1980 Rendlesham Forest incident

“On a December morning in 1980, an American military patrol near the British Royal Air Force base RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk, England, saw lights descending into the adjacent Rendlesham Forest.”

“Strange lights appeared near a joint UK-US military facility in Suffolk, England, where the two allies had stored nuclear weapons in a secret bunker. Two security policemen, John Burroughs and Jim Penniston, found a landed UAP in nearby Rendlesham Forest.”

“United Kingdom, 1980: UAP appeared out of the night sky over a very sensitive joint UK-US military facility near Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk, England. These UAP hovered specifically over an underground bunker where the two allies had secretly stockpiled nuclear weapons.”

“One of the interesting ones took place on a joint United States Air Force, Royal Air Force base at RAF Woodbridge in England, near Ipswich, England on the coast. And they had a triangular-shaped object land at the back gate of the base.”

“Mr Penniston and Airman John Burroughs claimed they saw the craft land in Rendlesham Forest near the RAF Woodridge base in Suffolk, England, on 26 December 1980.”

“His colleague, Sergeant Jim Penniston, described seeing a small three-metre-wide craft composed of what looked like a black smoky glass-like material, with unfamiliar symbols inscribed on its upper side.”

“Witnesses of the UAP encounter at Rendlesham Forest in 1980 also saw similar symbols on the craft.”

“Airman John Burroughs saw strange flashing red, green and blue lights in a clearing 'that threw off the image of like a craft' but he says he also never saw anything 'metallic or hard'.”

“Penniston made the astonishing claim much later that he touched the craft and recorded sketches of the hieroglyphic inscriptions in a notebook.”

“A sketch of the purported Rendlesham Forest UAP drawn by witness Staff Sergeant Jim Penniston.”

“They found depressions where the three landing gear had rested the object on the ground.”

“They found radiation.”

“Nick Pope, who headed the British Ministry of Defence's 'UFO Desk' in the 1990s, told me the radiation levels tested the next day were many times higher than normal background, a finding challenged by sceptics.”

“And the document relates how armed security police advanced toward it. It took off and went into the woods, lighting up the whole woods with its bank of blue lights underneath and sort of a red light on top.”

“And animals, wild animals in the woods, rabbits and so forth, started running out of the woods.”

“The watches both men wore that night lost forty-five minutes of time when compared to the timepieces of the airmen back on base.”

“Penniston also raised dramatic claims that he and his colleagues suffered 'missing time' during the incident, that their memories were deliberately confused and blocked in some way.”

“(Hal Puthoff calls this the Rip Van Winkle Effect.)”

“Burroughs later experienced a series of worsening health effects—vision problems, white gums, heart murmurs, heart tissue scarring—all of which culminated in heart surgery to correct damaged leaflets in his mitral valve.”

“what is it, Rameshon Forest in England, the U.S. guys that saw stuff and actually got radiation burns.”

“As a result, two witnesses were awarded permanent disability by the US government for their involvement and injury at Rendlesham.”

“One guy was medically disabled, but they weren't going to give it, and he got help from John McCain. His office helped get the guy's disability reestablished.”

“More than thirty years later, the late Senator John McCain successfully had the service records of one of the service members involved in the incident declassified.”

“Two nights later, US Air Force Colonel Charles Halt, deputy commander of the nearby RAF Bentwaters base, Penniston and Burroughs' home base, led a patrol back into the forest following another reported landing by an unidentified craft, later writing a detailed memorandum of what he saw.”

“Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, the deputy base commander at RAF Woodridge who led a patrol that witnessed what he describes as an 'intelligently-controlled' object moving through Rendlesham Forest.”

“he had the presence of mind to audiotape his dramatic live commentary of what he saw, including how the object looked 'like an eye winking at you'.”

“In a field, he and his patrol watched as the object, which had 'danced about in the forest', shed sparks that looked like molten metal; there was a heavy field of static electricity in the air.”

“Perhaps most disturbingly, it shone beams of light into the nuclear weapons storage area on the base.”

“He said the nearby lighthouse was easily visible and quite distinct, at least 30 degrees away, from what he saw.”

“He told me he and his colleagues witnessed a hovering UAP in the forest at close-up range and he believed the vehicle was probably extra-terrestrial.”

“But, decades on, Halt is adamant that the objects he saw were intelligently controlled and probably non-human in origin, and he derided the sceptics who were not there who dismissively asserted otherwise.”

“'I just know that there was something somewhere that was controlling what I saw,' Halt told me. 'It certainly is a bit scary.'”

“Sceptics such as Ian Ridpath have declared that all the men saw was a nearby lighthouse, that it was a non-event misperception of distant lights, conflated into an alien encounter.”

“He said the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) attacked the credibility of his sighting.”

“'I certainly believe there's a cover-up,' Halt said.”

“Radar operators recently testified that an unknown object was indeed tracked in the area that night.”

“perhaps the most intriguing evidence from the Rendlesham incident were the accounts from multiple witnesses supporting claims there was an aggressive official cover-up – claims reportedly backed by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was memorably quoted as privately admitting, 'You can't tell the people.'”

“I think Rendlesham was an interesting case.”

“Multiple servicemen saw the UAP up close and have since gone public despite being told not to talk about it.”

“Very few people know that all communications on the base went to "flash override," which completely shuts down all communications lines so that only the president of the United States can communicate directly with someone on the base.”

“After the event, it was reported by servicemen on the base that an identified private plane landed on a runway just outside the base and that a group of men, said to be from a defense contractor, exited the plane and were driven onto the base.”

“The same men were later seen loading crates onto the plane before leaving for the US.”

“The next day, the servicemen who were eyewitnesses were called to the base's office of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI).”

“They were told to never speak about what they saw, and they were administered some sort of drug and hypnotized, presumably to distort their memories.”

“The ones I personally spoke to said there was someone from the CIA in the room with the men from OSI.”

“Years later, one of the servicemen saw a photo of a certain CIA official who had long worked on the UAP topic and claimed that CIA official was in the room the day after the event.”