Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident

[John J.]

How is it I'm not allowed to make claims without reference or evidence....but everyone else is ?

In fairness, I stated something which was incorrect, or at least without evidence (that Halt had spoken with Penniston off the record), you asked for evidence, I checked and acknowledged my mistake.

Similarly, you (@Scaramanga) accepted that Burroughs didn't report seeing a landed object.

Very oddly, the police report makes no mention of who at Bentwaters made the call

was shown to be incorrect by @NorCal Dave, reducing some of the "oddness" that you interpreted as evidence of a cover-up.

Your claim that no-one involved in the events saw any lights, and they were all involved in a cover-up (i.e. were deceiving the public- lying).

I am insisting that stories are cover stories

-has no supporting evidence, but you insisted that this had to be the case (I don't think I'm misunderstanding, or misrepresenting your words?)
It's not unreasonable for others to ask what evidence there is for your theory of a conspiracy.

 

[Scaramanga]

My problem is when people make factual claims without giving much thought to whether they can be supported or not—and then blaming the other side when they turn out to be hard to support.

There are no definitive facts about the Rendlesham case. There is nothing we can ascribe the same certainty with which we can say Australia exists. Thus...what factual claims can be supported ? We cannot even say with 100% certainty that the 'beacon light' was the lighthouse. We can simply say that is 'more likely'.

Most of the claims about Rendlesham are hard to support. There is not a single 'explanation' that does not have issues. By all means point out the inconsistencies in any argument....that is what we are here for. But you seem to increasingly come across as objecting to anyone even making any other argument as it is just speculation and lacks enough facts, when every single Rendlesham forest theory is speculation and there are very few facts to go round.

I would agree that some speculation is more likely to be true, and more 'fact based' than others. Its a thankless task championing the wilder theories, and most of them probably are nonsense. But surely our entire purpose here is to rule stuff in or out, and we don't get there by not entertaining every possibility.

And I note...my comment about the base not being to the south west of Halt, a crucial error in the Ridpath theory, has just been glossed over. So I'm ignored even when I do present things that are facts....

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/rendlesham-forest-ufo-incident.13457/#post-315257

( and before anyone gets pedantic, this isn't a fact about the case itself...its a fact about a theory about the case )

 

[deirdre]

where in the world do they take witness statements years after the offenders have been convicted

also, not my claim, burden of proof is on the side claiming these statements exist

you posted a link that could be interpreted as insinuating the debunk is in that link. it isnt.

duffy was convicted in 2001. thats close to 20 years later. technically sounds like 16 or 17 years would be more accurate.

 

[Scaramanga]

was shown to be incorrect by @NorCal Dave, reducing some of the "oddness" that you interpreted as evidence of a cover-up.

Nope....I was referring to this police report, its the only one I am aware of, which gives no names. That the names were later established does not make them in the original report....

http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/police.html

 

[Scaramanga]

In fairness, I stated something which was incorrect, or at least without evidence (that Halt had spoken with Penniston off the record), you asked for evidence, I checked and acknowledged my mistake.

What are the chances that Halt produced his memo ( 2 weeks or so after the event ) without ever once speaking to Penniston ? But here one has one of the issues posting here, in that I am fairly sure I have seen Halt later comment that he did speak to Penniston at the time. But I'm not going to trawl through many 2 hour interviews to find every comment made....so its hearsay, plus even if I did find it I have no doubt I'd get ' Halt is remembering stuff 40 years later '

So my best bet is to argue its unlikely Halt wrote his memo without ever once speaking to those involved.

 

[deirdre]

your claim that no-one involved in the events saw any lights, and they were all involved in a cover-up (i.e. were deceiving the public- lying).

did he claim that noone saw any lights? must have missed that sentence.

either way, for those that fully believe the given explanations this conversation is useless. But for those that do not believe the skeptic explanations because of x, y and zed... it would probably be a good idea to consider the arguments rationally instead of being seen to be just dismissing everything out of hand. that doesnt help change the minds of people who dont believe the explanations you believe. (i realize this may not be what you doing, dismissing out of hand.. but this thread kinda reads that way. just saying, in case anyone cares about changing minds.)

 

[Scaramanga]

did he claim that noone saw any lights? must have missed that sentence.

I took the devil's advocate position that there's no evidence any of what is reported actually happened as described. That is not 'my' position. It was my response to being told there's no evidence for this or that specific claim. If one is going to argue that some of what happened is made up, or falsely claimed, then why not go the full hog and wonder if any of it really happened....and what theories might cover that, which a 'cover story' would.

That is all I was doing. It's a perfectly legitimate arguing tactic.

 

[John J.]

Nope....I was referring to this police report

It's not a police report !
It's a letter sent by the police to a member of the public (Ian Ridpath) in response to an enquiry. You think it should've included names of US service personnel? You think the police are under an obligation to give details of people they'd had contact with to anyone who writes and asks?
Including serving members of the armed forces?

That the names were later established

The name of the airman at the CSC who contacted Suffolk Constabulary was recorded at the time of his call (26 December 1980).

The letter that the police sent, which doesn't include names, is dated 23 November 1983, almost three years after the names were established.
And a few weeks after the story was first dramatically published in a very popular national newspaper (News of the World, October 1983 IIRC).

 

[Scaramanga]

It's not a police report !
It's a letter sent by the police to a member of the public in response to an enquiry. You think it should've included names of US service personnel? You think the police are under an obligation to give details of people they'd had contact with to anyone who writes and asks?
Including serving members of the armed forces?

It's a report ( of what happened ) contained in a letter. Do we really have to be quite so pedantic.

We can cross reference the date and time the police were called, in the police letter ( 4.11am on December 26th )....with Lieutenant Fred Burran's comment

'at approximately 0354 I terminated the investigation'

If he terminated the investigation, why were the police being called just 17 minutes later ? Burran makes no mention of calling the police. If we are to apply the criteria that if its not in the statements it didn't happen...why are we not applying that here ? What is more, there is no indication ( given that the investigation was 'terminated' ) that anyone was even there to meet the police when they arrived. I find this all decidedly odd.


http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/police.html
http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/Buran1.PNG

 

[JMartJr]

It occurs to me that, were I in charge of an effort to cover up a nuclear device that fell off a plane or otherwise wound up in an English forest, I would likely want something that would raise significantly less interest than an elaborate close encounters UFO story. Some obvious alternatives would be "we conducted a training exercise in case we ever have to recover such a device someday," or "we ran recovery operations on a bit of harmless but expensive/secret military kit inadvertently fell of a plane."

A UFO case with close-encounter details and physical traces on the ground and the like has the potential to create interest that persists for decades! (As evidence, note that here we are still debating it decades later.)

Even a simple "somebody thought they saw a UFO, we went out with a team to investigate but didn't find anything" would be better, as it does not create a huge mystery that people will want to try and solve!

As it stands, a coverup story seems unnecessary (unless I missed a bit where there were people NOT involved in the supposed cover up that reported strange doings in the woods that would need to be explained away, which is possible as it has been a long time since this thread started and I have not read the whole thing through recently.) But, were there need for a cover story, something less elaborate and less likely to attract interest would seem to be easy to come up with, and much preferable.

Barring some disclosure of a mislaid atomic bomb or something, I don't buy it, it does not seem to pass the "smell test." (With the full acknowledgement that me not buying it is not conclusive proof of anything!)

 

[Ann K]

"Is there" would have been a better choice of words, but in the moment I wrote a conjecture instead.

1. Opinion or judgment based on inconclusive or incomplete evidence; guesswork.
2. An opinion or conclusion based on guesswork.
   "The commentators made various conjectures about the outcome of the next election."
3. An opinion, or judgment, formed on defective or presumptive evidence; probable inference; surmise; guess; suspicion.

I don't have any of my own evidence to back it up. I accept that and I also accept that there may be evidence backed opinion which supports or refutes my conjecture, or there is no definitive opinion. I'm not here for a fight.

I think your phrase "must be a sweet spot" is exactly the right way to describe it. If there's an excited moment of confusion (adrenaline flowing, etc) at the beginning, and a memory corrupted by the years or influenced by other testimony at a much later date, there must necessarily be some middle ground between those two extremes.

 

[John J.]

did he claim that noone saw any lights? must have missed that sentence.

He claimed that the Penniston, Burroughs and Cabansag "encounter" never actually happened. It was a cover story only.
If none of it happened, they weren't pursuing lights.

Not only is there zero evidence that the Penniston/Burroughs incident ever happened....

...So, if we assume that the event never happened, we have to ask why would those guys say it did. OK so it may not be a dropped bomb or whatever, but to my mind it is a cover story for something else that occurred.

Fancy that. There was nothing there at the time. Yet another clue that nothing actually happened on 26th December.

The entire Rendlesham story is full of conflicting accounts. That is precisely what happens when people can't remember what happened because it didn't actually happen....

Of course people have trouble remembering the date of things that never happened.

And in my view, that includes the entire UFO incident being a cover story.

Incidentally, under this [Scaramanga's] theory the Penniston/Burroughs incident never happened at all...but would have been invented later as a reason for there to be a place in the woods to go to.

...because none of it ever actually happened.

In my thesis....the entire Penniston/Burroughs story is an attempt to create a false location for where some incident occurred.

My theory of a cover story perfectly explains it. The entire Penniston/Burroughs 'encounter' is a diversion. The entire reason Penniston, Burroughs, and Cabansag vary so wildly over what happened is because it never happened.

.....one of the fake witnesses even gives the game away and effectively states 'this never happened'.

How about keeping up ? I'm saying the first night incident never happened. ...It's easy to get the date wrong of something that never happened

My theory is that the Penniston/Burroughs encounter, where they themselves totally disagree on 'what happened', was invented later

 

[John J.]

It's a report

No, it is not a police report!

Do we really have to be quite so pedantic

Yes, when you make mistaken inferences about perfectly normal correspondence to advance theories that otherwise lack evidence.
You thought there was something odd in correspondence from the police, to an uninvolved member of the public, not giving details of third parties. You are wrong.

With the same sources that are available to you- they have been liked to from this thread- it has been shown that Suffolk Constabulary recorded that AFC Arnold contacted them from the Central Security Center on 26th December 1980 (the night you were claiming nothing happened).

 

[John J.]

If he terminated the investigation, why were the police being called just 17 minutes later ?

The off-base Penniston/ Burroughs/ Cabansag expedition was terminated, not the interest in / concern about the sightings.
Once it had been established there was no aircraft crash, there was no justification to have uniformed US airmen, acting under orders, investigating anything in the English countryside.

 

[Scaramanga]

He claimed that the Penniston, Burroughs and Cabansag "encounter" never actually happened. It was a cover story only.
If none of it happened, they weren't pursuing lights.

How many times do I have to be trolled with what I have long since said was a possible explanation for which I was playing devil's advocate ? I am perfectly entitled to then move on and entertain a completely different theory....without constant ' you said.....' when I do. This would not happen if you responded specifically to individual posts rather than harking on about what someone said in a completely different post and context 100 posts ago.

 

[Scaramanga]

The off-base Penniston/ Burroughs/ Cabansag expedition was terminated, not the interest in / concern about the sightings.
Once it had been established there was no aircraft crash, there was no justification to have uniformed US airmen, acting under orders, investigating anything in the English countryside.

That is all just as much assumption as anything I've said is made out to be.

 

[Scaramanga]

Yes, when you make mistaken inferences about perfectly normal correspondence to advance theories that otherwise lack evidence.
You thought there was something odd in correspondence from the police, to an uninvolved member of the public, not giving details of third parties. You are wrong.

I'm sorry but that is pedantics, as the letter Ridpath received can clearly be described as 'a report' of what happened....as that is precisely what it is. Have we really reached argument ad dictionarum levels when it was perfectly clear what I was referring to ?

 

[Scaramanga]

It occurs to me that, were I in charge of an effort to cover up a nuclear device that fell off a plane or otherwise wound up in an English forest, I would likely want something that would raise significantly less interest than an elaborate close encounters UFO story. Some obvious alternatives would be "we conducted a training exercise in case we ever have to recover such a device someday," or "we ran recovery operations on a bit of harmless but expensive/secret military kit inadvertently fell of a plane."

A UFO case with close-encounter details and physical traces on the ground and the like has the potential to create interest that persists for decades! (As evidence, note that here we are still debating it decades later.)

But the story was never intended for the public eye. Halt's memo is to the British Ministry Of Defence...not to every member of Joe Public. He clearly had a duty to report something to the MOD, especially as the incident took place off the base.

Whatever happened in the woods, Halt had to write some form of account to 'explain' it. One can, as most do, argue that what happened ( though not necessarily the interpretation of it ) was exactly as Halt describes. But we can't rule out that it wasn't....even if the latter is less likely.

 

[FatPhil]

'Must be' ? Your evidence for this is ?

If a smooth function starts by decreasing, and then later increases, then it must have a lowest value between those two points.

This reminds me of a wind-up we did at school for the newbs. We'd get their interest by showing them a set of french curves, and slay them with "they're specially designed so that no matter at what angle you hold them, the lowest point's always horizontal". And the suckers would think we were saying something smart. Some would want to grab the french curves to test this theory out.

 

[JMartJr]

But the story was never intended for the public eye. Halt's memo is to the British Ministry Of Defence...not to every member of Joe Public. He clearly had a duty to report something to the MOD, especially as the incident took place off the base.

Whatever happened in the woods, Halt had to write some form of account to 'explain' it. One can, as most do, argue that what happened ( though not necessarily the interpretation of it ) was exactly as Halt describes. But we can't rule out that it wasn't....even if the latter is less likely.

Still does not work for me. If the intent was to deceive the MOD, all the same objections hold -- why go with an elaborate and memorable and interesting story, when a simpler, boring, routine one would work just as well?

Whoever they were supposed to be covering things up from, a story that invites more interest seems a poor choice.

 

[deirdre]

why go with an elaborate and memorable and interesting story, when a simpler, boring, routine one would work just as well?

i'm laughing at this question considering all the overly [unnecessarily] wild claims from military personnel documented in other threads on this forum

 

[deirdre]

Yes, when you make mistaken inferences about perfectly normal correspondence to advance theories that otherwise lack evidence.

that has nothing to do with you being aggressively pedantic over a term you personally don't agree with.

instead of bashing him for 2 paragraphs, just say "a name was given in the actual police documentation/reports which is linked below the letter in your link".

 

[JMartJr]

i'm laughing at this question considering all the overly [unnecessarily] wild claims from military personnel documented in other threads on this forum

Put forward as a cover story? Could you point me at one? (Sincerely asked, I can;t recall one, but then I am an old man! ^_^)

 

[John J.]

I'm sorry but that is pedantics, as the letter Ridpath received can clearly be described as 'a report' of what happened

I feel that might not be what most people might understand by the phrase "police report".
Maybe we can establish some middle ground:

Are we agreed that the letter you cite is from the police, in response to a query from a member of the public who is not directly involved?

If so, do we agree that it is in no way unusual for such correspondence from the police not to give the names of parties who are involved?
That this is not a sign of something unusual?

Or is it more likely that, having received a letter from a member of the public asking about an event that they were not involved in, that happened three years earlier, the police would volunteer names of the then-witnesses/ contacts without their permission?

 

[deirdre]

Put forward as a cover story? Could you point me at one? (Sincerely asked, I can;t recall one, but then I am an old man! ^_^)

no not put forward as a cover story, just men vocalizing the most outrageous things without censoring themselves.

 

[JMartJr]

no not put forward as a cover story, just men vocalizing the most outrageous things without censoring themselves.

Gotcha. That seems to shade over into "a hoax," rather than the cover story hypothesis. But I suppose there could be some overlap.

But the thing about telling whoppers and tall tales is it is generally a technique for ATTRACTING attention, as opposed to the idea that the story was concocted to hush something up.

 

[Scaramanga]

why go with an elaborate and memorable and interesting story, when a simpler, boring, routine one would work just as well?

Yeah, right, like the Calvine UFO was an upside down ( or was it right way up, or did that depend on which way the wind was blowing ) reflection in a lake, or was it a pond, where the clearly visible distant trees were just 'pond weed' and the clouds were just having one of those upside down days and the reflections were too and weren't even reflecting properly and....ah hell, lets just hang a model from a tree as nobody on Metabunk would argue such an elaborate 'explanation' would they.

 

[Scaramanga]

I feel that might not be what most people might understand by the phrase "police report".
Maybe we can establish some middle ground:

Are we agreed that the letter you cite is from the police, in response to a query from a member of the public who is not directly involved?

If so, do we agree that it is in no way unusual for such correspondence from the police not to give the names of parties who are involved?
That this is not a sign of something unusual?

Actually, I refer to it as 'the police letter' as far back as September 28th....

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/rendlesham-forest-ufo-incident.13457/post-353418

And the lack of any names is irrelevant and trivial next to my main point which was ignored...which was that the police were seemingly called out to investigate an incident for which all the witnesses had been sent home just 17 minutes earlier.

Why call the police only after everyone who was a witness has gone home ?

 

[deirdre]

But the thing about telling whoppers and tall tales is it is generally a technique for ATTRACTING attention, as opposed to the idea that the story was concocted to hush something up.

i was trying to figure out a way to express my thought of your original comment without saying "because men are numbnuts"**.

i did come up with a way finally:

so... the skeptic explanation for Rendlesham is that a group of men running around teh woods mistook a lighthouse and a star as an extraterrestrial craft.

I assume this means this group of men are not the sharpest tools in the shed.
IF they are not the sharpest tools in the shed, is it really such a leap to believe they would think this particular ufo story was a good idea?

add for foreigners:** a nut is a noggin, not the other usage

 

[deirdre]

Yeah, right, like the Calvine UFO was an upside down ( or was it right way up, or did that depend on which way the wind was blowing ) reflection in a lake, or was it a pond, where the clearly visible distant trees were just 'pond weed' and the clouds were just having one of those upside down days and the reflections were too and weren't even reflecting properly and....ah hell, lets just hang a model from a tree as nobody on Metabunk would argue such an elaborate 'explanation' would they.

the reflection idea was better than the glass sheet idea. just saying. (since we all know it was a moldy ravioli hanging from a tree)

 

[Scaramanga]

so... the skeptic explanation for Rendlesham is that a group of men running around teh woods mistook a lighthouse and a star as an extraterrestrial craft.

I assume this means this group of men are not the sharpest tools in the shed.
IF they are not the sharpest tools in the shed, is it really such a leap to believe they would think this particular ufo story was a good idea?

But....these same people were responsible for identifying Soviet craft and protecting us, and though the term 'trained observer' gets thrown about way too much they were a heck of a lot more trained than Joe Public.

I am reminded of Admiral Lord Hill-Norton's famous comment...

"My position both privately and publicly expressed over the last dozen years or more, is that there are only two possibilities, either:

a. An intrusion into our Air Space and a landing by unidentified craft took place at Rendlesham, as described.

or

b. The Deputy Commander of an operational, nuclear armed, US Air Force Base in England, and a large number of his enlisted men, were either hallucinating or lying."

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/uk-ufo-files-show-high-le_b_937478


Incidentally...is Hill-Norton confirming that Woodbridge was nuclear armed ? Was he in a position to know ? Or is he just getting mixed up.

 

[JMartJr]

Yeah, right, like the Calvine UFO was an upside down ( or was it right way up, or did that depend on which way the wind was blowing ) reflection in a lake, or was it a pond, where the clearly visible distant trees were just 'pond weed' and the clouds were just having one of those upside down days and the reflections were too and weren't even reflecting properly and....ah hell, lets just hang a model from a tree as nobody on Metabunk would argue such an elaborate 'explanation' would they.

How is that in any way at all responsive to what I posted?

 

[JMartJr]

so... the skeptic explanation for Rendlesham is that a group of men running around teh woods mistook a lighthouse and a star as an extraterrestrial craft.

I assume this means this group of men are not the sharpest tools in the shed.

I'm not sure that is a well-founded assumption. Some very smart folks have misperceived mundane things as mysterious UFOs. Getting caught up in a misperception, or in an escalating series of them, doesn't mean they are dumb... it just means they are human, and subject to the human foibles to which any of us could fall victim.

 

[John J.]

And the lack of any names is irrelevant and trivial next to my main point which was ignored...

So, we're agreed that the lack of third party names in the police's letter to Ian Ridpath is not, in itself, unusual?

According to the records, the police were called a mere 17 minutes after some captain 'terminated' the Penniston/Burroughs exploration of the forest. Very oddly, the police report makes no mention of who at Bentwaters made the call, and makes no mention of the police ever meeting or speaking to any of the witnesses...

Re-reading that, I think you / others might see why I might reasonably have thought you were referring to this police log (below) recorded at the time, not the letter written in response to a query from an interested but uninvolved member of the public three years later.

Agreed that it would make sense to us that the primary witnesses (Penniston, Burroughs, Cabansag) meet the Suffolk Constabulary officers,
but we don't know the priorities and concerns their shift leader (Buran?) had.
With the initial suspicion of a crashed aircraft, sending an ad-hoc party out to check is admirable; but when it became clear this wasn't likely, having on-duty, uniformed USAF men "investigating" something off-base in this context might have been problematic.
They had no jurisdiction or authority off-base, and while relations between USAF personnel and local communities in the UK have been overwhelmingly positive, that doesn't mean the locals would want USAF Security Police policing them.
-In passing, the Rendlesham village sign carries a US flag to this day, as can be seen on the Rendlesham Parish magazine website.

The linked-to issue has an article about the local Cold War museum- and notes how the role of the local US bases changed over 42 years

...involving both bases with USAF fighters providing first air defence, then nuclear strike and ending with ground attack.

The twin bases were not involved in hostilities or a major exercise in December 1980. It is likely that they were operating on minimum staffing scales over Christmas. The USAF Security Police on duty would have the responsibility of patrolling the perimeters and securing access points and key sites on the bases; physical security. In addition, they would have been responsible for garrison police duties (I don't know if US service police use that term): the maintaining of military discipline amongst service personnel and the day-to-day policing, and police support, of the base's population. Investigating allegations of theft, looking for lost pets, intervening in fights between young men, attending domestic incidents, ensuring traffic safety and driver sobriety.
Military bases have a disproportionately large number of young, physically fit men, and the problems that young men sometimes cause.
Large American military bases overseas are like small towns- married quarters, stores (definitely the ubiquitous PX), fast food outlets, bars, a bowling alley etc. etc. (I don't know if the USAF bases in England had schools, some US bases in other nations do).
Christmas, a time of happiness and peace if we're lucky, can be testing for some, and for many of us involves some drinking; police are kept busy as always. (And it has to be said, RAF Bentwaters/ Woodbridge are not in an area with many diversions for young men off-duty).

The three airmen might have been required elsewhere, or at least their shift commander might have wanted them available for duties elsewhere. They had been sent off-base to investigate lights, and we know what some of the light sources they ended up seeing were- a farmhouse and Orford Ness lighthouse, which they reported back to the CSC.
It was clear no aircraft had crashed. There was no indication of major criminality involving base personnel, or of a quantifiable breach of base security (e.g. the theft of munitions or small arms) or any signs of hostile action against the bases. There were no losses or injuries of any sort.
We don't know if the farmhouse and lighthouse were the sources of all the lights they saw, and @Scaramanga correctly points out it is hard to reconcile those sources with the subjective accounts of the airmen (particularly Penniston).
But the UK's visiting forces protocols do not make provision for allied military units to investigate unidentified lights in the surrounding countryside under their own recognisance.

Again, we might think it would make sense for the three airmen to describe their observations to Suffolk police in person, but they had made their reports back to the Central Security Center, and there was nothing resembling a major incident. Like many policing remits, the USAF SP operation at Woodbridge/ Bentwaters would of necessity been continuous; duties, information and responsibility have to be transferred from person to person and shift to shift. We can draw an analogy with acute care in a hospital: Continuity of care is important and is the ideal, but after several hours nurses and doctors hand over responsibility for their patients to others due to a shift change or perhaps because they are required elsewhere.

 

[John J.]

But....these same people were responsible for identifying Soviet craft and protecting us

Not Bentwaters or Woodbridge, not in 1980.
They were not air defence stations in the 70s, 80s or 90s. Up to 1979, they had F-4 Phantoms. Phantoms were decent interceptors, but those at the twin bases seem to have been in a strike role (and could have been nuclear armed).

The bases hosted A-10s from 1979 on, ground attack/ close air support aircraft, heavily optimised to attack enemy armour (tanks etc.)
They don't carry radar, though on ops they often carry short range air-to-air missiles for self defence.
Top speed about 440 mph, similar to the fastest propellor-driven fighters of WW2.

Possible Soviet aircraft threats to Britain would have included Tu-22M, Su-24, MiG-23/ 27. All capable of over twice the speed of an A-10, all radar-equipped (bar MiG-27, with optics-based attack instrumentation).
All (bar MiG-27?) capable of night ops, which in 1980 A-10 formally was not.

No-one would suggest using A-10s to intercept Soviet strike aircraft. They were designed to attack tanks on the battlefield, not engage enemy fighter or bomber aircraft.

is Hill-Norton confirming that Woodbridge was nuclear armed ? Was he in a position to know ?

No, he wasn't. He was a cross-bencher (i.e. not government-aligned) member of the House of Lords from 1979.
He would have been in a position to know if the Phantoms at the twin bases in 1977 were nuclear-armed (they probably were); Hill-Norton was Chairman of the NATO Military Committee up to retirement in 1977 (Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hill-Norton).

We've seen elsewhere on this forum, the "UFOs are alien craft" v. "the claimants are lying / mad" is not a useful dichotomy, and not one many skeptics would support. It's a shame Hill-Norton advanced a version of this overly-simplistic argument, but he was a man from an earlier time than most of us.

 

[deirdre]

I'm not sure that is a well-founded assumption. Some very smart folks have misperceived mundane things as mysterious UFOs. Getting caught up in a misperception, or in an escalating series of them, doesn't mean they are dumb... it just means they are human, and subject to the human foibles to which any of us could fall victim.

not in this specific case. but you're welcome to your opinion that it would be incredible for them to come up with a fanciful story vs a boring one. it's fair. i think its incredible they would mistake a star or a lighthouse beam slicing over them every 2 mins for a huge craft. our opinions don't have to agree.

How is that in any way at all responsive to what I posted?

He's giving an example that people often lean into elaborate stories when a simple, boring story would work better. (and i'm adding: esp in groups. there's plenty of psych research describing how group think can reinforce bad ideas).

 

[Scaramanga]

How is that in any way at all responsive to what I posted?

It was a little humour, to show that even skeptics are not beyond contriving ever more elaborate explanations and doubling down on them and making them even more so when challenged. I've seen that often, and yes, even done it myself.

 

[JMartJr]

He's giving an example that people often lean into elaborate stories when a simple, boring story would work better. (and i'm adding: esp in groups. there's plenty of psych research describing how group think can reinforce bad ideas).

If so, he's giving an example from a totally different and not related context. Nobody here is prepping a cover story to distract attention away from something of great importance potentially damaging the relationship between the host country and a military base where we are stationed! Our goal is to, with any kind of luck, find out what really happened, the goal of a cover-up is to obfuscate and distract attention from what really happened. The goal of a potential hoaxster, such as may have been the case with the Calvine, is also not the same as that of folks running a cover-up; the hoaxster is generally seeking some level of attention, the cover-upper to avoid it.

It makes sense for us to consider elborate efforts to carry out a hoax because hoaxsters do that sometimes. It makes sense for us to consider whether an elaborate cover story for an event that we do not know, in fact, happened MIGHT be behind the case under discussion -- but it also makes sense to point out that the cover story foreseeably accomplishing the opposite of what would be desired, and focusing long term attention on the case, is an argument against that hypothesis. Not proof it is wrong, but a point against it.

Now if the question is, "Is it POSSIBLE that an inept, overly elaborate coverup story was concocted which had the foreseeable effect of focussing attention on the case for decades," of course that remains possible. But it requires beleiving a number of people behaved dishonestly (though arguably in a good cause) and stupidly. An honest misperception of reality running off with a group of excited people in the woods at night requires only that they be humans. (Later embellishments and additions to the story are not really relevant to what went on at the time of the incident, and would be consistent with either interpretation.)

That's my take, anyway. As you point out, correctly,

not in this specific case. but you're welcome to your opinion that it would be incredible for them to come up with a fanciful story vs a boring one. it's fair. i think its incredible they would mistake a star or a lighthouse beam slicing over them every 2 mins for a huge craft. our opinions don't have to agree.

...though I'd argue that the number of precedents for people mistaking very mundane stimuli for very incredible UFOs (or giant mystery drones, nowadays!), some of which have been mentioned already above, makes that possibility pretty unremarkable.

 

[Scaramanga]

I'm not sure that is a well-founded assumption. Some very smart folks have misperceived mundane things as mysterious UFOs. Getting caught up in a misperception, or in an escalating series of them, doesn't mean they are dumb... it just means they are human, and subject to the human foibles to which any of us could fall victim.

I feel uneasy with this sort of debunk methodology. Not that the basic underlying assumption isn't true, but that it just seems to me to be too easy to cast a dismissive ' Many people mistake Venus....therefore this must be another of those cases' onto any and every case.

When you consider Venus, Jupiter, Mars, the ISS, Starlink, Sirius, drones, aircraft, etc, etc there is ever more stuff that people can misperceive., and they undoubtedly can and do misperceive them. But ironically, this also means that if there was any genuinely mysterious object in the skies then we are in ever more of a situation where one of those 'conventional' objects will be nearby and thus used as the 'explanation'.

I think we have to treat every case entirely on its own merits. We should avoid ' people are bad at identifying things' tropes even if they are true, because they bias the investigation from the start.

 

[Scaramanga]

Now if the question is, "Is it POSSIBLE that an inept, overly elaborate coverup story was concocted which had the foreseeable effect of focussing attention on the case for decades," of course that remains possible. But it requires beleiving a number of people behaved dishonestly (though arguably in a good cause) and stupidly. An honest misperception of reality running off with a group of excited people in the woods at night requires only that they be humans. (Later embellishments and additions to the story are not really relevant to what went on at the time of the incident, and would be consistent with either interpretation.)

This puzzles me....because even in the 'standard' lighthouse/stars explanation it is quite clear that one is charging that people have been dishonest in their stories over the years. There is simply no way you can put the sheer elaboration of the various stories down to mis-identification.

So whatever version of the story is the flavour of the day...people have lied and been dishonest and made stuff up. I do not think there is any theory for Rendlesham for which that is not now ( certainly all these years later ) the case.