Rendlesham Forest: Britain's Roswell and the Halt Memo

The Story

In December 1980, RAF Woodbridge and nearby RAF Bentwaters in Suffolk, England, were being used by the U.S. Air Force. Next to them lay Rendlesham Forest.

On 13 January 1981, the deputy base commander, Lt. Col. Charles I. Halt, put what happened into a one-page memo headed 'Unexplained Lights.' He wrote that 'Early in the morning of 27 Dec 80 (approximately 0300L), two USAF security police patrolmen saw unusual lights outside the back gate at RAF Woodbridge.' Thinking an aircraft might have come down, three patrolmen went into the forest on foot. They 'reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest.'

'The object was described as being metalic in appearance and triangular in shape.' (Lt. Col. Charles I. Halt's memo, 13 January 1981)

The memo describes the object 'as being metalic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three meters across the base and approximately two meters high.' It says the object had 'a pulsing red light on top and a bank(s) of blue lights underneath,' and that as the patrolmen approached, 'it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared.'

According to the memo, 'three depressions 1 1/2" deep and 7" in diameter were found' the next day. On the following night 'Beta/gamma readings of 0.1 milliroentgens were recorded.' Later that night 'a red sun-like light was seen through the trees,' followed by star-like objects in the sky. Halt ended the memo: 'Numerous individuals, including the undersigned, witnessed the activities in paragraphs 2 and 3.'

The memo's description of an object in the woods, written by a senior officer, made Rendlesham one of Britain's best-known UFO cases. The UK National Archives calls it 'Perhaps Britain's most well-known UFO event.' But it adds that a note responding to a Parliamentary Question 'confirmed that there was nothing of defence interest in the alleged sighting,' and that 'no further records or investigations took place.'

Skeptic Ian Ridpath offers an ordinary explanation. He writes that the first sighting 'coincided with the burn-up in the atmosphere of an exceptionally bright meteor,' and that the airmen who saw the flashing light between the trees 'were looking straight at the Orford Ness lighthouse.' He says local police and a forester identified the ground marks 'as rabbit scrapings and cuts made by foresters,' and that the brightest of the later lights 'was in the direction of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.' Ridpath also says Halt's memo gets the dates wrong.

The memo and the official files are real. What the airmen saw is still argued over.