On two nights in late-December 1980, bizarre lights and mysterious flying objects were witnessed by dozens of military personnel in Rendlesham Forest, just outside the Bentwaters airbase in Suffolk. Dubbed “Britain’s Roswell”, the Rendlesham Forest UFO event is one of the most well-documented and widely witnessed UFO sightings in modern times. It is also one of the most government-suppressed UFO reports in history. Now a witness to the event, Col Charles Halt, claims he has new evidence in hand supporting military personnel’s claim of the unusual objects they witnessed in Rendlesham Forest.
Summary of the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident
Three US military officers (John Burroughs, Bud Steffens, and James Penniston) based at RAF Bentwaters (an airbase used by the US Air Force during the Cold War) claimed a “triangular shaped craft” landed in neighboring woods in the early hours of December 26, 1980. Col Halt was not present during the first incident but investigated the sighting the following day while recording a running commentary of the second event on a dictation device. Halt says the officers who first witnessed the lights and then a UFO “on the floor” of the forest could not account for a 40-minute period while searching in the woods after their communication systems went “off air”.
Later, on the evening of December 27, 1980, officers returned to base shouting, “It’s back, the UFO’s back!” Halt investigated the scene and found three evenly spaced, distinct “impact holes” in the ground, damage to the canopies of the nearby trees, and higher-than-normal levels of radiation throughout the area. During his investigation, Halt witnessed a mysterious lit object which began sparking before exploding. Witnesses on the scene then saw objects in the sky which appeared to be elliptical in shape before becoming a full circle. This was followed by a series of high-speed bright white lights, one of which emitted a laser-like beam of light.
New Rendlesham Forest UFO evidence surfaces – radar reports
Colonel Charles Halt, deputy commander at the Bentwaters airbase on the two nights the Rendlesham UFO made its appearance, has long maintained that the Ministry of Defense has suppressed details of the sighting from the public. He now says he has obtained official statements from multiple radar operators confirming that an unknown object was tracked on radar at the time military personnel reported the object landed just outside the fence of the base.
According to Halt:
“I have confirmation that [Bentwaters radar operators] … saw the object go across their 60-mile (96km) scope in two or three seconds, thousands of miles an hour, he came back across their scope again, stopped near the water tower, they watched it and observed it go into the forest where we were. At Wattisham, they picked up what they called a ‘bogie’ and lost it near Rendlesham Forest. Whatever was there was clearly under intelligent control.”
Halt says the former servicemen did not want to speak of the evidence they had in hand until they retired. Now, 35 years later, they have provided written statements admitting that radar confirmation of the event was obtained on the night of the sighting which disproves skeptic claims that all the men saw that night were lights from a nearby lighthouse.
You can check out the full story of the Rendlesham Forest UFO here.