UFO Lands in Suffolk and That’s Official – So What Really Happened at Rendlesham?
My own conclusions are as follows. On two occasions in late December 1980 USAF personnel serving at Bentwaters/Woodbridge came face-to-face with the UFO phenomenon in its most dramatic form. The Halt Memorandum and the Halt Tape put this among the few cases which cannot be denied.
The events encountered were weird almost beyond belief- though quite consistent with many other reports we have had of the UFO phenomenon. These events were only partially ” substantial , ” but ” real ” nonetheless .
Something “manifested” which was absurdly large for the forest clearing in which it appeared and the spacing of the pine trees among which it skittered. We have little evidence of serious damage to the environment but every indication of a profound effect on the humans involved.
The authorities-as often before-had no idea what to do with this startling intrusion into human affairs. Perhaps photographs were attempted; perhaps they were sent to Defense authorities “up the line” but the only trace we have subsequently had5 is that they were probably “fogged” and that nobody will acknowledge them! The tree-damage and radiation traces have long since disappeared. , The unfortunate Col. Halt, faced with the burden of having encountered the miraculous, and conscious of having caused a rumpus on British territory (a fact about which he has shown himself to be courteously concerned), consulted his British “landlord” (Squadron Leader More land).
After the lapse of a fortnight he cleared his yard ann by sending a curtailed report to the British Ministry of Defense (via Moreland). (He may, of course, have sent other reports to his own superiors, but I doubt that we shall ever see them.) The MoD, as often before (I speak with feeling as a former member of that troubled Department of State!), were merely embarrassed by this latest outbreak of ghostly occurrences and/or the evidence that USAF colleagues had gone out of their minds. They filed a report and forgot it.
In 1983, some clerk in the department, quite unaware that anybody might care (because nobody had ever seemed to attach much importance to this kind of thing) released Halt’s report to American .friends who seemed to be interested for obscure reasons of their own.
British officials and Ministers-with their accustomed genius for evading embarrassing matters-have stalled ever since. Senator Exon in the United States (far more re sponsive to questions from the public) took a hard look at the matter but was horrified by what turned up: members of the USAF, and even the denizens of the Pentagon and the Intelligence community, had clearly gone soft in the head about ghost stories. Goodness knew what damage this might do if the Russians (or, worse, the American public) got wind of this evidence of vulnerability to superstition. Better check out that Boeche fellow . . . Better clam up . . .
But the U.S. is a more open society than Britain. Not only were the Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) able to force out the Halt Memorandum (a step inconceivable in the U.K.), but some members of the USAF were determined that the events of December 1980 should not remain buried. Witnesses were prepared to tell their stories; a few senior officers took the responsibility of uneasily backing them; and one of them, Sam Morgan, released the Halt Tape. Perhaps some last-minute failure of nerve led to the serious expurgation of the tape (as I have conjectured above); and perhaps somebody may now take courage and give us the tape in full. But more has already been provided to us in this case than in most others.
What does the case tell us? Not much more, perhaps, than many other “high strangeness” occurrences-but with the fairly rare collateral of an authenticated document and a much wider range than usual of witness reports. It confirms what some of us have long felt-that the UFO phenomenon is utterly “real , ” but something other than wholly “nuts-and-bolts”; that it is, indeed, a phenomenon at the very edge of human comprehension, more analogous to the apparitions and poltergeists of psychical re search than to the space-vehicles and space-brothers which (some decades ago) I would have been glad to welcome.
If I have been unkind to the authors of Skycrash, may I now make amends by quoting their conjecture [page 93] that the UFO experience is possibly some “incomprehensible meeting with an alien phenomenon which the mind can only embody in symbolic terms. “
The Rendlesham case also confirms, at least for me, that governments and their official agencies are undoubtedly engaged in concealment and obfuscation-but that the cover-up is of ignorance and unease. (This was certainly the game which I felt it necessary to play, myself, during my own term as an official of the Ministry of Defense from 1949 to 1977 .) Finally, I draw the conclusion that even very sensible ufologists are capable of utterly confusing their own inquiries by pursuing dark suspicions of anybody with a uniform or an official title, rather than examining the strange facts which come their way. They might be surprised to know how expert and well informed ufologists look to unfortunate officials sitting behind a Whitehall desk with the job (competing with many others) of responding to the public about inexplicable events!
Whatever “intruded” at Bentwaters/Woodbridge in December 1980 has possibly done so often before in human history. It will probably continue to do so-in its own time and according to its own inscrutable purposes. It seems to have been manifesting with increasing frequency and in creasing elaboration in recent years; it is, indeed, nearly shouting its head off . . . a nd it may be important to our species to come to terms with it. If Col . Halt has done nothing except to draw attention to it in undeniable form, we shall probably have to put up a statue to him some day in some leafy square.