RENDLESHAM FOREST

Opening

In the early hours of 26 December 1980, US Air Force security police at RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk, one of a pair of American-run bases with neighbouring RAF Bentwaters, saw lights in Rendlesham Forest outside the east gate. Thinking an aircraft had crashed, Staff Sergeant Jim Penniston, Airman John Burroughs and Airman Ed Cabansag went into the trees. Two nights later the deputy base commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, led his own patrol into the forest with a tape recorder running. His one-page memo to the Ministry of Defence, titled "Unexplained Lights", is why Rendlesham is called Britain's Roswell.

Timeline

26 December 1980, about 03:00Lights are reported near the east gate. Penniston, Burroughs and Cabansag go out. Their statements describe bright white and coloured lights in the trees, and some describe a small, triangular, metallic object. Penniston later says he touched it.

Later that dayThree depressions are found in a clearing, which some of the men later measure and photograph.

27-28 December, after midnightLights are reported again. Halt leaves a party and goes out with a small team, including Lieutenant Bruce Englund. On tape, they take radiation readings at the clearing and describe a red, pulsing light through the trees and, later, star-like lights in the sky sending down beams.

13 January 1981Halt sends his memo to the MoD. He gets the date of the first night wrong, writing 27 December.

1983The group Citizens Against UFO Secrecy obtains the memo in the US under freedom of information, and it makes headlines in Britain.

2010Halt signs a notarised statement saying he believes what he saw was extraterrestrial and that the incident was covered up. Penniston produces a notebook of binary code he says was downloaded into his mind when he touched the craft.

2015After Senator John McCain's office intervenes, the US Department of Veterans Affairs grants Burroughs full disability benefits for heart and eye problems, which he attributes to the encounter.

Key figures

Jim Penniston led the first patrol. His story has grown over the decades, from lights and a possible object in 1980 to the binary download in 2010.

John Burroughs was on both nights and has said he suffered lasting health effects. He has also questioned Penniston's later story, saying there wasn't time that night for Penniston to walk around a craft for 45 minutes and sketch it.

Ed Cabansag, the third airman on the first patrol, gave the least dramatic statement, describing lights rather than a landed craft.

Charles Halt, the deputy base commander, wrote the memo and made the tape. He later became a full colonel and has never changed his account.

Astronomer and writer Ian Ridpath is the leading sceptic. He argues the lights were the Orford Ness lighthouse and bright stars.

Physical and documentary trail

What exists: the airmen's original statements, the Halt memo, the Halt tape, the MoD's files released in later decades, and photographs of the ground marks.

Still missing: any photograph of the object, any radar evidence, and any explanation from the MoD beyond a finding that the incident posed no threat to defence.

The object was described as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three meters across the base and approximately two meters high. It illuminated the entire forest with a white light.

Things you might not know

• The tape is real and you can hear it. Halt's recording, about 18 minutes long, captures the officers in the forest reacting live.
• A scream turned out to be deer. Some of the strange noises in the woods have been put down to muntjac deer, which shriek.
• The memo has the wrong date. Halt wrote it two weeks later, from memory, and got the first night wrong.
• The binary decodes to coordinates. Penniston's notebook has been read as map references for ancient sites and a reference to the year 8100.
• The forest has a UFO trail. Forestry England runs a walking trail to the site, complete with a model of the craft.
• The lighthouse was five miles away. Orford Ness light flashed every five seconds, and sceptics note the airmen's descriptions match its timing.

Competing explanations

Lighthouse and stars. Ridpath's reading: the pulsing light the patrols followed was the Orford Ness lighthouse, the lights in the sky were bright stars such as Sirius, and the ground marks were rabbit diggings. This fits the Halt tape's distant lights well. It fits the first night's close-up object less well.

A secret test or exercise. Some suggest a military test or a psychological operation. No evidence has emerged.

An unknown craft. The reading of Halt, Penniston and Burroughs: a structured object seen at close range by trained military witnesses, with radiation readings and ground traces.

Later life of the case

Rendlesham is Britain's most famous UFO case, the subject of books, documentaries and an annual stream of visitors. The witnesses still speak about it, and they don't all agree on the details.

Finding

Experienced military personnel saw something on two nights that they could not identify, and the deputy base commander put it in writing to the Ministry of Defence. The lighthouse explains some of what was seen on the second night. It does not comfortably explain what the first patrol described at close range.

What still will not resolve: what Penniston, Burroughs and Cabansag saw in the clearing on 26 December 1980.