sighting
www.ianridpath.com...

Note also the Update at the foot of that page and the link to some very strident criticisms he and Lt Buran posted on Burroughs and Penniston's FaceBook page (before they were taken down!).

reply to post by FireMoon

You think spending several hours off base chasing a lighthouse about is anything other a than an accusation of gullibility and incompetence?

Again, the straw man. What he was doing was investigating a report of some lights and that's what he did. Whether it was an alien craft or a lighthouse doesn't matter. He did his job and the outcome was the same.

Halt's dialogue on the tape of experience he had, has been analysed by a specialist in recognising "stress patterns" and their opinion is that. he was stressed and then some, which sort of boots the idea "nothing to worry about" into touch for good?

I am not sure about your personal experiences but I can tell you that I have had "stress patterns" in my vocalizations from time to time where it turned out to be over nothing. Have you never been out in the woods in the pitch black before? Was he in a state of "high alert"? Absolutely. I am really not sure how you think that helps your case. When someone is in a state like this, there is a definite change in their perception of their surroundings. It's called "Tachypsychia" which is brought on by adrenaline rush:
en.wikipedia.org...

Psychological response
The most common experience during tachypsychia is the feeling that time has either increased or slowed down, brought on by the increased brain activity cause by epinephrine, or the severe decrease in brain activity caused by the "catecholamine washout" occurring after the event.
It is common for an individual experiencing tachypsychia to have serious misinterpretations of their surroundings during the events, through a combination of their altered perception of time, as well as transient partial color blindness and tunnel vision. After the irregularly high levels of adrenaline consumed during sympathetic nervous system activation, an individual may display signs and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and it is common for the person to display extreme emotional lability and fatigue, regardless of their actual physical exertion.

So I think we agree that "he was stressed and then some" during the time he was investigating the reports of lights which means that he was most likely experiencing Tachypsychia which means he may have experienced "serious misinterpretations of his surroundings".

As for why you wouldn't fire at it? Great idea. something sat right over your head, why not fire on it and see if you can kill yourself at the same time?

So what did he do? He filed a report.

Questions and more questions.

What you have is speculation and more speculation and the absence of facts to support them.

ZetaRediculian
Not a far fetched idea whatsoever. "High-strangeness" can mean a lot of things and is a term thrown around a lot without any clear definition. To me it is another word for "altered state". It's is certainly not beyond the military to experiment on their own people. My feeling is that it's not always needed to introduce a foreign component to induce such states. It's also not so far fetched that being in the Forrest in the middle of the night with your adrenaline pumping could cause this as well.

So whether it was intentional or unintentional...who knows.

That's pretty much the way I look at it, too. One of the interesting thing about EM effects on the human nervous system that has caught my attention, is that much of the burgeoning knowledge and study came about after affects were noticed on various military personnel and project scientists who were working around--or on--equipment that produced a wide-range of fields.

Of course, to the military mind, they weren't just looking out for the health of the cadre, but almost immediately started thinking of ways such insights could be weaponized. Some more food for thought might include the idea that some of those concepts must be tested on unsuspecting ( "controlled testing") subjects. Some similar thought didn't seem to escape Lord Hill-Norton either. He certainly had an affection for the ETH but, yet, something about this case made him suspect otherwise to some degree.

I also agree the Bentwater boys could have freaked their own-selves out, then again any EM or geomagnetic anomalies could exacerbate that. Intentional or not. Surely the area was a hotbed of such manmade fields and possibly geomagnetic as well. My mind keeps going back to the reported problems with the lightalls which seems to be a pretty consistent theme.

Having said all that, my mind is still open to the possibility that "high strangeness" + EM doesn't necessarily equate to "illusionary" experiences only.

reply to post by mirageman


Great thread mate and for what it's worth Nick Pope does state in this interview that a lot of the 'evidence' for the case got sent to Germany (am not in a position to save videos at the moment but if anyone could upload this interview then that would be great as it's a bit of a rare one).

Nick Pope was the man who brought Tony Topping to the attention of Channel 4. Here in a never seen before interview he is interviewed by Miles Johnstone of AMMACH regarding his time in the MOD Air 2. Nick was pushed for time and so let his guard down.

FireMoon
At this point my friend said.... "Oh my old man told me something, that one in the forest a good few years ago, that really happened as in, something very strange happened"

I asked him..."Do you mean the Rendlesham incident?"

"Yes"; he replied "That's the one, that actually happened as reported and my dad also told me that many of the witnesses were threatened with prison if they said anything about what they had seen".

Obviously, my interest piqued I then asked them. "So how would he know about that?"

"Oh"; my colleague replied, "My old man was spook, a spy, an arms dealer for the British government and he told me it was true when the first articles in the newspapers were published, not years and years afterwards".

Now, lets break it down. His dad told him that witnesses were threatened with prison if they spoke out. Prison would suggest civilians as, if it were military surely, the terminology he would have used would have been. "They were threatened with court martial"?

So, why would a member of the British security services know of the Rendlesham incident and what was the security services involvement.? Then I remembered the episode of UFO Hunters where Thurkettle says he was visited after the events of December 1980 and before Halt had even written the memo, by two British guys who questioned him about had he seen any strange red light in the forest recently.

Now, my colleague has no real interest in UFOs and neither did his dad however, how come what my colleague tells me his father told him when the incident was first made public, seems to square up nicely with what is now known?

Good stuff mate and some very pertinent questions asked there -certainly wouldn't be the first time we've had UFO witnesses claiming to be threatened by spooks and the civilian prison (and not court martial) aspect is really intriguing. Have admittedly never really looked into this case (other than reading the ATS threads about it) but always thought the audio statement below about it being a National Security issue from five star Admiral Of The Fleet Lord Hill-Norton was a good one.





As already discussed I also watched this doco recently and the claims about the radar confirmation on the same night from operator Nigel Kerr at RAF Neatishead can be found around 10:00.

FireMoon

Why is it that, the USAF, which has a notorious record for "forced fit" explanations has never come out and said. "Err right well , actually it was a lighthouse and meteor and given the tensions of the period it happened in everyone became a little carried away for over 72 hours and a whole bunch of professionals made a right mess of it?

Another very good point mate and it certainly is notorious (some would even say bordering on the criminally negligent) -also seems it's not just the USAF who enjoy manipulating the 'actual unknown' stats and engaging in a spot of force-fit debunking.

.you may have heard of Julian J.A. Hennessey´s work before but he also brings up British MOD UFO policy and the subject of massaging the statistics of actual unknown reports (not to mention 'force fit' debunking) -thought the whole article was an excellent one but towards the end he also mentions how his research led him to conclude that the MOD were engaging in separate, non public UFO investigations.

Post

Cheers

karl 12
Nick Pope does state in this interview that a lot of the 'evidence' for the case got sent to Germany (am not in a position to save videos at the moment but if anyone could upload this interview then that would be great as it's a bit of a rare one).

Hi karl 12, it’s always a pleasure to see you around and the valueble info you post.
Thanks for that video with Nick Pope, I go definitely check that one out.
Cheers mate.

And for those interested, in this video starts Clifford Stone at 0:46:45 talking about his involvement with the Bentwaters case.

"The Interplanetary Phenomena Research Unit" - Sgt. Clifford Stone Testimony

www.youtube.com...

The GUT
Does anyone happen to know where Jenny Randles sits on this subject today?

She pretty much recanted on this in the late 1990s. See her chapter titled Rendle Shame Forest in the book The UFOs That Never Were (2000). Go to this Amazon page
www.amazon.co.uk...
click on the cover to “Look Inside” and search on “Rendlesham”.

Perhaps the most pertinent quote is on pp.219-20: “The Orford Ness lighthouse does seem to have been witnessed on both nights, despite claims to the contrary. I find it hard not to believe that the lights in the northern sky seen by Halt were probably stars. The very first object that fell into the forest and seen by Steffans on December 26 appears to match the meteor seen at 2.50 am.”

She still harbours the hope that there was something unusual going on, but she agrees it wasn’t a ‘real’ UFO in any normal sense of the term.

FireMoon
Could it be that, when most people see this their first thought is. "So let me get this right, a whole bunch of trained personnel mistook something that lasted for mere seconds for something that was clearly visible and hovering for some considerable length of time? Just how would they do that?

The "trained personnel" argument is fairly generic and often used to imply some sort of expertise in the identification of "highly strange" phenomena. I doubt that anyone involved, from the SP's to the brass, had such specific training.

FireMoon
Why is it that, to my knowledge, not one member of the service personnel that night has ever stepped forward and said something along the following lines " Oh god, what right royal cock up that was, there was hell to pay about personnel going off base and spending hours wombling about looking for a lighthouse and meteor"?

Because they don't want to look foolish to the entire world, perhaps?

draknoir2Because they don't want to look foolish to the entire world, perhaps?

The USAF handed the whole thing over to the British, since it was on British soil, and had done with it. As we know, the MoD didn't take it seriously either, and we also know why, thanks to the release of this briefing paper prepared for the British defence minister Lord Trefgarne when he met Lord Hill-Norton in 1985:
Official papers reveal: “No additional action was required”
www.ianridpath.com...

Perhaps the most pertinent comment from the USAF was made by Col Sam Morgan, who succeeded Col Ted Conrad as Halt’s boss in mid 1981. Morgan found Halt’s tape recording of the UFO sighting in a desk. Morgan had not heard of the events before. He called Halt in for an explanation, then spoke to the UK base commander Don Moreland and concluded that it was “just a bunch of guys screwing around in the woods”, as he told Phil Klass in 1984.

That, I think, is a fitting epitaph for the Rendlesham Forest UFO case.