All the witnesses to this are military personneclass="underline" they’re trained observers; they don’t make mistakes. Some of the skeptics have suggested that this could have been a mistaken sighting of a nearby lighthouse. That’s nonsense for two reasons: firstly, these were trained military observers who were familiar with the lighthouse and saw it pretty much every night of their tour of duty, and [secondly], certainly at one point in the encounter, the lighthouse was clearly visible at the same time as the UFO. So, this simply could not have been the lighthouse, as the skeptics sometimes suggest.
Although this case predated my own tour of duty by ten years, I reviewed the case and looked through the file. The most important thing that I was able to focus on was the physical evidence. After this craft had touched down, personnel had returned in the light of day to the landing site and discovered three triangular indentations on the forest floor; when you drew lines between them they were pretty much in the shape of a perfect equilateral triangle.
The area was checked for radiation. I took the readings that were taken, and snapped off some branches and stripped off some bark; as it had done so either coming in or going out.
I sent the figures that had been recorded at the time by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt to the Defense Radiological Protection Service, which is part of the Ministry of Defense [Halt was the deputy base commander and himself a witness at one of these incidents].
The radiations from the indentations in the ground were ten times background for that area―ten times what they should have been.
It is important to say that the levels were still comparatively low: Halt and his team were not endangered by this. This was still low-level radiation. But again, looking at it from a scientific point of view, that’s not the point. The point is that when compared with control readings immediately outside of the area, you had this peak of ten times normal right where this craft came down on the forest floor.
I find this is extremely significant, because it involved sightings by trained military observers and, also, at one point, this craft was tracked on radar from a nearby base, RAF Watten. There were sightings on radar, sightings by trained military personnel, and after the event, in the cold light of day, the undeniable, scientific, methodological evidence of the radiation readings. By anyone’s standards, this had to have been an extremely significant event.
I have seen witness statements from the military personnel, and I’ve heard testimony from some of those involved that suggests that much more went on during these particular nights, than even went into the file that ended up in the Ministry of Defense.
[We have learned that nuclear weapons had been secretly kept at the Bentwaters Air Force Base under U.S. control at this time. There have been many incidents where UFOs have taken an extreme interest in civilian nuclear power stations, military installations with nuclear assets. — SG]
Larry Warren was a security officer at Bentwaters Air Force Base in the United Kingdom.
My name is Larry Warren. In December of 1980, I was assigned to the 81st Tactical Fighter Wing in Suffolk, East Anglia, at the NATO Air Base Bentwaters, which is next to Woodbridge. I was a security specialist and worked with securing the nuclear arsenal we secretly housed there at that time.
On December 11, 1980, my security clearance notice, PRP, came through and I was approved. I held a secret clearance at that time.
The UFO incident took place near Woodbridge, which is our sister base, six miles away and separated from Bentwaters by a pine forest known as Rendlesham Forest. I was into my second week on the flight line, working the night shift.
We had just come off a break. The previous flight, C-flight, had a UFO encounter on Boxing Day [the first weekday after Christmas] morning, early in the hours―two nights before my event. A security policeman named John Burroughs, and an Airman, Parker, were at the East Gate at Woodbridge. Airman Burroughs saw what appeared to be an object in the forest at the east end of the runway, just within the trees. There were multi-colored lights, and he suspected maybe an aircraft had crashed. He called in Central Security Control on Bentwaters and reported what he was seeing. A shift supervisor named Jim Penniston responded―he was a Staff Sergeant―[and] a few other personnel arrived.
I wasn’t involved in this, but this is what I know of it: they pursued the phenomena into the woods―they definitely thought there was an air crash, and started to begin those procedures…
They found that it was not an aircraft, but a triangular object about six feet at the base, that rose to a nine-foot point. It was black like glass, with a great density to it. They didn’t know if it was on a tripod or on legs of some sort, but it had multi-color lights around it. I do know this―based on his own testimony―that Sergeant Penniston and these men did bring their side-arms, which are .38-caliber that the law enforcement people carried. Sergeant Penniston drew his revolver when they encountered this object and saw clearly that it wasn’t anything they were familiar with. These are all highly trained observers―as we all were at that time―for aircraft or unusual things. Sergeant Penniston drew his revolver and aimed it at the object.
At some point he approached this phenomenon very close to it, and observed a panel on its side with some sort of language similar to hieroglyphics. It was somewhat familiar to him, but he couldn’t identify the script. It was raised from the surface; he touched it and felt the surface― it felt warm to a degree, and was the texture of glass, almost―the consistency and hardness. They sensed there was movement within, through this opaque kind of glass. Sergeant Penniston heard a voice. These men had four hours of missing time and their radio communication had failed with the base. Luckily enough, some other personnel obviously did respond to see what was happening with these people―and some brought cameras and snapped some photos.
These men were debriefed the next morning. They were retrieved, dazed, [from the forest]; they made statements immediately. They were given injections, of what they were told was sodium-pentothal, by some element of the Air Force.
Airman Burroughs told me directly that he knew within the next two days that this phenomenon was going to return―and it indeed did. Their shift had ended that day; my shift came on.
There was evidence left by this encounter―pod indentations―on the ground. The British Suffolk Constabulary responded to this the next morning, because it was an incident. It was reported to them from the Base Security Police Operations desk. Colonel Charles Halt can explain this very accurately, because he was present on-site for the investigation. These pods were in a perfect nine-foot separation, forming a triangle. It represented something weighing two and one-half metric tons sitting down on the ground. There was a break in the canopy of the Corsican pines where something clearly came through it. There were background radiation readings taken, and Nick Pope can actually offer some more information on this via the Ministry of Defense.
The readings were twenty-five times higher than the normal natural background radiation in that area. Sergeant Nevels, who was the disaster preparedness man at the base at the time, had the Geiger counters and knew how to read them. These readings were taken from this ground-zero area. There was residual radiation on the trees and everything.
I was put on a very remote post at the end of the RAF Bentwaters flight line, called Perimeter Post 18; it was an alert-man position. I went to my position. It was uneventful for about an hour and one-half. What I noticed first, was an animal disturbance where some deer ran down to a rather low fence we had at that time surrounding the base. This herd of deer jumped the fence and ran past my position, right over the runway. They seemed spooked.