Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident

[Scaramanga]

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.

I share the same sentiments. Was the lighthouse ever mistakenly identified during the sightings ? Yes...undoubtedly. The statements even admit as much. But it is quite clear to me that on the Penniston/Burroughs/Cabansag night there was a red/blue object other than the lighthouse that was visible....and that is what has never been explained.

Likewise with Halt. Did he or any of his team ever, during his investigation, mistake the lighthouse. Again...yes, undoubtedly. But once again, it seems there was another object...a red object dripping sparks of light.

And again, Halt's team clearly state that the alleged star-like objects are in motion. Indeed, Halt implies rapid motion. At one point Nevels comments...

NEVELS: Moving out fast.

BALL(?): This one on the right's heading away, too.

HALT: They're both heading north. Hey, here he comes from the south, he's coming toward us now.

HALT: Now we're observing what appears to be a beam coming down to the ground.

http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/halttape3.html

The problem with the explanation that this was the lighthouse beam is that it is also claimed the object is Sirius...yet Sirius was 120 degrees ( a third of the way round the sky ) from the lighthouse. The Ridpath debunk flits back and forth between convenient objects.

What is more, a lighthouse beam rotating once every 5 seconds....over 6 miles the end of that beam is doing 7 miles per second ! You'd see it for a tiny fraction of a second. Not even long enough to notice a beam 'coming down to the ground'.

This is why I end up coming to the conclusion that either there genuinely was something weird going on, or the whole story is made up.

 

[deirdre]

If so, he's giving an example from a totally different and not related context.

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.

pretty sure i specified military personnel, just to clarify. but still, you seem to be taking this conversation (ours and the overall Rendlesham convo) much more seriously than i am, so im not gonna further argue the points.

 

[deirdre]

This is why I end up coming to the conclusion that either there genuinely was something weird going on, or the whole story is made up.

this is one of the sloppiest ufo stories, which is why i dont really take anything about it too seriously. i kinda lean towards: started out as a prank, then paranoia and group fear maybe added in some other mistaken stuff, then a bit of a cover up because they were embarrassed about their initial 'reports'. [or they didnt want the pranksters to get in major trouble] obviously we will never know for sure what happened that Christmas.

 

[JMartJr]

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.

We may just have to fundamentally disagree over the idea that considering things that are true introduces bias! ^_^

It would make no sense to discard previous knowledge of things that can generate a UFO report and have done so in the past, and start all over with every case -- it seems to me to make much more sense to consider things that have been known to generate similar report sin the past as possible explanations.

Note that in cases like this one, with nothing but "witnesses say" to work with, it is usually going to be impossible to PROVE what really happened. But that is not necessary, the bunk is in the extraordinary claim that aliens are flying around and being seen by people for the last 80 years are so. That claim requires proof. Cases where there is a simpler explanation (or even several simpler explanations) cannot prove that the alien hypothesis is correct.

I am not convinced that the idea that this was all covering up something like a lost nuke makes a lot of sense -- but it makes WAY more sense than the alien hypothesis!

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.

I'll try to clarify, with apologies if I was unclear.

For the story to START, back when it all purportedly happened, we have three sorts of hypotheses that have been discussed. I don't think anybody here is arguing for the "It was aliens" one, so I'll drop that out for now, but see above. The "they saw stuff, misinterpreted it, got fired up running around the woods at night with the adrenaline probably flowing" hypothesis does not require them to have been dishonest or dumb, it is the sort of thing that people demonstrably do from time to time. The "It was a cover up for a lost nuke or something" hypothesis requires that they be dishonest (though in the generally acceptable context of national security secrecy) and, I'd maintain, somewhat dumb as their story was WAY too elaborate and attracted rather than defused attention... for decades!

There have certainly been embellishments and additions over the years. I'd agree that many of them look like intentional deceptions, though memory is fungible and people can come to believe all sorts of unlikely things so I guess it remains possible that most/all of that is just people coming to believe new stuff over the passage of time, and memories getting embellished. But sure, some of it may well be added lies to make the story better and keep some wanted attention on the teller of the tale (not what a cover-up would want, by the way!)

But they seem more down to misremembering or deception, not to misperception -- misperception would have happened on the night-of, when people were looking at lights and perceiving more than was there.

But what ever happened over the intervening years, that does not have any sort of causation in the chain of events during the event. Later dishonesty or later honest error is not relevant to what happened that night. It happened later.

Looking back on the event, and considering the options, I'm not at all sure the "coverup" idea can be ruled out. I do think there are some points against it, and it does require us to add some things that we don't know happened, most notably the dropped nuke! The preponderance of evidence seems to me to be with the idea that they misinterpreted a number of visual cues (a lighthouse, a farmhouse, one or more stars and planets) while out in the woods at night with trees and stuff to see around or through, got excited about "it's a UFO!!!" as an exciting bit of modern folklore from the culture they (and we) lived (and live) in, and it went on from there.

Maybe that's wrong. Maybe it's all an intentional lie from the start, for whatever reason. You've put that forward for discussion, and it seems to me to be worth discussing. Of the three explanations above, it is nowhere near the least likely! But barring more evidence, which we are unlikely to ever get, it does not seem, to me, to be the most likely either.

There, I don't know if that is any clearer, but it is at least longer! ^_^


PS: We, as in all of us, may be reaching the point where everything has been said about this and we're just going to be rehashing what's already been said, while getting more irked with each other... barring new ideas or evidence, maybe it's time to let it lie dormant for a bit? Or not, of course, just a thought...

 

[deirdre]

We may just have to fundamentally disagree over the idea that considering things that are true introduces bias! ^_^

to be fair-and i was gonna mention this above- i think im a bit biased about the prank angle because Fravor said they used to prank the locals with their jets.

 

[Ann K]

We have run this story into the ground, but I will throw out one more hypothesis that has not yet been considered. Do you remember getting your photo taken with a flash bulb? The afterimage is red-orange. Might a fleeting view of a brilliant beam of a lighthouse have had the same effect? Maybe the perception of color was just an artifact.

 

[deirdre]

Maybe the perception of color was just an artifact.

or boxing day small fireworks. my neighbors [kids?] a block over do that for some reason on christmas.

 

[JMartJr]

to be fair-and i was gonna mention this above- i think im a bit biased about the prank angle because Fravor said they used to prank the locals with their jets.

It always amazed me how little impact that had on the conversation about the Fravor incident...

We have run this story into the ground, but I will throw out one more hypothesis that has not yet been considered. Do you remember getting your photo taken with a flash bulb? The afterimage is red-orange. Might a fleeting view of a brilliant beam of a lighthouse have had the same effect? Maybe the perception of color was just an artifact.

I also find myself wondering whether the lighthouse is far enough away to start to show colors like scintillating stars do. I'd guess not, but I don;t know how to figure that out. Of course, any misperceived stars might well have been scintillating colorfully.


Source: https://youtu.be/e1SdC9KnsGg

 

[John J.]

...it is quite clear that one is charging that people have been dishonest in their stories over the years.

It's very difficult to take Penniston's much later accounts of touching a landed craft and receiving a telepathic ASCII message as an accurate account. I don't think the written message could have been arrived at subconsciously or as the result of writing down a false memory.

Burrough's recollections under hypnosis are also problematic, but we know people can give unreliable (even silly) "recollections" under hypnosis.

What is more, a lighthouse beam rotating once every 5 seconds....over 6 miles the end of that beam is doing 7 miles per second ! You'd see it for a tiny fraction of a second.

It doesn't work like that. You still see the main lamp illuminated at the times it's set to be visible from a given sector.
The whole point is to have a visible beacon that can be seen from several miles.
You can identify major lighthouses (around Britain anyway) by their flash rate; this doesn't alter by distance.
This is important to navigators (much more so in the past) as some areas of coast / major channels have more than one lighthouse, so knowing which is which is an important aid to safe navigation.
These are the specs of the former Orfordness lighthouse:

The Orfordness lighthouse (like many) also had red and green sector lights. The red sector light would have been visible from land to the west.
The sector lights shone from windows lower down the tower than the main beacon (some other lighthouses use tinted filters each side of the main light to generate red and green sector arcs each side of the main beam).
Ian Ridpath wrote that the sector lights were too low down to be visible from wherever the airmen were; I've wondered if in mist the glow of the scattered light might have been visible, but who knows- perhaps unlikely.

We know from other claimed UFO sightings that witnesses sometimes ascribe colours, including changing colours, to lightsources that were probably a constant white (e.g. Jimmy Carter). Others have ascribed shape and visible size, and radiating beams, to what were essentially point lightsources (e.g. the Dorset policemen in 1967, chasing Venus). Witnesses have also described celestial objects as rapidly manoeuvring, when we know their movement across the sky is slow and steady.

 

[Ann K]

What is more, a lighthouse beam rotating once every 5 seconds....over 6 miles the end of that beam is doing 7 miles per second ! You'd see it for a tiny fraction of a second. Not even long enough to notice a beam 'coming down to the ground'.

You've confused a beam APPEARING every five seconds with a beam ROTATING every five seconds. The lighthouse used a three-panel fresnel lens, which (if I understand correctly) means that the lighthouse would only need to rotate once every fifteen seconds, a much more reasonable speed.

 

[Scaramanga]

You've confused a beam APPEARING every five seconds with a beam ROTATING every five seconds. The lighthouse used a three-panel fresnel lens, which (if I understand correctly) means that the lighthouse would only need to rotate once every fifteen seconds, a much more reasonable speed.

It really doesn't alter anything. OK so each beam is now wizzing past at 'only' 2.33 miles a second....that's 8388 miles per hour. What I also overlooked was that the lens spreads the beam out a little...it is not a laser thin beam, and even less so at 6 miles.

But if you are arguing that the 'beam' is the lighthouse beam then you have the bizarre situation where the lighthouse itself has to be the bottom of the 'beam of light' ( effectively 'the ground' in Halt's commentary ) and the beam is actually pointing 'upwards'. So you'd surely see the beam sweeping rapidly across the sky like some celestial luminous windscreen wiper.

Then you'd have to wonder how that is possible on a crystal clear night, there's no mist or fog reported to make the beam visible and indeed....arguing that Halt saw Vega or Sirius brightly, very low in the sky, only compounds that and is yet another of those factors for which parts of the explanation clash with each other.

Not only is any of this not what's described in the Halt tape, there is no way a beam 'coming down to the ground' can be converted to a beam 'sweeping across the sky', but how does this tie in with the UFO being Sirius...which is 120 degrees to the right of the lighthouse ?

This is precisely one of those 'debunks' I object to for trying to force the explanation to fit the observation. It simply doesn't fit.

 

[Scaramanga]

We may just have to fundamentally disagree over the idea that considering things that are true introduces bias! ^_^

I'm fine with it as the null hypothesis. I'm not objecting to mistaken identity being true...or to it being a large factor in many cases. What I feel uncomfortable with is the ease with which it becomes a doggedly defended, all encompassing, position from which counterfactual evidence is just hand waved away. I think the Rendlesham UFO is a classic example of such...though I have no doubt some of what is related is mistaken identity, I find it impossible to square that with all of the data.

 

[Scaramanga]

to be fair-and i was gonna mention this above- i think im a bit biased about the prank angle because Fravor said they used to prank the locals with their jets.

The problem with the police car prank is...I've seen police car lights, through trees, at night, and there's no way I'd conclude they were anything other than police lights. And I'm not even a policeman. Am I to believe that a military policeman doesn't know what police car lights look like ? God forbid if the Russians had ever invaded Rendlesham using American police cars !

 

[FatPhil]

It really doesn't alter anything. OK so each beam is now wizzing past at 'only' 2.33 miles a second....that's 8388 miles per hour. What I also overlooked was that the lens spreads the beam out a little...it is not a laser thin beam, and even less so at 6 miles.

The beam has no meaningful linear "speed", it has an angular speed. A person twice as far away would witness twice the linear speed, yet see the lobe of the beam for exactly the same period of time. This proves that the linear speed is not useful when it comes to ascertaining visibility.

 

[John J.]

Then you'd have to wonder how that is possible on a crystal clear night, there's no mist or fog reported to make the beam visible

The lighthouse light itself was visible.
Photos show that the top part of the lighthouse (or in the dark, its light) would have been visible to the airmen at some parts of their trip.
It was noted by the visiting Suffolk police officers.
We know from local forestry worker Vince Thurkettle that the lighthouse shone through parts of Rendlesham Forest.
The light was visible when Ian Ridpath interviewed Vince Thurkettle for BBC 1's Breakfast Time TV programme, 07 October 1983 (just 5 days after the News of the World broke the story), http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham1c.html

 

[JMartJr]

The beam has no meaningful linear "speed", it has an angular speed. A person twice as far away would witness twice the linear speed, yet see the lobe of the beam for exactly the same period of time. This proves that the linear speed is not useful when it comes to ascertaining visibility.

This might make it more clear (or less, but worth a try!)

Consider this top down dieagram of a hypothetical lighthouse with an 180 degree beam. It is rotating once ever ten seconds.

The green guy, close to the light, sees the light for 5 seconds, then darkness for 5 seconds. The purple guy, further from the light, also sees the light for 5 seconds, then darkness for 5 seconds. There is also an orange guy, 5 miles further away -- he won't fit on the screen, but he's out there, trust me! ^_^ And he too sees the light for 5 seconds, then darkness for five seconds.

Wherever you stand, you will see the light for 5 seconds, then darkness for 5 seconds. Yeah the beam is tracking across the ground faster as you get further away, but it is "wider", as well. Those balance out everywhere, every observer sees the same "flash pattern," in this case 5 on, 5 off.

 

[John J.]

Am I to believe that a military policeman doesn't know what police car lights look like ?

Though I'm unsure if Conde's account is relevant or not, remember he claims to have modified/ added to the lights on his car.

Penniston, Burroughs and Cabansag followed lights to a house. But I'm sure they were familiar with what houses looked like.

The farmhouse hadn't just appeared overnight, it's a fair guess it was there for several years before Penniston, Burroughs and Cabansag "discovered" it! But the airmen were unaware of its existence.
Or, if aware, they were disorientated and didn't realise that they were heading towards it when they followed its light.
It is also likely they were unaware of the lighthouse, or again, if aware they were disorientated.

Service police make perceptual errors the same as anyone else. And our perceptions are less reliable at night.
(In passing- a planned excursion into an unfamiliar wooded rural area, without a map or compass?)

The airmen on the 26th seemed to follow any lights that they could see but not immediately identify, apparently under the mistaken impression that there shouldn't be visible artificial lights near their base.

Edited to add:

But if you are arguing that the 'beam' is the lighthouse beam

I'm not sure anyone is.
I think it's more likely something like the Dorset policemen reporting Venus radiating beams of light in 1967 (well, "...radiating points of light from all angles").

 

[deirdre]

The problem with the police car prank is...I've seen police car lights, through trees, at night, and there's no way I'd conclude they were anything other than police lights. And I'm not even a policeman. Am I to believe that a military policeman doesn't know what police car lights look like ? God forbid if the Russians had ever invaded Rendlesham using American police cars !

i never even knew it was a police car prank. i thought other service men (or locals) were pranking them, and then someone called the police.

EDIT AFTER READING JOHNS POST: i'm guessing Conde was MP (Military Police).. i get it now. it was the military police who maybe pranked the other guys? huh, that would certainly add to my coverup theory as they certainly would get in trouble for screwing around.

 

[John J.]

EDIT AFTER READING JOHNS POST: i'm guessing Conde was MP (Military Police)

Yeah, pretty much all the airmen involved in the 26th December stuff (Penniston, Burroughs, Cabansag, Chandler and I think Buran) were USAF Security Police (the successor units are now called USAF Security Forces). As was Larry Warren, who told his story to the News of the World.
It's not that surprising, as their role was base ground defence as well as more traditional police-type duties for the base community, so they would be some of the very few obliged to be out and about, and looking beyond the bases' perimeters, on the night after Christmas.

Kevin Conde was in the same outfit, 81st Security Police Squadron. 81st SPS covered both RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge.

On a different matter, @Scaramanga was concerned that none of the original witnesses were present to meet the Suffolk police officers the first time they were called out, but it turns out one of them (Burroughs) probably was, as was Airman 1st Class Chris Armold (who the Suffolk Constabulary log records as the man who had contacted them from the Central Security Center).
Armold was one of the few men involved in the events of both the 26th and 28th of December (Halt's trip).
We know there were USAF men present when Suffolk officers were called to look at ground scrapings, there's a photo.

This is from Brian Dunnings Skeptoid website, https://skeptoid.com/episodes/135, "The Rendlesham Forest UFO" (06 Jan 2009):
Brian links to a Wayback Machine-hosted record of James Easton interviewing Chris Armold for "Voyager Newsletter" 15, October 2000:

If I remember correctly, and this is hazy so forgive me, I believe we (Burroughs and I) met up with two constables who drove
up in a small marked vehicle on the main road that connects to the East Gate access. I have to believe the conversation we had with them was of little consequence as I don't recall re-entering the woods with them or spending much time chit-chatting about the issue.

Armold also perhaps sheds light on Buran "terminating the investigation" and the later 'phone call to Suffolk police:

EASTON: As your call was apparently logged after 4.00 a.m., this must have been subsequent to Burroughs having any 'close encounter'. In Flight (Shift) Commander Fred Buran's statement, he wrote:

"At approximately 0354 hours, I terminated the investigation and ordered all units back to their normal duties".

According to this timeline, you must have driven to see Burroughs after he had returned to duty and was back at 'east gate'.

ARMOLD: Yes, I remember the call was rather late in the shift and I'm certain the decision to call the local constabulary was one that was made late in the morning and with hesitation. You see no one was particularly eager to call the local police and ask silly questions about UFO's. However one also must cover all the bases so we made the decisions to call and ask if they had any reports of aircraft accidents or similar phenomenon. I'm quite certain the word UFO wasn't a part of the conversation. It was after that time that I scooted out to RAF Woodbridge and met up with Burroughs and yes, we did indeed stomp around the forest a bit more.

While Armold was with Burroughs, he could see some lights:

There was absolutely nothing in the woods. We could see lights in the distance and it appeared unusual as it was a sweeping light, (we did not know about the lighthouse on the coast at the time). We also saw some strange colored lights in the distance but were unable to determine what they were.

Also,

EASTON: Significantly, in July 1997, you mentioned there were 'some strange lights' in the distance, whose origin could not be determined. Can you recall what those lights looked like - indeed, anything about them at all - colour, size, whether they were flashing or moved, etc.

ARMOLD: Yes, there were what we initially interpreted as 'strange lights' and in my opinion and contrary to what some people assert, at the time almost none of us knew there was a lighthouse at Orford Ness. Remember, the vast majority of folks involved were young people, 19, 20, 25 years old. Consequently it wasn't something most of the troops were cognizant of. That's one reason the lights appeared interesting or out of the ordinary to some people.

After it was discovered that a lighthouse was out there the 'strangeness' of the lights evaporated. The lights were primarily white and were very small, far off in the distance. Occasionally one would see a shade of blue or red but I attribute that to refraction from stained glass windows in a local church in addition to the fog and weather at the time. The lights did not move in erratic fashions nor did they move towards us or act in any manner which violated the laws of known physics.

Back to the issue of police cars, either Suffolk or USAF,

EASTON: When you had met up with Burroughs that first night, went back to the logging/access road with him and observed those unfamiliar red and blue lights in the distance, can we refute any suggestions these might have been connected to the local police who
had been called out? For example, could the red and blue lights have been from the police car or torches they were using?

ARMOLD: The lights were not from police cars, nor torches, nor alien space ships. You can bank on that.

Re. lights seen during Halt's expedition on the 28th,

EASTON: When you were in the forest that second night, or at any time afterwards, were those red and blue lights also visible then?

ARMOLD: According to my recollections, there were some lights but they seem to me to have primarily been a neutral color. I'm certain
there could have been tints of blue or red but nothing striking and nothing spectacular.

EASTON: Can you recall what Burroughs told you about their pursuit of these lights through Rendlesham forest? How did he rationalise
that the red and blue lights - which in truth they couldn't locate the source of - were still there?

ARMOLD: Now remember, I was with Burroughs and Bustinza out in the woods the second night. I too saw the lights but while interesting initially, we never thought much about them (Once I realized there was a lighthouse at Orford Ness, things became a bit clearer). As for rationalizing the lights, it never was an issue.

James Easton added

Armold also confirmed there were no 'beams of light' visible that second night from 'star-like' objects and such an memorable occurrence was never mentioned as a 'mass-sighting' on base at any time afterwards. This is of course contrary to Halt's assertions that 'light-beams' were being seen by '30 and 40 people stationed around the dual Bentwaters-Woodbridge base'.

(Something I think Col. Conrad, Halt's CO at the time, also politely refuted, as did a Security Police guardsman at the aircraft weapons store).

There's more to the interview, including mention of the ground markings, which bears reading.
Armold says

The British UFO enthusiast community need to put the onus on Burroughs, Penniston and Halt to substantiate their side of the story. Why is it that these three men claim to have observed the same phenomenon, yet it seems the events continually change as time passes. From what I understand, their stories are often radically different from each other. ...I'm very disappointed at how silly this makes 81st SPS appear. It was a good squadron with very competent people who worked hard. That's a good point to consider as well that on a base of several thousand Americans, why are these few individuals who can't get a story straight, the only ones whose story is taken as gospel?

...I strongly encourage you and your friends to shift the burden of proof. I absolutely can not prove that something didn't happen, it
isn't possible. Nor can other folks who staunchly deny any incident or subsequent cover-up. Consequently, Burroughs, Penniston, Halt
and anyone else who asserts that there was a close encounter with little green men should bear that burden.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Re. the colour of lights reported by Halt, Brian Dunning writes

Although several times during the tape Col. Halt calls the light red, he is contradicted by his men who say it's yellow. In photographs of the 1980 light taken before it was replaced, it did indeed look orange.

Cropped version of photo Brian Dunning links to, I think (but don't know) that the lighthouse is the rightmost light.

At one point Halt reported seeing 5 red lights. He doesn't seem to have seen one light split into five, which I'm sure I've read in some re-telling or another. Brian Dunning again:

Col. Halt: "We've passed the farmer's house and are crossing the next field and now we have multiple sightings of up to five lights with a similar shape and all but they seem to be steady now rather than a pulsating or glow with a red flash."

Five steady lights glowing red. The Orfordness Transmitting Station is just two miles up the coast from the lighthouse, and features five tall radio towers topped with red lights. Col. Halt's thoroughness was commendable, but even he can be mistaken.

 

[Scaramanga]

On a different matter, @Scaramanga was concerned that none of the original witnesses were present to meet the Suffolk police officers the first time they were called out, but it turns out one of them (Burroughs) probably was, as was Airman 1st Class Chris Armold (who the Suffolk Constabulary log records as the man who had contacted them from the Central Security Center).

Actually on closer look it is in Cabansag's statement...just that an overstrike obscures the reference to 'PC's'...which I take to be Police Constables. Or rather, although it is obscured I don't think it can be anything other than 'PC's'.

'Finally we made it back to our vehicle, after making contact with the PC's and informing them of what we saw..'

http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/Cabansag.PNG

 

[Scaramanga]

Cropped version of photo Brian Dunning links to, I think (but don't know) that the lighthouse is the rightmost light.

It's worth pointing out that when Halt spots the 'strange red light' they are no longer in the forest, if you take the 'landing site' to be the one Ridpath marks out here ( which is much the same site indicate on Google Earth )...

http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham2c.html


Halt clearly states that they are 150 to 200 yards from the landing site...which ( if the landing site location is correct ) places them in the farmer's field....


HALT: We've just bumped into the first night bird we've seen. We're about 150 or 200 yards from the site.

MY NOTE : ( 'the site' can only be the alleged landing site. This places them barely into the first farmers field. So at this point they are no longer in the forest )

HALT: There is no doubt about it – there's some type of strange flashing red light ahead.

ENGLUND: Sir, it's yellow.

HALT: I saw a yellow tinge in it, too. Weird! It appears to be maybe moving a little bit this way? It's brighter than it has been.

VOICE: Yellow[?].

HALT: It's coming this way. It is definitely coming this way.

VOICE: Pieces of it shooting off...

HALT: Pieces of it are shooting off.

VOICE: At eleven o'clock...

HALT: There is no doubt about it. This is weird!


So, according to Halt's own tape...all the images people portray of this particular part of the incident occurring in the forest are wrong, or the 'landing site' is wrong.

http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/halttape3.html

 

[JMartJr]

Hi! Can you explain what the orange arrow is in this pic? I'm trying to integrate in my mind here how this fits into what you wrote. Thanks!

 

[John J.]

Um.

So, according to Halt's own tape...all the images people portray of this particular part of the incident occurring in the forest are wrong, or the 'landing site' is wrong.

You might be right if people imagine Halt etc. were deep* in the forest at the time they first see a light.
I'd guess the route you (@Scaramanga) indicate is roughly correct, and they're probably near the edge of a field when they see a flashing light in the approximate direction of the lighthouse.

After Englund first sees a light, and brings it to Halt's attention,

HALT: Well douse flashlights then. Let's go back to the edge of the clearing so we can get a better look at it. See if you can get the Starscope on it. The light's still there and all the barnyard animals have gone quiet now. We're heading about 110, 120 degrees from the site out through to the clearing now...

They don't report seeing the lighthouse, which, if they're looking to the east, raises questions. It flashes every 5 seconds.
It must be likely they saw it, but they didn't identify it.

In passing, I noticed something in the transcript that I hadn't before. As with the Geiger counter, Halt seems to notice "strange" readings from another item of kit he's not familiar with, the Starlight scope.

HALT: We're looking at the same tree we took the sample off with this – what d'you call it – Starscope?
ENGLUND: Uh huh, starlight scope.

It's a Starlight scope, an image intensifier. It was reliant on there being some light, hence the name.
No-one called them "Starscopes".
From Wikipedia, Night-vision device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night-vision_device

See also Wikipedia, List of military electronics of the United States; there's a small gallery of Starlight scopes here at a website devoted to the US 1st Bn, 83rd Artillery.

Immediately after Englund gently corrects Halt, the transcript continues:

HALT: And you're getting...getting a definite heat reflection off the tree about, what, three to four feet off the ground?
ENGLUND: Yes, where the spot is...
HALT: Same place where the spot is, we're getting a heat...
BALL: ...and a spot on the tree directly behind us I picked up the same thing, and one off to your right.
ENGLUND: All right, let me...
HALT: Three trees in the area, immediately adjacent to the site, within ten feet of the suspected landing site, we're picking up heat reflection off the trees.

But they're using an image intensifier, not an infra-red scope! Starlight scopes/ other image intensifiers don't indicate how warm something is, they detect light in the visible spectrum. Unlike an IR device, it won't show you if a vehicle engine has been running recently. It can't indicate a body behind visually opaque cover- even just a sheet of cardboard.

Yet Halt thinks it is indicating warm spots on trees. And no-one corrects him.
The "definite heat reflections" are where (presumably visible) "spots" are. They are looking at visual features, amplified and increased in contrast by the scope. Because that's what a Starlight scope does.


* "Deep" being a relative term, as someone (@NorCal Dave ?) pointed out, Rendlesham Forest has modest areas of managed woodland, but not much in the way of what most people imagine as forest.

 

[Scaramanga]

Hi! Can you explain what the orange arrow is in this pic? I'm trying to integrate in my mind here how this fits into what you wrote. Thanks!

The aliens made me post the wrong link. Should be this one...

http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham2d.html

...which is Ridpath's version of the route, and as far as I know is in accordance with all the statements. They went down the East Gate Road, turn right for less than 100 yards, left the vehicle there, and proceeded along a logging road towards the 'UFO'. I agree with that route....I think most do. It would seem the 'landing site' was right at the edge of the forest, only 100 feet or so from the field.

It's worth adding something that is seldom mentioned or shown in depictions. From the mid point of the forest everything slopes downhill. Indeed, the 'landing site' is some 40 feet higher than the farm house. I've seen Halt claim that the UFO reflected off the farm house windows....and Ridpath also refers to that claim....

"So he has now changed his story. What he now says is that the flashing UFO was to the left of the farmhouse and, moreover, that its light was reflecting off the farmhouse windows – a new detail we have not previously heard"

http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham2a.html

My own skepticism about the reflection in the farmhouse windows is that the alleged UFO would have been higher in elevation than the farm, and thus any light from the UFO would have reflected downwards on meeting the windows of the farm...and not in Halt's direction. So the downward slope is important in that respect. Indeed...to me this is an actual physical debunk, which one does not get often.

 

[JMartJr]

The aliens made me post the wrong link. Should be this one...

http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham2d.html

Thank! Those pesky aliens do that to me sometimes, too!

 

[Ian Ridpath]

Cropped version of photo Brian Dunning links to, I think (but don't know) that the lighthouse is the rightmost light.

That's actually my photograph from this page (Dunning has reused quite a bit of my work)
http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham1a.html
The ‍Orford ‍Ness ‍lighthouse ‍is ‍the ‍bright ‍yellow-white ‍light ‍at ‍right ‍of ‍centre, ‍seen ‍between ‍trees. ‍Two ‍other ‍whitish ‍lights ‍left ‍of ‍centre ‍were ‍on ‍a ‍building ‍or ‍buildings ‍in ‍the ‍valley ‍(or ‍perhaps ‍even ‍streetlights), ‍which ‍I ‍did ‍not ‍identify ‍at ‍the ‍time. ‍At ‍far ‍left ‍are ‍two ‍red ‍lights ‍on ‍tall ‍aerials ‍on ‍Orford ‍Ness ‍itself.

 

[Bristolian]

@Scaramanga may be interested in the following.

One further, albeit not particularly convincing, point in favour of the accident coverup version of this event is the witness unearthed by David Clarke in the past year.

https://drclarke.substack.com/p/dropped-object

While this has features of some of the more sensational stories put about by people like Penniston and Bustinza, with cordoned-off areas on the ground and a heavy official presence, Loutzenheiser says he saw a "dropped object" that he felt was "an aircraft or part of an aircraft".

He also claimed to have been explicitly told it was not a "broken arrow".

Loutzenheiser's story is frustratingly vague, particularly given his apparent refusal to actually describe the object he claims to have seen. In the end I guess it's another story to add to the pile.

 

[Scaramanga]

One further, albeit not particularly convincing, point in favour of the accident coverup version of this event is the witness unearthed by David Clarke in the past year.

https://drclarke.substack.com/p/dropped-object

While this has features of some of the more sensational stories put about by people like Penniston and Bustinza, with cordoned-off areas on the ground and a heavy official presence, Loutzenheiser says he saw a "dropped object" that he felt was "an aircraft or part of an aircraft".

He also claimed to have been explicitly told it was not a "broken arrow".

Loutzenheiser's story is frustratingly vague, particularly given his apparent refusal to actually describe the object he claims to have seen. In the end I guess it's another story to add to the pile.

The thing is....the lighthouse was always there. One thus has to wonder why the first team ever went into the woods to investigate something which had been there since 1792 and would have been there on prior nights and successive nights. It makes zero sense to argue that what was initially seen was the lighthouse.

That says to me that there was genuinely something in the woods...whether they later confused the lighthouse or not.

I keep returning to why Halt took the geiger counter with him on his trip. Some claim it was to debunk a UFO, but in what sense would 'look, there is no radiation ' debunk any UFO ? Whoever said UFOs had to have radiation ?

And Halt's tape is weird. A whole hour or more of nothing much...and then beams of light coming down. Beams that no-one outside of his party ever saw. NOTE : We do not know that the latter part of Halt's memo was actually created on that same date.

I think something embarrassing happened in the woods. Sufficiently so that a vague UFO cover story was invented...possibly even using the lighthouse to fool some members. I think 'look at these silly airmen chasing lighthouses' was considerably less embarrassing for those concerned than whatever really took place.

 

[JMartJr]

I mean, that is plausible, but the evidence for it seems lacking (but which I mean, while it fits available evidence reasonably well, I'm not seeing evidence that feels "proofy.") . It very well MIGHT have happened, but there are a lot of UFO stories that are just people, singly or in groups, being wrong about stuff.

(As mentioned upstream in post 260, carrying a Geiger counter to investigate a UFO seems to be a thing that people did... perhaps not to say that lack of radiation means no UFO, but the presence of too much radiation might indicate SOMETHING non-typical happened...)

Spoiler: Copy of stuff from that post spoilered to avoid clutter

Examples

The Cash-Landrum case (1980)

When Schuessler inspected Betty's car in early 1981 and used a Geiger counter to check for radioactivity, he found none. Presumably he also checked for radioactivity when he visited the site of the (alleged) incident, and found no abnormal radiation ... [Schuessler] provides NO medical data on Betty's health PRIOR to the UFO incident. Nor does he provide any medical data on the prior health of Vicki or Colby. [emphasis in original]

Quote from the CSI - The Klass Files #53, appearing at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash–Landrum_incident

The Fishersville, Virginaia UFO "flap" (1964)

...Burns got out of the vehicle and watched the craft, which he described as an "Upside down spinning top toy" and was about 125 feet wide and abut 90 feet high. Burns claimed to see a bluish glow from under the object, but he couldn't see any doors, windows, landing gear, or people inside. After about 60-90 seconds the craft made a "whooshing" sound and flew straight up, according to Burns. Burns told his wife and decided to keep his sighting quiet until he saw a report by WSVA a few days later about a UFO club at Eastern Mennonite College he decided to share his story. Jim Shipp of WSVA interviewed Burns about his sighting, and a professor at EMU who was in the UFO club went to the landing site with a Geiger counter. He reportedly picked up readings of over 60,000 counts per minute, and the sighting was reported to Project Blue Book at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Source: https://www.whsv.com/2023/04/25/story-alleged-1964-fishersville-ufo-landing-chaos-that-ensued/

The Socorro (Lonnie Zamora) case (1964)

Socorro policeman, Lonnie Zamora watches as investigators from Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque use a geiger counter to check out a bush burned by the exhaust from a "flying saucer." Zamora spotted the egg-shaped flying object 4/24 and said he watched it fly away. Using the geiger counter are Major William Connor (C), UFO(unidentified flying objects) investigator at Kirtland and Sgt. David Moody...

Source: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/...atches-as-investigators-news-photo/2169426096

 

[John J.]

Some claim it was to debunk a UFO, but in what sense would 'look, there is no radiation ' debunk any UFO ? Whoever said UFOs had to have radiation ?

Who has claimed Col. Halt took a Geiger counter to debunk a UFO?
If anything, it might be that he was looking for evidence of a UFO or something else extraordinary- as @JMartJr points out, associating UFOs with radiation has something of a history, despite the lack of reliable evidence.
Even Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) gets "sunburn"- it's a trope.

We know Halt misinterpreted the Geiger counter readings and thought that they were significant in some way.
He also misinterpreted what was visible through a Starlight Scope as "hot spots", see post #543, and appeared to think this was somehow significant. (Halt believed the scope was detecting heat; but it was an image intensifier, not an IR device).

The thing is....the lighthouse was always there. One thus has to wonder why the first team ever went into the woods to investigate something which had been there since 1792 and would have been there on prior nights and successive nights. It makes zero sense to argue that what was initially seen was the lighthouse.

There was an inhabited farmhouse much closer to the bases which also (presumably) had been present for some time; it also attracted the attention of the airmen investigating lights. They apparently didn't use a map.

Cabansag's and Burrough's witness statements make it clear they followed lights, and ended up realising they were looking at a lighthouse.
Penniston didn't mention a lighthouse at all, which in itself is interesting.

Quoting Ian Ridpath's excellent website (see http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham2b.html) on the case :

Burroughs and Cabansag confirm that they chased this unidentified light for about two miles before realizing what it was. Evidently they were not as familiar with the lighthouse as proponents of this case like to claim... ...Burroughs stated he had never been out in the woods before that night. Penniston and Cabansag were newly arrived on base and were no more familiar with the woods than he was...

Ian also quotes USAF Security Policeman Chris Armold, who spoke to James Easton in 1997;

I met Burroughs at the East Gate of WB [Woodbridge]. We left our guns with the guy riding with Burroughs and drove to the end of the long access road. We left our vehicle and walked out there.

There was absolutely nothing in the woods. We could see lights in the distance and it appeared unusual as it was a sweeping light, (we did not know about the lighthouse on the coast at the time). We also saw some strange colored lights in the distance but were unable to determine what they were.

Contrary to what some people assert, at the time almost none of us knew there was a lighthouse at Orford Ness. Remember, the vast majority of folks involved were young people, 19, 20, 25 years old. Consequently it wasn't something most of the troops were cognizant of. That's one reason the lights appeared interesting or out of the ordinary to some people.

I've always thought it a bit strange that on both excursions off-base, the airmen didn't appear to take maps (I don't recall to any reference to a map being used; we know Halt's expedition took a compass). The USAF Security Police were not responsible for security off-base, but perhaps an interest in the local environment/ topography might have been advisable "just in case".
A map might have made a lot of difference; a compass can tell you where you're looking, but not what you're looking at:

Although Col Halt maintains he saw the Orford Ness lighthouse in the southeast, it is actually east of where he stood. Evidently Col. Halt confused it with another flashing light in the southeast, probably the more distant Shipwash lightship.
His mistake arose because he was used to seeing the Orford Ness lighthouse in the southeast from his home base of Bentwaters, which lies to the north of Woodbridge.

Rendlesham Forest UFO Case, Ian Ridpath, http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham2a.html, see also "The compass bearings" on that page.

There probably wasn't much in the night-time Suffolk countryside of 1980 that would be of interest to most young US airmen.
I haven't visited major US airbases in the UK but I have in Germany; they were in some ways like self-contained American communities with (at least in the late 80s) enviable recreation and entertainment facilities, at least compared to UK or German counterparts.
I don't know how common it was (at Woodbridge/ Bentwaters) for airmen to go for runs or whatever off-base in their own time (if memory serves, that's how the "landing site" was found, albeit by an officer who might have wanted to see if he could find evidence of anything connected with the sightings). Running in the dark (when the lighthouse might be noticeable) on uneven ground/ wooded areas has its hazards.

 

[Scaramanga]

but the evidence for it seems lacking

There is no hard evidence for any of what allegedly happened. Its not a case of some theories having more evidence than others. The entire story is anecdotal, with contradictory accounts. All we know is that something happened...and the contradictory accounts suggest a made up story, as its a lot easier for accounts to vary if their story never really happened as described than if it did.

Consider this also. Halt was out in the woods for 4 hours or so. His tape is just 18 minutes. The entire first half of the dialogue takes place in just 23 minutes between 01.25 and 01.48....all within the woods. An entire hour ( and nothing happening ) goes by before the next time check at 02.44, when they are way over on the far side of the farmer's field. For some reason we then suddenly start getting time checks every 10-15 minutes.....03.05....03.15....03.30....and lo and behold the UFO that shines the beam down just 'happens' to occur when Halt is already recording.

Why does Halt suddenly start doing regular time checks only when he's already been out for an hour and a half ? For the entire first hour and a half of being out and about Halt mentions the time just once....coincidentally just before the 'UFO' appears in the woods. And then Halt again coincidentally just happens to start mentioning the time regularly just before the UFO with the beam. Which he coincidentally just 'happens' to already have the recorder already on for when it allegedly appears.

I think the first part of the tape is genuine, and the latter part was added later to bolster the 'UFO' cover story. Why does Halt's 'beam of light' recording end so abruptly ? It's supposedly the most amazing thing he has seen all night...yet he just says 'this is unreal' and switches the recorder off ! That suggests to me he wants to say as little as possible...he's doing his bit to create the cover story but doing so with as few lines as possible.

 

[Scaramanga]

Who has claimed Col. Halt took a Geiger counter to debunk a UFO?
If anything, it might be that he was looking for evidence of a UFO or something else extraordinary- as @JMartJr points out, associating UFOs with radiation has something of a history, despite the lack of reliable evidence.

He's said numerous times he went out to debunk the UFO. Why does he need to take a geiger counter to do so ? There is zero evidence he had any prior interest or knowledge of UFO lore.

I think you are also somewhat missing the point. What would a zero reading have proven ? Would Halt have turned to his team and said ' There's zero radiation so it can't have been a UFO ' ? Nobody had ever said UFOs had to have radiation.

You take a Geiger counter to measure radiation...not UFOs.

 

[JJB]

The thing is....the lighthouse was always there. One thus has to wonder why the first team ever went into the woods to investigate something which had been there since 1792 and would have been there on prior nights and successive nights. It makes zero sense to argue that what was initially seen was the lighthouse.

That says to me that there was genuinely something in the woods...whether they later confused the lighthouse or not.

I keep returning to why Halt took the geiger counter with him on his trip. Some claim it was to debunk a UFO, but in what sense would 'look, there is no radiation ' debunk any UFO ? Whoever said UFOs had to have radiation ?

And Halt's tape is weird. A whole hour or more of nothing much...and then beams of light coming down. Beams that no-one outside of his party ever saw. NOTE : We do not know that the latter part of Halt's memo was actually created on that same date.

I think something embarrassing happened in the woods. Sufficiently so that a vague UFO cover story was invented...possibly even using the lighthouse to fool some members. I think 'look at these silly airmen chasing lighthouses' was considerably less embarrassing for those concerned than whatever really took place.

A couple of things here. A permanent lighthouse does not mean every airman knew its location or flash pattern, or could identify it correctly at night in a forest under stress. Misidentification does not require the source to be new, only unfamiliar or misread in context. That fits the earliest statements.

There is no solid evidence that anything physical was in the woods. No photos, no verified traces, no radar data, and no independent witnesses. The first reports describe lights, not a landed craft. Later embellishments do not change that.

Halt taking a Geiger counter is not mysterious. He was responding to an unexplained report near nuclear weapons storage during the Cold War. Radiation checks were routine procedure. The idea that this implies knowledge of exotic UFO properties is a later invention.

The tape mostly records confusion and distant lights. The so called beams align with the lighthouse sweep, stars, and aircraft seen through trees. No one outside the group saw beams hitting the ground, and no evidence of damage was found. Claims about the memo being written later are unsupported.

The embarrassment theory is pure speculation. It invents an unknown incident with no records and no evidence to explain away a simple explanation. Stressed personnel misidentified known light sources, officers investigated, and later retellings inflated the story. If someone claims more than that, they need to post evidence.

 

[JMartJr]

I think you are also somewhat missing the point. What would a zero reading have proven ? Would Halt have turned to his team and said ' There's zero radiation so it can't have been a UFO ' ? Nobody had ever said UFOs had to have radiation.

You take a Geiger counter to measure radiation...not UFOs.

Yes, but the idea that UFOs might leave radiation traces was popular in the culture, and Geiger counters were often taken to UFO "landing sites" not to rule out UFOs if no abnormal radiation was found, but to provide supporting evidence of something unusual having happened if radiation WAS found.

Note that in the other UFO cases mentioned above where Geiger counters were used, there is no real possibility of looking for a mislaid nuclear weapon, it's just a thing UFO investigations did as possible radiation traces was part of what it was believed "real UFOs" might do.

I don't think carrying a Geiger counter to supposedly investigate a UFO report differentiates between a sincere attempt to investigate a UFO and the "missing bomb" scenario. It would not be surprising either way. Of course, that is also not an arguement AGAINST your hypothesis!

(Here's one way to look at it --if you were looking for a bomb or something, and were making up a cover story about a UFO, why mention the Geiger counter at all? Wouldn't it get people thinking about radiation sources that might be found around a military base, such as a mislaid weapon? Or was the idea that you checked for radiation at a UFO landing site sufficiently common that mentioning carrying a radiation detector was unlikely to raise eyebrows? Was in fact expected?)

 

[Ann K]

The thing is....the lighthouse was always there.

But was it always visible? For someone who hasn't previously ventured far from the buildings into the woods, it might have been a novel sighting. Same thing if, given the date, the leaves were off the trees, or if there had been any cutting of trees. Did the terrain mean that it was only visible if one went far enough to clear a concealing ridge line?

My first instinct would have been to explore a nearby forest, but I know perfectly well that's not true for many other folk. And it's not impossible for people to know there is a lighthouse there, but be basically turned around in the woods and not know which direction they're facing, i.e. not know where "there" is.

 

[John J.]

It's reasonably clear Halt couldn't interpret the Geiger counter readings appropriately, he also misunderstood what the Starlight Scope could show. If the airmen with him knew better, they didn't correct him (except Englund, IIRC, correcting Halt on the name of the scope, Halt still calls it a "Starscope").

Other than Halt, almost all (or all) the personnel who we know were involved were USAF Security Police, serving with the SP squadron providing ground-based security and policing services for the 2 airbases (Woodbridge, Bentwaters). A perfectly respectable squadron, but not specialised in recovery or "special ops" and it wasn't configured or equipped for operations off-base. It wasn't a Nuclear Emergency Search Team or equivalent. It wasn't equipped to handle aircraft stores or munitions; nor would its personnel be trained to do so.

The US (and UK) had, and has, assets available for securing mislaid (ahem) nuclear materials, which might (conjecture) also be suitable for securing other high-value or highly sensitive materials/ vehicles etc.; both nations also have world-class aircraft crash investigators.
There is no evidence that any of these resources were used.

It must be highly unlikely that Halt, with his unfamiliarity with the kit used, would be the commanding officer of a team involved with recovering an artefact/ material which might be radioactive. It wasn't his role and he has never claimed it was. He had access to a Geiger counter, so he took it. There's no evidence anyone told him to or that he was following some protocol.

And if Halt were involved in a serious effort to find and retrieve something, perhaps he should have considered taking a map. Instead, we have an officer, known for his interest in day-to-day SP activities, organising a group of personnel (mainly or all SPs) for a sojourn off-base which was either in their own time or unauthorized (I don't think that has ever been adequately established), and getting mildly disoriented within a kilometre or two (Ridpath's work on the compass bearings) and demonstrating (Halt's tape) a lack of knowledge of the kit they had taken along.
This isn't what might be expected of a NEST or crash response team or a special forces unit.
(There were early concerns that the lights seen in the forest might have been from a crashed aircraft, sending some airmen to check was admirable, the personnel sent were the available SPs, not a crash response team).

There was no cordon established in Rendlesham Forest or anywhere else in the vicinity of the airbases. No road closures; anyone could have gone for a walk in the forest, and we know the nearby Boast farm was inhabited. Their is absolutely no evidence the local forestry workers had their work suspended- they had recently marked trees for felling, apparently misinterpreted by some of the SPs as damage caused by a flying vehicle.
Despite the lack of any restrictions to public (or forestry worker) access, there are no reports of areas of damage to foliage or disturbed ground.
Although (hypothetically) conducted at night, over one night (remember, no security cordon) and presumably in response to some unexpected incident, the hypothetical search/ recovery effort left no trace and no interesting debris was left there.

The USAF SP control room belatedly contacted Suffolk Constabulary, not their equivalents in the RAF Police or RAF Regiment, the Ministry of Defence Police (which has teams providing physical security for UK nuclear weapons) or the (then) UK Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary, whose teams had access to radiation monitors and heavy weaponry (e.g. crew-served machine guns). There is no evidence Suffolk Constabulary, who sent two officers who were on a rural police beat, contacted any of these organisations; they did contact Air Traffic Control which had nothing to report, other than the widely-seen fireball of approx. 03:00, 26th December.

We have no evidence of armourers/ weapon technicians or crash investigators from any agency being involved in the events.
No-one of those descriptions has claimed to have been present AFAIK; the original known witnesses (Halt and SPs) do not mention any.
If personnel from those specialisations were sworn to secrecy, which they've abided by for 45 years, why were the SPs different?

More recently, SP Kurt Loutzenheiser has claimed 67th ARRS was involved, see post #547.
Loutzenheiser doesn't feature in any of the accounts given by Halt, Penniston, Chandler, Burroughs, Armold or others who we know were involved.

Whatever some later accounts have claimed, there is no evidence of any recovery operation of any sort. No use of heavy vehicles, no detailed sweep of any area in daylight by lines of personnel. No unusual helicopter activity. Again, no restrictions on public access: While a rural area with a low-density population, that bit of Suffolk isn't really isolated. More country lanes and B-roads than the wilds of Nevada.

There is no hard evidence for any of what allegedly happened. Its not a case of some theories having more evidence than others.

Agree to some extent, but there is documentary evidence that Penniston, Cabansag and Burroughs were sent into the forest, and for Halt's expedition (including his tape). There is evidence that the USAF security control room contacted Suffolk Constabulary.

Of course, the Halt etc. accounts and witness statements could all be fabrications. But there is no evidence of this.
And there is no evidence of there being any event that required a cover-up unless we assume, without evidence, that the witness statements, Halt's tape etc. are themselves evidence of a cover-up!
I agree that there are inconsistencies; Penniston's failure to mention that the three SPs ended up looking at a lighthouse and his claim to see a structured object might be seen as a precursor to his later claims; Halt's use of the wrong date is surprising, but we're all human.

There's no physical, circumstantial (e.g. disruption to local activities/ traffic, deployment of personnel other than those we know about) or photographic evidence, and no convincing witness accounts, of any type of sensitive or serious incident in the vicinity of Rendlesham Forest, or of any recovery of anything.

 

[John J.]

...there are no reports of areas of damage to foliage or disturbed ground.

(Other than the trees marked by the forestry workers and scrapes in the ground which local policemen thought might have been rabbit scrapes).

 

[Scaramanga]

The so called beams align with the lighthouse sweep, stars, and aircraft seen through trees. No one outside the group saw beams hitting the ground, and no evidence of damage was found. Claims about the memo being written later are unsupported.

Well, no, one has to really be stretching things to argue that a lighthouse beam rotating every 10 seconds ( two beams..so one flash every 5 seconds ) whose beam at Halt's distance would actually be travelling at 12,000 mph ( I base this on there being two opposing beams ) could possibly constitute a beam coming down to the ground long enough for Halt to even say those words. Plus it was a totally clear night. There was no haze or mist for the beam to have reflected off.

 

[Scaramanga]

My first instinct would have been to explore a nearby forest, but I know perfectly well that's not true for many other folk. And it's not impossible for people to know there is a lighthouse there, but be basically turned around in the woods and not know which direction they're facing, i.e. not know where "there" is.

Well, I was referring to when the 'UFO' was first seen, which was from the East Gate and not in the forest itself. So there's no real reason for there to have been a problem with orientation. Also, three men went into the forest, plus one man left behind at the gate, plus whoever gave permission for these guys to leave the base....none of them were ever aware of the lighthouse before that night ?

Google AI says Burroughs had been at Rendlesham since June 1979 as a base policeman. He's the only one for whom I can find that info ( though I suspect it is out there for the others ). So, Burroughs had been there a year and a half and had never heard of the lighthouse ?

 

[Scaramanga]

Of course, the Halt etc. accounts and witness statements could all be fabrications. But there is no evidence of this.
And there is no evidence of there being any event that required a cover-up unless we assume, without evidence, that the witness statements, Halt's tape etc. are themselves evidence of a cover-up!
I agree that there are inconsistencies; Penniston's failure to mention that the three SPs ended up looking at a lighthouse and his claim to see a structured object might be seen as a precursor to his later claims; Halt's use of the wrong date is surprising, but we're all human.

But there is equally no evidence for anything else about the incident. The only thing we know with certainty is that 'reports' were filed and that includes a police file as the police were called out.

One then has to ask...WHY were the police called out. They were not called out during the men being in the forest, when you'd think they could help chase whatever the object was. The base chief who called the men back to base called the police after the men were told to return. Which is odd. If you're giving up the search as you can't find anything more and calling men back to base....why then call the police out ?

Of course I get suspicious that the police were called to create a distraction to a different area.