Rendlesham Forest Incident
As the Rendlesham Forest Incident or the Rendlesham Incident , two events of December 26 and 28, 1980 are referred to in ufology . These are said to have occurred in the Rendlesham Forest in Great Britain . The Rendlesham Incident, along with the Roswell Incident in New Mexico , is considered a milestone in ufology because high-ranking military personnel were involved and most of those involved were classified as "credible" by the British military. The incident gained worldwide prominence through the press and media .
Most of the time it is assumed that the events were partly natural phenomena with no evidence of UFOs or aliens . Witness reports from an allegedly sighted spaceship or from aliens are now classified as not credible, especially since the statements in this regard are contradictory and inconsistent.
Place of events
The center of the events is the so-called Rendlesham Forest , a 15 km², militarily cordoned off forest area near the Bentwaters-Woodbridge air force base . Towns adjacent to the forest are Woodbridge , Sudbourne and Orford . Ipswich is approximately 8 miles west of Rendlesham Forest . All locations are located in an extensive nature reserve in the English county of Suffolk . Bentwaters-Woodbridge was a US Air Force- led NATO facility on UK soil at the time.
Description of the incidents
Involved
The main witnesses of the military are Lieutenant Colonel Charles Iowerth Halt, Staff-Sergeant James Penniston, Sergeant John Burroughs and the servants Edward Cabansag and Larry Warren. All named individuals are now retired.
The main witnesses of the local police (English Constabulary ) include Superintendent George Plum, the sergeants Brian Creswell and Martin Brophy.
Main civil witnesses include Garry Harris, Diana Persinger, and Gordon Levitt. Their names are mentioned in local police files.
First incident
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In the early morning hours of December 26, 1980, lights were seen from Bentwaters-Woodbridge Air Force Base , said to have gone down in nearby Rendlesham Forest. Under the suspicion of a plane crash , the chief security officer James Penniston and the airmen Edward Cabansag and John Burroughs went in search of the alleged crash site. When they arrived in the relevant area in the Rendlesham Forest, according to the witnesses, a bright light could be seen emanating from an intact object on the forest floor. The closer the witnesses got to the object, the worse the quality of the radio contact with the base should have become. Airman Cabansag stayed behind to keep radio contact with the base. Penniston and Burroughs said they continued to approach the property and described it in their reports as triangular, about 2.5 m long and 2 m high. Blue and yellow lights have moved across the surface of the object. Penniston and Burroughs observed the object at some distance for about 10 minutes. Then Penniston decided to examine the object more closely. He stepped up to the object, circled it, touched it and noted symbols that he supposedly saw on the surface of the object. According to him, the object was warm and smooth. According to the witnesses, after 25 minutes the light from the object intensified suddenly, it began to lift off noiselessly and flew away at high speed. A later investigation of the place revealed three depressions, which were interpreted as traces of land, as well as increased radioactivity .
Second incident
On the night of December 28, 1980, lights were seen again over Rendlesham Forest . The base's deputy commander, Charles Halt, went with four other soldiers to examine these lights. The witnesses later testified that they could see a pulsing, red-orange light in the forest that was maneuvering in a zigzag between the trees. The men followed the light to a field at the edge of the forest, where it appeared to explode. A search for the remains of the alleged explosion was apparently without result. During the search, Halt said several distant objects appeared in the sky with red, blue, and green lights. One of the objects quickly came closer and stopped right above the witness. The object was later described as being disc-shaped with lights around the edges. A red beam of light, similar to a laser , was emitted from the object and hit the earth a few meters away from the witnesses. Then the object quickly moved away and disappeared from view with the other objects. The lights are said to have been visible from the military base for over two hours. From time to time rays of light were sent to the ground. One of the objects is said to have flown over an arsenal of the air force base and sent light beams to the arsenal, according to Halt.
According to security officer Larry Warren, there was another encounter on the night of December 29th. Warren claims he was part of an investigation team accompanied by Lt. Col. Been stop. He saw a brightly shining object on the floor, similar to the one described by Penniston. Military personnel stood by as well as some small, humanoid beings. Warren had the impression that they were communicating. Then Warren was removed from the scene by military personnel.
Civilian testimony
Gordon Levitt, from Sudbourne, is one of the civilian witnesses to the incident. He said he was walking his dog on the evening of December 28th or 29th between 7:00 pm and 8:00 pm and noticed a glowing object in the sky that was moving in his direction. According to Levitt's description, the object was mushroom-shaped, slightly rounded and gave off a greenish light. It moved towards Levitt first and then turned towards Woodbridge. According to Gordon Levitt's report, the unknown flying object was also noticed by his dog. He is said to have suffered a shock and refused to leave his kennel the next day . Common UFO literature often claims that Levitt's dog died as a result of this shock. However, this is denied by Gordon Levitt and his lawyer.
Another local resident, Gerry Harris, and his wife also observed unusual lights over the Rendlesham Forest. Harris testifies that he returned from visiting friends around 11:30 p.m. on the evening of Boxing Day and that the couple prepared for sleep shortly afterwards. Looking out of the window, Harris observed very bright lights bobbing up and down over the Rendlesham Forest. At first his wife assumed it was just an airplane, but Gerry disagreed with the argument that such an "airplane" would certainly have crashed long ago due to the flight behavior. Harris assumed it was some sort of United States Air Force air show - an impression that seemed reinforced after Herris heard the sounds of approaching vehicles and distant shouts. During the observation one of the strange lights suddenly plunged into the forest and flew away again a few minutes later at high speed. In the following days, Harris observed that forest workers removed several trees from the spot where the UFO supposedly landed. The forest workers had stated that the trees had been felled because of "increased radioactivity".
Later additions to the incident
In December 2010, James Penniston expanded his account of the events. In an episode of the History Channel's television documentary series Ancient Aliens , Penniston states that he received a binary message telepathically during his encounter with the object . He wrote this message down a day later. This binary code turned out to be ASCII code and contained geocoordinates of the mythical Brazilian island as well as a short text about the "exploration of humanity".
Investigations of the Incidents
Military investigations
According to Nick Pope , head of the Department of Defense's UFO reporting from 1991 to 1994, the UK Department of Defense and US agencies such as the CIA were investigating the Rendlesham incident. A particular focus was on the supposedly excessive radiation values that were measured at the sighting site. If these had actually been threateningly high, it would have been a case of endangering national security (in addition to the sighting of a possibly extraterrestrial aircraft). However, Pope notes that none of the state agencies ever considered such a threat, although they took the testimony of the witnesses involved in the incident and the incident as a whole seriously. The authorities and the Ministry of Defense see the information about alleged radiation exposure as not confirmed. Pope himself considers the Rendlesham incident to be a security threat, as it is an incident in which an unknown flying object entered the airspace of a military facility.
Penniston and his former colleagues report that they were questioned by employees of the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in the days following the incident . Some claim they were partially intimidated and sworn to secrecy. Colonel Halt claims that his supervisor, Lieutenant Colonel (former) Colonel and Liaison Officer Donald Moreland, asked Halt two weeks later to draft a memorandum on the incident.
Warren's account, or even his involvement in the sighting, is not confirmed by Halt or Penniston and is not found in the military records released. Since his descriptions are not supported by official and / or military documents, nor by other witnesses, his testimony is consistently rated by investigators and experts as "unreviewable" and "fictitious". Many representations of the incident therefore do not include Warren's statements at all.
Investigations by independent experts and journalists
Reporter Ian Ridpath has investigated the incident and written several articles about it. According to his analysis , a meteor was responsible for the first sighting on December 26th and the reason why the group around Penniston set out for the Rendlesham Forest. Ridpath rates the portrayal of Burroughs, Cabansag and especially Penniston regarding a landed object as a deliberate false statement. As evidence of this, he names some inconsistencies in Penniston's statements regarding the time of the incident and the shape of the object. The alleged binary message added decades later is seen by Ridpath as further evidence of Penniston's untrustworthiness. The supposed traces of land are more likely to be collapsed rabbit holes . The radiation measuring device with which the increased radioactivity was measured is, according to Ridpath, designed for far higher radiation doses and would not be accurate enough in the areas investigated to be able to provide conclusive results. Ridpath explains the portrayal of Halt as follows: The light that followed the group from Halt through the forest was the light of the Orfordness lighthouse about 8 km away , the lights in the sky were the stars Deneb , Vega and Sirius . The reports of color changes, movement of objects and rays of light can be traced back to the normal flickering of the stars as well as to optical illusions in interaction with thin clouds.
Reporter Georgina Bruni conducted an investigation into the incident and interviewed other witnesses, particularly civilian witnesses and police officers. According to their conclusion, something has happened in the Rendlesham Forest that has not yet been satisfactorily explained. She thinks it is quite possible that either an alien aircraft or a futuristic prototype of a new type of missile landed in the Rendlesham Forrest. In 1997, she interviewed former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about UFOs and the incident. Thatcher replied: “You must have your facts and you can't tell the people.” (German: You have to know the facts and you can't just tell the people ). Bruni wonders whether this reaction, which "facts" Margaret Thatcher could have meant and whether the English Prime Minister is aware of the UFO phenomenon and how much Thatcher might know. Halt's statement that his supervisor only asked for a memorandum two weeks after the incidents is unbelievable to Bruni, and Halt's statement that the reason for this was that Moreland was on vacation is a "weak excuse". According to Moreland, he returned to Bentwaters a week after the incident and only found out about the incidents there for the first time.
Nick Pope criticizes that the incident was not properly investigated by the British authorities. Pope blames errors in the transfer of information and, above all, unclear responsibilities between the English authorities and the US military. Pope himself investigated the incident without finding satisfactory explanations.
Importance of the Rendlesham Incident in Ufology
Nick Pope describes the incident as "one of the most significant UFO sightings of all time". Various documents relating to the incident were released by the UK Department of Defense, as well as audio recordings that Halt allegedly recorded during the incident. Among the documents released is a report of Charles Halt's incident to the UK authorities known as the "Halt Memorandum". In it Halt reports the descriptions of the group around James Penniston on December 26th and the sighting of his group on December 28th.
See also
literature
- Georgina Bruni, Nick Pope: You Can't Tell the People: The Definitive Account of the Rendlesham Forest UFO Mystery . Pan Macmillan, London / Oxford (UK) 2011, ISBN 1447217551 .
- Leslie Kean: UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record . Random House LLC / Harmony, New York 2010, ISBN 0307716856 .
- Nick Pope: The Real X-Files . In: Leslie Kean: UFOs generals, pilots and government officials break their silence . Kopp, Rottenburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-86445-025-9
- Nick Pope, John Burroughs, Jim Penniston: Encounter in Rendlesham Forest: The Inside Story of the World's Best-Documented UFO Incident . St. Martin's Press, New York 2014, ISBN 1250038103 .
Web links
- Comprehensive documentation on the incidents at Rendlesham Forest with numerous eyewitness testimony, documents and videos exopolitik.org
- Extensive critical documentation on the events of Werner Walter Ufo-information.de
- Website of Ian Ridpath with an article on the Rendlesham incident (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Georgina Bruni, Nick Pope: You Can't Tell the People . Pp. 11-14.
- ^ Georgina Bruni, Nick Pope: You Can't Tell the People . P. 16.
- ^ Georgina Bruni, Nick Pope: You Can't Tell the People . P. 18.
- ^ Georgina Bruni: You can't tell the people . Pp. 86-87.
- ^ Georgina Bruni: You can't tell the people . Pp. 87-89.
- ^ The History Channel (ed.): Ancient Aliens . Alien Contacts / Season 2, Episode 10. Prometheus Entertainment, December 30, 2010 ( online [accessed May 29, 2012] TV documentary).
- ^ Georgina Bruni, Nick Pope: You can't tell the people. P. 51 & 57.
- ↑ a b c Nick Pope: The Real X-Files . Pp. 174, 181-185.
- ↑ a b Georgina Bruni, Nick Pope: You can't tell the people. Pp. 122-127.
- ↑ a b Ian Ridpath's website with an article on the Rendlesham Incident , last accessed on January 10, 2014
- ^ Georgina Bruni, Nick Pope: You can't tell the people. Pp. 30-32.