The Lakenheath-Bentwaters Radar-Visual Incident

Summer 1956. The United States Air Force was using two RAF bases in Suffolk, Lakenheath and Bentwaters. Lakenheath held nuclear weapons. On 27 July a B-47 had crashed into a storage igloo there that held three Mark 6 nuclear weapons. All four crew died. None of the weapons detonated. Two weeks later came the night of 13 August. It was dry and largely clear, and observers noticed an unusually large number of shooting stars. The Perseids were falling.

It began at about 21:30Z. The ground-control approach radar at Bentwaters picked up a target moving steadily west-northwest until contact was lost. Soon a group of 12 to 15 targets drifted northeast at 80 to 125 mph. Then they merged into a single strong echo "several times larger than a B-36 return under comparable conditions."

At 22:55Z a single target crossed the whole scope. It went from 30 or 40 miles east of the base to 40 miles west, at an estimated 2,000 to 4,000 mph. Above Bentwaters, the pilot of a C-47 at 4,000 feet reported a "bright light streaked under his aircraft traveling east to west at terrific speed." To him, "it just appeared to be a blurry light." From the ground, a rapidly moving white light was seen.

Bentwaters alerted Lakenheath. There, ground personnel watched several luminous objects. One observer said the first was "about size of golf ball." Two arrived, made a sharp change in course and appeared to merge. "Ground observers stated one white light joined up with another and both disappeared in formation together."

On the Lakenheath scopes, targets were "traveling at terrific speeds and then stopping and changing course immediately." Watch supervisor Forrest Perkins later described a stationary target about 20 to 25 miles southwest. When it moved, its speed was "constant from the second it started to move." There was "no slow start or build-up to this speed."

Lakenheath asked the RAF for help. At RAF Neatishead, Flight Lieutenant Freddie Wimbledon watched the object as it "travelled at tremendous speeds at an altitude of between 10 and 20,000 feet and then suddenly stopped." He ordered the Battle Flight to scramble. A Venom from 23 Squadron was vectored onto the tail of the object, and the pilot called "CONTACT."

Then the picture turned. On radar, the target made a swift circling movement and got behind the Venom. "The UFO acted like it was glued right behind him, always the same distance," Perkins wrote. The pilot took violent evasive action for about 10 minutes. "I did everything I could to get behind him and I couldn't." A second Venom never made contact. According to Wimbledon, the object sped off, climbing at terrific speed. The targets left the scopes at 0330Z.

The USAF sent its file to Project Blue Book. In Britain, personnel were questioned in "absolute secrecy." Years later, Perkins wrote to the Condon Committee, and Gordon Thayer took up the case. J. Allen Hynek judged it "highly unlikely" that the Perseid meteors were the cause. Thayer called it "the most puzzling and unusual case in the radar-visual files," and concluded that "the probability that at least one genuine UFO was involved appears to be fairly high." Ralph Noyes said he saw Venom gun-camera film at a 1970 screening. The Ministry of Defence later said the records had been lost or destroyed.

Philip J. Klass blamed "a combination of false radar returns and misperceptions of meteors from the Perseid stream." 23 Squadron itself tentatively suggested a weather balloon. Decades later, researchers including David Clarke and Martin Shough interviewed the aircrew. Some remembered "nothing there, it was some sort of mistake." The researchers found the events "much more complex than the Condon Report had suggested" and called the testing of radar spoofing technology the most probable explanation.

Wimbledon never accepted that. In 1978 he recalled "a solid radar return tracked from three sets on the ground and one in the intercepting aircraft." Seventy years on, Lakenheath is still one of the classic radar-visual cases.