Documents / Hearing transcript
This is the script of an August 2009 podcast from The National Archives in which consultant David Clarke introduces the fourth release of Ministry of Defence UFO files. The release has 14 files, just over 4,000 pages, covering 1981 to 1996. The files include MoD correspondence on the Rendlesham Forest incident, the Belgian wave, the 1993 Cosford flap and London sightings of an advertising airship. The MoD judged Rendlesham of no defence significance and found most Cosford sightings were caused by a Russian rocket re-entry.
2 Rendlesham is undoubtedly Britain’s best known UFO incident. It has become known as “Britain’s Roswell”. It involves sightings of mysterious lights in the forest outside the perimeter fence of RAF Woodbridge made by USAF personnel in December 1980. They claimed a UFO had landed in the forest, leaving traces including markings on the ground and radiation. A summary of the events were included in a famous memo to the MoD by Lt Col Charles Halt (USAF deputy base commander), who witnessed one of the sightings. Halt’s memo opens this file, which consists largely of correspondence between the MoD and members of the public about the case between 1983 and 1995. The file also shows the MoD were unable to explain the incident, but decided it was of “no defence significance” as no unidentified objects had been detected on radar at the time. Another file in this release contains the MoD’s final position statement on the Rendlesham incident. This was written for the defence minister Lord David Trefgarne in 1995 and says: "…it is highly unlikely that any violation of UK airspace would be heralded by such a display of lights. I think it equally unlikely that any reconnaissance or spying activity would be announced in this way. We believe that the fact Col Halt did not report these occurrences to MoD for almost two weeks after the event, together with the low key manner in which he handled the matter are indicative of the degree of importance in defence terms which should be attached to the incident."
Hearing transcript, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 6 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.