The Rendlesham Forest Incident
American airmen at a British base reported lights and a craft in the forest over three nights. A deputy base commander's memo and tape recording made it Britain's best-known case. No beings were seen; a lighthouse is the usual explanation.
- Date
- 26–28 December 1980
- Place
- Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England
- Witnesses
- US Air Force personnel from RAF Woodbridge and RAF Bentwaters
- Status
- Disputed
What happened
In the early hours of 26 December 1980, security police at the twin bases saw lights descending into the forest and went to investigate a suspected crashed aircraft. Sergeant Jim Penniston and Airman John Burroughs reported a small, glowing, triangular craft on legs, which Penniston said he touched and which then rose and moved away through the trees. Two nights later the deputy base commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, led a party into the forest and recorded his observations on tape: a pulsing red light, beams of light coming down, and readings on a radiation meter.
Halt wrote a memo to the Ministry of Defence in January 1981, which was released in 1983 and printed in a British tabloid under the headline 'UFO lands in Suffolk'. The case has been argued over ever since.
The beings
None were reported at the time. Decades later Penniston described receiving a binary code by touching the craft, and other later accounts added small figures; these are treated with caution even by supporters. The case is about lights and an object, which is why it links to no species here.
Aftermath
The Ministry of Defence released its file in 2001 and concluded nothing of defence significance had occurred. The forest has a marked UFO trail with a model of the craft. Halt, Penniston and Burroughs have appeared in documentaries for forty years, and Burroughs received US veterans' benefits in 2015 for health problems he attributed to the encounter.
Explanations
The astronomer Ian Ridpath established that the flashing light seen through the trees matches the Orford Ness lighthouse, five miles away in the direction Halt was looking, and that a bright meteor was recorded over the area on the first night. The radiation readings were within background levels. Supporters argue the airmen knew the lighthouse and would not have mistaken it, and that the object Penniston described does not fit.