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

a reply to: DaveBowman

I do allow the very real possibility that Halt and Penniston are playing out unattractive but assigned roles. Their motivations may very well be duty.

I'm simply padding out a theory again. But it is notable that Halt seems to have a sort of hold over Penniston. It's also possible that the binary was invented to completely throw the 30th anniversary conference into confusion. It's also interesting that Penniston remained close to Burroughs just long enough to ensure that he got the binary episode into the "Encounter in Rendlesham Forest" book.

There are interviews with a number of people involved directly and on the periphery of the RFI. But the majority of the output comes from the #Fab Four#. They have led the narrative on the Rendlesham incident for many years without ever being able to agree on much at all. Perhaps we should be looking at them and asking why?

a reply to: mirageman

The Bennewitz Effect.

originally posted by: mirageman
Of the civilians there are a handful of witnesses. Gary Collins, Gordon Levitt and Roy Webb

Thanks for that. Funny how the phenomena seen by civilian witnesses vary as much as the phenomena reported in the Halt memo: A triangular craft, a red ball of light, and lights hovering and zapping through the sky.

originally posted by: mirageman

It's also possible that the binary was invented to completely throw the 30th anniversary conference into confusion.

I think it was more of a decoy to hide the fact they still didn’t have an answer to the huge gap between Penniston’s account and that of Burroughs. Penniston had to come up with something big enough to divert public attention.

originally posted by: mirageman

I'm simply padding out a theory again. But it is notable that Halt seems to have a sort of hold over Penniston.

It is true that Halt and Penniston used to be the ‘semi-official spokesmen’ to the incident. This also seems logical as they were the highest ranking eye witnesses to the third and first night.

Burroughs was kept out by Halt for some reason, maybe because Burroughs tends to come on too strong, was obsessed with it, and keeps throwing in wild theories.
Or maybe because the beam shining down on Burroughs had to be kept out of the public domain – Halt did say that Burroughs came forward during the third night, in his interview in LAEG, but never talked about a beam shining down on Burroughs.

Burroughs himself seems to be willing to follow orders; when Larry Fawcett called him in in 1984 he refused to give Fawcett any information before getting permission from his superiors and he never called back (the phone interview with Burroughs is also published in LAEG).

Bustinza is the biggest enigma to me. His accounts over the years vary beyond belief. Which one is the truth?

- The one he told Larry Fawcett in 1984, where he describes a landed craft in detail, and how he saw Halt facing the craft, talking about parts he would get from the electronics division? He also told Fawcett he was debriefed but never threatened.

- The one he told Georgina Bruni around 1999, where he doesn’t remember anything about parts from the electronics division anymore, only says there was a landed craft without giving any details, but does tell her they threatened him?

- Or the one he told recently, where he doesn’t even talk about a landed craft anymore, but only about a light shining down that looked like a snowy TV screen?

The only stable part in his stories is the confiscation of cameras…

I'm starting to think that Bustinza spun a yarn for Warren back on the base without realizing the potential consequences. After all, Warren was mesmerized by the story. The silly story about the base commander helping aliens to repair their ship may have been nothing more than a joke that was passed on.

The only story that still has some credibility left is Halt’s story. It has been pretty stable, is backed up by a memo and a tape recording, and is corroborated by Nevels, a civilian witness, and a logged call to Eastern Radar.
It is also consistent with Halt’s reaction mid-January 1981, when Palmer and Laplume reported strange lights again at East Gate.

All the lies, fabrications, and quarrels have basically undermined Halt and prevented his story from getting any serious attention. Was this deliberate, or just a consequence of the personalities involved? And is Halt's story essentially the truth (or at least a watered-down version of it)?

originally posted by: ctj83
a reply to: Jayceedove

Thanks for clarifying that Jenny. Have you ever looked at some of the paper's he has written? A lot of them are around space and in many ways are 'extra terrestrial. If memory serves, didn't Alan initially get drawn into this because he though the re entry path for Cosmos was wrong?

Yes, he is quite well known in the UK for his attempts to design a sub orbital spaceplane that could cut long distance flying times and over 30 years on this is still what he is involved with. He was in the UK media quite recently talking of these plans.

When he first called me he got my number from someone else he then worked with in a space/astronomy team who knew me and my involvement in RF and so had my ex directory number. He was then unaware of the case details and was naturally suspicious of it because of its tabloid background.

His first conversation was about the problems with the entry into the Earth's atmosphere of the Cosmos booster that created the major burn up just after 9 pm on 25 December 1980. A few hours before the RF sightings began but at the very time of the puzzling account from the two witnesses at Paco de Arcos in Portugal who had already contacted me by mid January. In fact they did so just before I found out via the radar operator at Watton (Eastern Radar) about the RF case - that being about 2 weeks after my contact from the witnesses who saw what they did in Portugal.

Those two men saw something that logically has to be the Cosmos burn up given the time and details. Yet their accounts report something that could not have been the Cosmos because it reportedly churned up the sea, changed direction and left them with tingling skins, redness and mild sickness in the following hours. So I had a dilemma of these anomalies about the Cosmos burn up even before I knew that RF had happened. Their account either had to be seriously out of kilter or what they saw was not a normally behaving satellite booster burn up.

Alan Bond said that there had been issues with the orbital path of a Cosmos burn up around the RF weekend (though he was speaking of a different one at that point) and he was speculating about some kind of intercept and recovery mission involving the aerospace recovery team then based at Woodbridge trained for space flight recoveries. Plus, I knew that this Cosmos rocket had been launched from the site in the USSR from whence came the apparent interference (thought by some workers to be attempts to scupper their research) that had ended the 'OTH radar' experiments on Orford Ness.

So a pattern was emerging, either real or just coincidental.

The British Astronomical Association preliminary report into the Cosmos event and the many reports of it across northern Europe was familiar to me as I had spoken with them when it appeared in early 1981. They were puzzled because there were two sets of data based on witness sightings that were incompatible. The directions of flight etc implied that two coincident but different phenomena were involved because, of course, they knew that an inert re-entering booster could not change course to create such a conflict in the data.

So that astronomical report was seeing similar things to what the witnesses in Portugal had already told me.

In their later final report the BAA simply ignored the relevance of those anomalous reports and instead focused on the majority that matched the presumed burn up path of the booster. Paco de Arcos was south of this by some distance (most reports were over France and south east England) but compatible with the pre combustion phase of the burn up.

Bond was seemingly thinking of finding a very different way this all might fit together.

His second call to me was the one that basically told me he was dropping his interest in this matter and implying it was because it was dangerous and sensitive to inquire any further. The comments he now says were meant as a joke.

That is really all I know.

originally posted by: mirageman
a reply to: Jayceedove

HI Jenny (again)!

Did you ever get the impression in your dealings with Colonel Halt that he was holding things back or even feeding false information?

The reason I ask is that :




i) He claims he was never debriefed on the RFI but felt he could debrief some of the men involved.

ii) The statements he took indicated that there was a beacon (or lighthouse) but Halt never acknowledged that this played 'any' part at all in confusing the men. (At least I don't think he has).

iii) He has remained tight lipped about the night of 26th/27th Dec until recently although claims he knew nothing about it until 6 or 7 years ago! The night when Bonnie Tamplin had suffered a trauma after experiencing something fly through her vehicle out in the forest. There is a comment by Ted Conrad that places Halt out investigating that night.

iv) On the night of the 27t/28th Dec Halt spends some 4 hours out in the forest and has since described all sorts of phenomena in the sky above his bases and that 'sensitive' ordnance was probed by a beam of light from an unknown source. But whenever he's asked why he didn't do anything more than walk, and occasionally talk into his tape recorder, he seemingly deferred to lower ranks further away and issued no alert nor call for further support. So was it really that important?

v) His memo has the wrong dates on it. He waited two weeks to send it and despite his protest no one did anything in the MoD he didn't actually ask them to do anything in the letter.

vi) Despite being Deputy Base Commander he claims all sorts of people were involved in interrogating his men. But he claims to have been totally out of the loop and was not informed what was going on.



There's more of course.

I'm not actually interested in Halt's replies to those issues. But more as to whether you think he has been deceiving everyone about elements of the case?

Charles Halt was in a difficult position for many reasons. He stayed on base longer than most. He got promotion during the time the case started to make the media in the UK. At that point the USAF were trying to bring cruise missiles into the UK and getting major protests over this. At the same time as many locals believed there was nuclear material on the Bentwaters/Woodbridge complex but officially that was not the case. As a base commander his reputation was a factor in things well beyond this UFO event. Things that involved the security of western civilisation.

I do not blame him for being circumspect at all. Most of the witnesses were. We were told by both Jim Penniston (when he was still on base in 1983) and John Burroughs (when I met him in Arizona in 1989) that they had chosen to tone down certain aspects of their story and the USAF (including Halt) were on board with that.

I do wish they had referenced the fact they saw the lighthouse on the night and recognised it was different from the UFO. That would have undercut the theory in a big way when it was seemingly 'invented' by the UK media in 1983. So - yes - that looks like a mistake in retrospect, but I think I can see why they omitted it. They were trying to get the MoD interested in the case and mentioning - oh lighthouses were seen too that night - would have handed an instant out to the MoD to write off the case. Anyone who has followed the MoD handling of UFOs can see that as predictable.

Overall they all seemed to be trying to strike a perfectly understandable balance between sharing the extraordinary events they all clearly believed they had witnessed and the self destruction of their careers that would follow if they were too open about all of this.

I think a lot of the issues and confusion around the case in the early days stem from them being split for all sorts of reasons like these and others - for example keeping the involvement of Cabansag out of it altogether. We knew early on there were three men out there on that first night and that two were Burroughs and Penniston but they were going out of their way to hide the involvement of the third man. In fact most of what we knew about the third man came from things Halt said off the record and a judicious piecing together of the clues.

So we knew all along that it would be years before the real story emerged - probably when all the main parties were out of the USAF and felt less restrained from talking.

I was okay with this because I saw it happening in other cases. Around the time we were pursuing RF I was closely involved in a case involving the abduction of a British police officer from his patrol car on duty. It happened 4 weeks to the day before RF. By chance this was not just another case for me. That officer's sergeant was married to my cousin and he vouched for him as 100% genuine from the off. Hence why I was closely interested, wrote up the case in 1983 with him for my book 'The Pennine UFO Mystery' and am still in close contact with him to this day. He actually carried the coffin when my cousin's husband died.

Anyway my inside track on what was going on here showed me the way that his career was destroyed as a consequence of both his UFO encounter and his involvement with a mysterious death that he was officer on scene to just a few months earlier (the dead man's name was Adamski - which meant nothing to the police officer but certainly did to me!)

All of this meant that I understood the complex issues faced by Halt and the other witnesses and could see how they were torn between wanting to talk openly and the restrictions imposed by their situation.

This is why Halt spoke freely when he could - especially to talk to anyone who was a UFO witness themselves as I fekt he was genuinely trying to figure out what he had witnessed. I know the News of the World tried hard to get him to talk in 1983 and my feeling is he would have done if he had felt that he was free to do so, but he had to curtail his natural desire to talk and understand and tell the world with his obligations to the US Air Force.

So I do not judge or think anyone was going out of their way to mislead UFO research. I think we just have to remember that behind all of this were human beings caught in extraordinary circumstances and as baffled by all of that as are some of us who have been chasing answers to the UFO mystery even before 1980.

When I met John Burroughs in Phoenix the one thing he wanted to ask me about were UAP - Unidentified Atmospheric Phenomena - something he knew I had researched. I knew right away this guy was the real deal and he had seen something that was to him unidentifiable. And - 9 years on - he was still trying hard to fathom out what that something was and willing to consider any and all possibilities.

He convinced me - for the first time since I saw the lighthouse and lightship for myself in 1983 - that, whilst these may well have been a factor in some of the events reported by some of those on base that weekend, they were probably NOT the cause of the primary events. That was an important epiphany for me.

a reply to: Jayceedove

I'd be interested to know where it launched from and did the interference come from the Duga? There is an excellent documentary called the Woodpecker that is very revealing on hidden connections between the Duga and Chernobyl disaster. I think you'll find it worth watching.

It's very odd that so many people suggested the satellite angle to you:
- Halt & 'brown bears'
- APEN and 'brown bears' via the railway group (from your Fortean times articles)
- Various staff as other military development facilities in the area
- Dr Bond

I'm not sure if that means something though.

Did you ever consider if 'Blandfordness' was constructed near a nuclear power station for a reason? Just as Windscale /Sellafield was really intended for producing plutonium then recycling nuclear materials the US could not, versus being constructed for domestic use. The reason I ask, is the Woodpecker / Duga was built near Chernobyl.

I finished 'A Private Property' and I noticed a few strange things:
- Weird software references - e.g. Hoyt is software with command functions
- Odd use of capitalisation and initialism that made it hard to read

Ultimately though, it seemed to suggest that Blandfordness and Duga were psychotronic weapons designed to manifest phantoms. Did I understand it right - i found it very difficult to read.

I believe, Noyes and yourself both met David Daniels,who butler believes was an alien. I wonder if that was really just surveillance, of a different form that I believe happened to you.

a reply to: Jayceedove

HI again Jenny, I hope you don't mind me saying this, but I get the feeling that when you say things beyond the ufo issue, an important for the security of the western world, you might be meaning something other than nuclear weapons or ufos. I can appreciate it's something you'd probably not want to share, but I've got similar feeling from watching Halt talk occasionally.

Perhaps I'm completely off base there.

originally posted by: mirageman
a reply to: DaveBowman

That's probably not a bad theory at all.

However I am puzzled why Halt (belatedly) wrote his infamous memo compressing the events and getting the dates badly mixed up. This is all just a theory as well but suspect it was a 'red herring put on ice'. Just in case something leaked out about what was really going on. Unfortunately it was. This then forced Halt into a role he never expected he would have to take on as the story grew arms and legs.

I think he purposely acted the way he did throughout the incident to play out the UFO story to the lower ranks involved under orders. A story that he has both played down and exaggerated when needed. I think, despite his claims, he has been well briefed over what went on. I also suspect things went wrong and have affected many of those closely involved. This is why the UFO story has been allowed to prevail. Because the real truth is something that has to remain buried to this day.

Like I said just a theory...

I have considered the idea that the Halt memo was put out there as a releasable file should Freedom of Information come to the UK and force release of data. It was nowhere in sight in 1981 so not a major factor in any decision I expect.

That would explain the complete absence of any reference to the key hard evidence in the memo - the tape recording, samples taken, readings and photographs. To exclude that from an official report is more puzzling than the - admittedly baffling - dating errors.... Though believe it or not I have seen worse in official reports.

I have asked Halt directly about these things and he told me that it was a test the water report to see if the MoD bit and came out to investigate. As he only wanted to share the full details face to face. If they had done so then they would have been shown the evidence to support the case.

This fits what we know from Brenda and Dot when they went on base to ask Donald Moreland what he knew around 3 weeks after the Halt memo was sent. Nobody on base was surprised to see them, even though to them the only people knowing about the case would have done so via the memo. Indeed Moreland mistook them for MoD officials following up the memo and only stopped talking when their true identity was revealed.

I also get the feeling there was a bit of a responsibility dispute over this. After all the men were all off base on British land during the whole affair and - with Halt's 'skywatch' field investigation in particular - there is a possible argument that British involvement should have been brought in rather than the USAF just go out in the night to do what they did.

Of course, there are two possibilities here. One that they did go solo and were wary of admitting as such in a memo and preferred to explain all they were up to face to face. As Halt told me.

Or that they did inform the MoD well before the memo and that this was just something submitted for the files. The police - having been called out on the first night - could also have contacted the MoD immediately, putting them in the loop far earlier than mid January when the Halt memo arrived at Whitehall.

We have two problems really over this. Firstly, that the MoD files show that they were very slow following up the case - despite the prospect of a forest filled with local people being possibly irradiated. They sent out letters to intelligence agencies and waited weeks for replies. Brenda and Dot were on base and I had talked to the radar operator at Watton before the MoD had even got into first gear with any follow up! This just does not make much sense.

Then there is the issue of when the radar tapes were accessed. If the Halt memo was first notification at the MoD and they sent out the letters the files reveal then there it cannot have been earlier than - say - 20 January 1981. Given the files tardiness of letters to and fro to responsible bodies then quite possibly later. Yet 12 days after that date I was in touch with the radar operator at Watton who was already talking about the visit by UK and USAF officials to access this data as if it had happened a week or two before - not days before.

This remains unresolved.

Plus the men visiting Watton were apparently aware of the existence of the Halt tape and many other key facts not in the memo. My notes written from that first conversation with the Watton radar man prove that. Because he only knew via their visit.

So where did the MoD visitors accessing the radar data at Watton discover the existence of this data? It is not in the Halt memo. And by the point I was told of it from Watton Halt and Moreland were still sat twiddling thumbs on base waiting for the never to arrive MoD visit.

The MoD files show that they WERE aware of the existence of the tape as early as February 1981 and they were later admonished because nobody bothered to go get it or listen to it. They claimed that it was not thought worthwhile as it would not tell them anything they did not know.

Well - apart from pretty much everything and the existence of hard data like photographs referenced on that tape that the MoD also never sought.

There are several things here that do not add up.

originally posted by: ctj83
a reply to: Jayceedove

HI again Jenny, I hope you don't mind me saying this, but I get the feeling that when you say things beyond the ufo issue, an important for the security of the western world, you might be meaning something other than nuclear weapons or ufos. I can appreciate it's something you'd probably not want to share, but I've got similar feeling from watching Halt talk occasionally.

Perhaps I'm completely off base there.

Sorry, you are off base. There was nothing more intended there than what I said. Halt was in command of a key base with nuclear material nearby at a time when this was a huge deal as far as the British public were concerned. I think he just had to put UFO questions to one side compared with his official duties. But that is just my opinion.

As for Ralph Noyes' novel. Yes, it is weird and he was a complex guy who could be mysterious at times. He was rather like Q in the Bond films in demeanour and character. He was also very concerned about what happened to the RAF gun camera footage of UFOs that he was shown on his induction into the MoD UIFO job. This is not in any released files.

He never believed that UFOs were alien and favoured the idea that they were a living force that could be created and
or harnessed for both benign and offensive purposes. I think he believed that there had been research into such things that had both accidentally created UFOs as side effects of the experiments and that had involved intrusions by these forces that were occurring because of laws outside our current levels of understanding of physics. Possibly inter-dimensional if I got his thoughts right - as I may not have done.

He was 100% sure the MoD took UFOs seriously up to a high level and we knew only a fraction of what they had done during their investigation into them as most was not in the files we saw. These were basically just reports from the public. The good stuff was never filed as UFOs so would never be found or released under searches related to this.

I have met one or two people who seemed to think they are aliens. That is as far as I would go with describing any of them.

a reply to: Jayceedove

Thanks for the correction on that. I found the book quite disturbing. Particularly the alien eating entrails in space.

I also didn't understand why Bob Taylor's encounter was shoehorned in at the start?

Was the implication that the balls were US military at the start? They seemed to have no relevance to the Bentwaters incident. Maybe I missed something on that?

I really appreciate your answers!

originally posted by: Jayceedove

Plus the men visiting Watton were apparently aware of the existence of the Halt tape and many other key facts not in the memo. My notes written from that first conversation with the Watton radar man prove that. Because he only knew via their visit.

So where did the MoD visitors accessing the radar data at Watton discover the existence of this data? It is not in the Halt memo. And by the point I was told of it from Watton Halt and Moreland were still sat twiddling thumbs on base waiting for the never to arrive MoD visit.

[...]

There are several things here that do not add up.

My theory:

I do not think Halt’s memo was the first and only official report to the RAF or MOD.
The first report already reached the MOD right after the incidents, as you would expect from a vigilant air defence organisation.

Nick Redfern wrote to RAF Watton Eastern Radar in 1989 and received this reply:

I can offer you a verbatim statement of the only entry regarding the subject incident in the log for that period. The entry is times ad 0325 on 28 December 1980 and states: ‘Bentwaters Command Post contacted Eastern Radar and requested information of aircraft in the area – UA37 traffic southbound FL370 – UFO sightings at Bentwaters. They are taking reporting action.’
UA37 means the Upper Air Route Upper Amber 37 which runs approximately north south some 40 miles East of Bentwaters and is used by civilian airliners. FL370 means 37,000 feet in altitude.

So the first reports must have come from the Bentwaters Command Post right after the incidents and were about UFO sightings high up in the sky East of Bentwaters that were possibly captured by RAF Watton Eastern Radar. This would have prompted the first investigations from the British side, including the collection of the radar tapes.

The Halt tape was played in a staff meeting with Wing Commander Gordon Williams. This is how knowledge of the tape and its contents could have reached the MOD. Their most logical point of contact would be the Wing Commander. The presence of USAF personnel and vehicles on British land was a sensitive matter and may have been downplayed by Williams. Halt could have been kept out of the loop for this reason, and because he was too intrigued by it.

The two English gentlemen who questioned Vince Thurkettle about lights in the sky days after the incident must have been part of the MOD investigation, which was probably already completed before Halt wrote his memo.

Halt did not want to leave it at that. So he asked Donald Moreland (the British liaison officer) what to do and wrote an additional memo in the hope it would initiate a more thorough investigation - not just whether this was something of ‘defence significance’.

QUOTE from Guest 101

My theory:

I do not think Halt’s memo was the first and only official report to the RAF or MOD.
The first report already reached the MOD right after the incidents, as you would expect from a vigilant air defence organisation.

Nick Redfern wrote to RAF Watton Eastern Radar in 1989 and received this reply:

I can offer you a verbatim statement of the only entry regarding the subject incident in the log for that period. The entry is times ad 0325 on 28 December 1980 and states: ‘Bentwaters Command Post contacted Eastern Radar and requested information of aircraft in the area – UA37 traffic southbound FL370 – UFO sightings at Bentwaters. They are taking reporting action.’
UA37 means the Upper Air Route Upper Amber 37 which runs approximately north south some 40 miles East of Bentwaters and is used by civilian airliners. FL370 means 37,000 feet in altitude.

So the first reports must have come from the Bentwaters Command Post right after the incidents and were about UFO sightings high up in the sky East of Bentwaters that were possibly captured by RAF Watton Eastern Radar. This would have prompted the first investigations from the British side, including the collection of the radar tapes.

The Halt tape was played in a staff meeting with Wing Commander Gordon Williams. This is how knowledge of the tape and its contents could have reached the MOD. Their most logical point of contact would be the Wing Commander. The presence of USAF personnel and vehicles on British land was a sensitive matter and may have been downplayed by Williams. Halt could have been kept out of the loop for this reason, and because he was too intrigued by it.

The two English gentlemen who questioned Vince Thurkettle about lights in the sky days after the incident must have been part of the MOD investigation, which was probably already completed before Halt wrote his memo.

Halt did not want to leave it at that. So he asked Donald Moreland (the British liaison officer) what to do and wrote an additional memo in the hope it would initiate a more thorough investigation - not just whether this was something of ‘defence significance’.

The memo from Watton referenced above is relating to the incident that I was told about 4 weeks after the sighting by the radar officer working at that base. He described to me both what was reported to the base from Bentwaters live and the furore this created AND the fact that they themselves could not detect on radar the objects that Watton said they could. However, added that another staff member had detected something earlier that weekend.

I have tracked him down (as he long since left Watton) to ask him again about all of this quite recently and he was very surprised to hear that the case has reached legendary proportions since the start of February 1981 when we first spoke.

However, he does recall the fuss that it created on an otherwise very quiet night and that they contacted Ash radar in Kent as well (where a tracking was made). And that a civilian aircraft on one of the over flight paths had reported seeing something. Though that might have been the Cosmos burn up.

So, yes, there were reports made to the CAA at West Drayton and these usually found their way to the MoD as well via telex if possible UFOs were involved.

But it is not clear whether any reference to events at Bentwaters/Woodbridge as the MoD files show no evidence.

What we do know from those files is that they spent ages looking for records of radar events on the wrong dates thanks to the mistakes in the Halt memo. And that even years later they were arguing that their searches had been meaningless because of that. By the time they tried to find data for the correct dates it was far too late as it had been erased.

This would all have to be a fabricated record of incompetence if there really was an earlier report of the correct dates of events.

The data officially suggests that up to mid January 1981 the MoD knew nothing of the events on Bentwaters and that the follow up at Watton involved only a request for the radar record on the wrong dates in the Halt memo at some point from the third week of January up to the middle of February when the issues surfaced.

There were also problems with some of the radar data apparently that contributed to no meaningful data being available.

Yet they also discuss the existence of the Halt tape and yet Halt says there was no follow up of his memo. So how and when this information was discovered is not apparent.

The Watton radar officer told me about this in 2 February 1981 (as far as I know the very first public knowledge of the tape in the UFO community). He said that this was told him by visiting USAF and RAF intelligence people when accessing the radar data. Though interestingly when we spoke recently he said that he remembered none of this - so I only have my notes written on that first call 35 years ago to establish this.

Various other things were also said at that point not in the Halt memo - again supposedly told to the Watton staff by the visiting MoD/USAF agents. For instance the fact that the recording was made by a team that was assembled from a party at Woody's.

So someone very much on the inside track on this case had talked to the MoD investigation within 4 - 5 weeks after the sighting and it is far from clear how or why this data beyond what was in the Halt memo came to be recorded by the MoD.

There are certainly some confusing things around this area, which was what I tried to piece together in a recent series of articles looking at the early days immediately after the case that I wrote for Fortean Times earlier this year.

a reply to: Jayceedove

Thanks for your responses again Jenny. This does give some added depth to what was going on in the early days after the RFI.

Even if we feel like we are forever standing in a revolving doorway with all of this!

There are certainly some confusing things around this area, which was what I tried to piece together in a recent series of articles looking at the early days immediately after the case that I wrote for Fortean Times earlier this year.

I did a summary of your work in Fortean Times (which is highly recommended) : click here

Please feel free to correct anything you feel is wrong or add your own comments.

One other thing I'd like to know is why so many of the witnesses mention "Heathrow Tower" as signalling something was tracked over Bentwaters on the first night of events in a number of different TV and radio interviews. Did you ever hear anything yourself and whether the CAA were involved?

a reply to: Jayceedove

I believe that the two men who visited Thurkettle, included Terry Hooper Scharf. Although he doesn't state who the colleague was, he has mentioned elsewhere a colleague of his admitted to being part of APEN and trying to blacken his reputation...

Of course, it's been suggested that Andrew Pike's research triggered the reports of men in black asking questions.

Not sure what to make of that, if anything at all...

originally posted by: Jayceedove

Various other things were also said at that point not in the Halt memo - again supposedly told to the Watton staff by the visiting MoD/USAF agents. For instance the fact that the recording was made by a team that was assembled from a party at Woody's.

So someone very much on the inside track on this case had talked to the MoD investigation within 4 - 5 weeks after the sighting and it is far from clear how or why this data beyond what was in the Halt memo came to be recorded by the MoD.

Thanks for sharing all this information, Jenny!

Maybe it was Moreland? According to an interview in YCTTP , Halt already approached Moreland right after Moreland’s holiday, and it was Moreland who asked him to write the memo (which Halt did a week later). Maybe Moreland already informed the MOD by phone:

As soon as I returned from my two-week Christmas leave, the first thing that happened was that Halt came to see me straightaway, said it was a serious matter.
[…]
He wouldn’t have done the memo, but I told him that the MOD should be informed

An interesting piece of that interview is this statement by Moreland:

There was only one memo. They didn’t reply, they didn’t even reply to the radar report

This must have been the radar report from Bentwaters. Halt recently stated he now has signed statements of the Bentwaters radar operators that they did see something.

It seems the CO at Watton, Squadron Leader Derek Coumbe, has also been interviewed, back in 2004 by Radio 4 investigative reporter Gerry Northam. He said nothing was seen on Eastern Radar.

Excerpts are here on ATS.

GN: What was the tone of the phone calls that came through [from Bentwaters]?

DC: They were very jumpy and quite panicky. In fact the first call I remember initially was just to scrutinise the radar and was there any unusual return in the area. However subsequently it went on a bit and they went on to be a bit panicky as if to imply that there should be something, that we should be seeing something, and really not wanting to take no for an answer. But in the end it sort of calmed down, but there was a bit of jumpiness about the whole situation on the telephone.

[…]

GN: What did you do afterwards with regards to the records that were kept those nights?

DC: As usual, with any incident of any kind, any aircraft incident, any reports coming through, the automatic procedure was for the voice tapes initially to be impounded and also the radar film because the radar was on a permanent camera, to be impounded as well, and they would then be scrutinised later as and when required.

GN: Did you impound them?

DC: I did.

GN: What then happened to those records?

DC: Well those records would have been kept on base. They would have been scrutinised and investigated for anything unusual in the event that anybody asked for any evidence required at any subsequent inquiry.

I realize these might be difficult for some to get access to after all these years, but Graham Birdsall's UFO Magazine interviewed radar operators and did two detailed reports in the November/December 2001 and February 2002 issues. Well worth digging out if you have copies.

a reply to: SkywatcherUK

The recent interview, conducted by Hastings has the radar operator describe the floating orange ball as basketball like.

This is also how Larry Warren describes the sphere that came down and exploded into sparks and became a space vehicle. Of course, the revelations over the past few months mean it's probably Bustinza's description.

Oddly, the same description can be found in the Shag Harbour incident.

It continually surprises me that these type of coincidences don't ring alarm bells for others.

Jenny has kindly confirmed that both Colonel Halt and APEN told them (Skycrash authors)to look for 'Brown Bears' as the real cause of the RFI . Apparently so did the CNN interviewer Chuck de Caro!

Interesting how these claims have just melted away over the decades...

a reply to: mirageman

Thank you for the reply. That was a very kind and well written summary of my pieces in FT.

Though I did groan at the 'veteran' UFOlogist comment. Not because you are incorrect - all too accurate these days, I suppose - but mostly as it seems like only five minutes ago when I was meeting Hynek, Vallee and Keel for the first time and thinking of them as being veterans that I had read with reverence whilst at school!

This FT series all came about rather suddenly as they needed a lot of space filling at short order and I had just tracked down the radar operator from Watton after many years to see what he had to say whilst digging into the early days of the case for my own peace of mind after being asked by John Burroughs to do a radio show. I do media interviews very rarely these days owing to my inability to travel.

I have also not written a book since 'Breaking the time barrier' appeared in 2004 because of my role as a 24/7 carer and the resulting impossibility of going to bookshops to promote it for publishers like I used to do. So I guess that I rather got carried away with this series of articles and ended up writing a mini book inside a couple of weeks.

Inevitably I had to leave things out as it was already overkill for Fortean Times balance anyway. Plus I had another commitment to help a witness write an autobiography about their own case which had a pressing time line. Then other factors regarding RF intervened which limited what I could say.

Nothing sinister here, by the way. Practical ones only concerning a contract. Though I am not writing a book on the case just to scotch any such rumours that might evolve.

I might do something about the things that got left out in a future article. But FT need more variety from me for a while.

Haven't been on for a week or so. No idea what has been said in those days, I will catch up. I just needed to tell you about another development.

In LAEG Warren states he went to Germany on the 24th dec. I have puzzled over this for some time, it didn't add up and thats the reason why I wouldn't leave it. He says he went on the 24th then i quote "On or around the 27th we flew back". "On the 28th I went to axe music to haggle over a guitar amp for a couple of hours." Why be vague about the 27th then specific about the 28th? Was that because the dates were confused by the memo? No...

He didn't go to Germany at all. He says he said he went to Germany to cover up his involvement in the incidents. Something he has literally NEVER tried to do. But the confusion lies around when he said he was involved initially. It seems he said that to cover his involvement in the first nights events to GB in YCTTP. He said it to cover up his involvement in something he wasn't involved with? Actually.. He knew about what had happened immediately because he was on base at the time. He feigned going to Germany so he could pretend he had no idea of what had happened on night one, was put on a non operational post and stole that nights events from Adrian and John B. Everyone knows who was there on night one.. Night three is messed up and that's how he wrote himself into it.

"A year earlier I had discussed Larry’s alleged trip to Germany with Peter Robbins. According to Left at East Gate, Larry had just arrived back from Germany the day before his encounter in Rendlesham Forest. Peter assured me that was what his co-author had told him, but I was not convinced. If Larry was in Germany, I thought he could not have been a witness because by his own admission and his records he was on D Flight, which meant he should have been on duty during 26/ 27– 28/ 29. Therefore, if he had been involved in the second landing, he would have already been on duty the day before. However, since then I had discovered that some of the flights were mixed up due to the Christmas holidays. With this in mind, I realized Larry could have been on a different shift that week, but for no reason in particular I had failed to mention my new findings to Larry or Peter".

"Just when I thought I had heard everything, Larry had another surprise in store for me. He was now confessing that he had never been in Germany during the Christmas holidays but had used the trip to cover up the fact that he had been involved in the initial incident. He claimed that if researchers thought he was out of the country then they would not connect him with it. I was obviously trying to figure out how anyone could connect him with the photographs or his alleged involvement when nobody had known anything about it anyway. This statement was remarkable, considering he had diligently done everything he could to prove the incident had occurred and especially that he himself was involved".

Bruni, Georgina; Pope, Nick. You Can't Tell the People: The Definitive Account of the Rendlesham Forest UFO Mystery (Kindle Locations 1721-1731). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

"The day before Christmas, I left for Germany with my friend Mark. We had met two German girls in London the previous week at Le Beat Route, a club on Greek Street. We had gotten along well at the time, and the girls had invited us to spend the holiday with them and their families near Frankfurt. We had a great time, despite a severe language barrier. However, I think the girls lost interest in Mark and me on the second night. We just sat around and stared at their parents and they at us, while the girls went out with their German boyfriends. On or about 27 December, we flew back to RAF Mildenhall to begin our shift the next night".

Robbins, Peter. Left at East Gate (Kindle Locations 1301-1305). Cosimo, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Warren VS Bruni. Incredibly revealing twinbases.org.uk...

He wrote himself off base until he realised he would be better off writing himself as being on base after two years of LAEG being published and not having the desired results. IMO

originally posted by: ctj83
a reply to: SkywatcherUK

The recent interview, conducted by Hastings has the radar operator describe the floating orange ball as basketball like.

Yes, some more details:

In 2007, Robert Hastings interviewed the Bentwaters radar operators: James H. Carey and Ivan “Ike” R. Barker.

Carey:

“What I remember is seeing was a very fast object on the radar we had in the tower. The scope was variable—it had a zoom as far as its [displayed] range, between five and 60-miles radius, but I think it was at set at a 60-miles when the object appeared. It came in from the east, went straight west across the scope and disappeared off the left side. It took maybe four sweeps—each sweep was two or three seconds—to cross it entirely. So it covered 120 miles in approximately eight to 12 seconds. In the 15 years I was an air traffic controller, I’d never seen anything travel across the scope that fast.

“A few seconds later, it came back on the scope, retracing its course, west to east, at the same speed. Then—I think it was maybe half or three-quarters of the way across—it did an immediate right-angle turn and headed south, off the bottom of the screen. I mean, it turned just like that, instantly. We couldn’t believe it! I told Ike, ‘Okay, that was not one of ours!’

Barker:

“When it hovered, I saw it out the window. It was basketball-shaped, and had sort of an orangish glow. Not bright orange, uh, sort of dim, maybe like the full moon would look behind a thin layer of clouds. There seemed to be something across the center of it, lighter-colored shapes like—don’t laugh—like portholes or windows, or even lights, in a row left to right, across its center. Maybe six or eight of them. They were stationary, not moving across the object. But it seemed spherical, not flat like a flying saucer. I couldn’t hear any noise. It wasn’t huge, but I think it was bigger than an airplane. I would say it was maybe twice the size of an F-111.”
[…]
“It stopped in mid-air for a few seconds, probably 500-feet, uh, maybe 1,000-feet above the [water] tower, then it left. I didn’t see it turn, uh, rotate or anything like that before leaving. But what impressed me most was the speed this thing had. I have never seen anything so fast in my life! It was zoom, gone!”

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