Rendlesham Forest UFO case
Was the flashing light really
the lighthouse?
the lighthouse?
ON OTHER PAGES
Why did Col Halt not see the flashing light sooner?
This is an intriguing question for which the Orford Ness lighthouse offers a
natural answer. Recall that Col. Halt’s men had called him to the scene with the words “The UFO is back”, meaning that they had already seen something out there. But, as we hear from
Col Halt’s tape recording, no one pointed out the flashing light to him until he had
spent some time at the site. Where had it got to? Had it gone away and come
back again, or was it there all the time but hidden?
In my view, the second answer is correct. The Orford Ness lighthouse is directly
visible from only a limited area along the forest edge, so anyone just outside
this range would not see it – even a few yards makes all the difference.
On this scenario, the landing site that Halt investigated was probably just to
the north of the area from which the lighthouse is visible. Only by moving a
few paces to the south would the flashing light on Orford Ness be brought into
direct view.
Why Col. Halt’s men did not immediately show him the flashing light which they had originally
called him out to see is an intriguing question which only they can answer.
Summary
Of all the questions that need to be answered about the Rendlesham Forest UFO
case, the most significant has always been the following: what was the flashing
light seen in the forest by the airmen on both nights? This was the first
aspect of the case that I addressed once the story appeared in the News of the World in 1983 October, and I was quickly convinced by the suggestion of local forester
Vince Thurkettle that it was the Orford Ness lighthouse. Eyewitness evidence
that has come to light since then strongly supports this identification.
Commonly raised objections to this identification are here examined and found
to be invalid.
Visiting the site
Within days of the story breaking, I visited Rendlesham Forest at night with a
BBC TV camera crew to interview forester Vince Thurkettle and film the lighthouse flashing as seen from the area where Col Halt, the prime witness, had seen his flashing
UFO. However, it was not until many years after my initial visit that I was
able to pin down exactly where Col. Halt had been standing. The clue came from
an online interview Halt gave to Salley Rayl on the Microsoft Network in 1997
May, by when he had retired from the air force and felt freer to speak. In this
interview, the existence of which was brought to my attention by James Easton,
Halt noted that the UFO had appeared closely in line with a farmhouse “directly in front of us”.
Armed with this new lead, I returned to Rendlesham Forest in 1998 October.
Scouting around at the forest edge, I discovered something that I had not
appreciated previously: the top of the lighthouse peeps through a gap between
distant trees, and can be seen directly from only a limited area of the forest.
Remarkably enough, when I was positioned so that I could see the lighthouse
through the gap in the distant tree line, the farmhouse lay right in front of
me, in the same line of sight, just as Halt had described it as lining up with
the flashing UFO.
Col Halt’s view
The photograph I took on that occasion has been published in various places, but at that time
the trees were still in full leaf and the crop in the field had just been
harvested, quite different from the situation in the dead of winter when Halt
and his men chased their flashing UFO across this field. To get a better idea
of what Halt might have seen, I returned to the site on 2005 April 3 in the
company of fellow researcher Dave Clarke when there was less foliage around,
this time armed with a digital camera, and captured the view below. The upper
image is the full-frame view with the lighthouse circled; the lower one is a
portion of the same frame enlarged. These photographs demonstrate once and for
all that the lighthouse was not “30 degrees off to the right” as Col Halt has since claimed (see
next page). He evidently mistook another light for the lighthouse.
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Orford Ness lighthouse seen from the eastern edge of Rendlesham Forest in daylight. I took this photograph in 2005 April from the forest edge, looking east across the neighbouring field towards the lighthouse with the farmhouse in the foreground. I think that it shows us a daylight version of the view that Col. Halt had when he looked from Rendlesham Forest across the field towards the “winking eye” UFO. The tilled soil beyond and to the left of the farmhouse is what I take to be the “second farmer’s field” described by Halt (see below). For a wider-angle view of the field from the same position, click here.
Local resident Tony Nelson of Wickham Market has sent me a super-telephoto view
of the top of the lighthouse peeking over the distant ridge, taken by him on
2006 December 9; to download it click here.
Looking across the field
The farmhouse in my picture, at Capel Green, is identified in Jenny Randles’ books as Victor Boast’s house. The houses to the north of it (off the left of my pictures), Green
Farm, are lower and among trees. The ground falls towards Butley River, two
miles to the east. Beyond the river the ground rises again to a fairly flat
ridge, with a gap between two stands of trees through which the white top of
Orford Ness lighthouse can be seen. Although a shield blocks the beam of the
lighthouse from the town of Orford itself, it does not extend far enough to
block the beam from this part of the forest, as may be clear from my enlarged
picture.
From Halt’s own description that the farmhouse could be seen right in front of them with
the flashing UFO almost in line with it, I think I was standing pretty much
where Halt and his patrol crossed the fence, which is particularly low and easy
to step over at this point. As seen on a recent map of the area, my position was about the middle of the letter G in the name Capel Green. Col
Halt confirmed that this was indeed where he crossed into the field in a
programme called The UFO Hunters broadcast on the History Channel in 2008 – see this screen grab.
On a photograph of the landing site obtained by researcher Georgina Bruni, daylight is clearly visible between the
tree trunks, which would not be possible if the site were more than about 100
metres from the forest edge. This puts its position at around 52° 05’ 20” N, 1° 26’ 57” E. (The Forestry Commission has now put a nice picnic bench quite close to the
spot.)
Perhaps a better idea of the layout of the area can be gathered from this aerial
photograph (click on it for a larger version):
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I have labelled the landing site, the farmer’s field and the farmhouse; the Orford Ness lighthouse lies off to the right. After walking across the field and past the farmhouse towards the flashing light, Halt mentioned crossing a second farmer’s field. This would seem to be the next field in line past the farmhouse which I have labelled accordingly. Comparison with the Ordnance Survey map shows this field is bordered by a brook which is apparently the “creek” which Halt, on his tape, reports crossing. (He and his men apparently fell into it, too.) See the region on Google Maps.
To show the complete east-to-west line of sight from the forest to the Orford
Ness lighthouse, I have constructed strip charts from OS maps and aerial
photographs:
For further discussion of the identification of the flashing light, including
the question of why Col. Halt thought the lighthouse was in the southeast when
it was in fact straight in front of him, go to the next page
Content last revised: 2012 April.
© Ian Ridpath. All rights reserved.
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Can the lighthouse be seen from East Gate?
No it cannot. Due to the contours of the land and the intervening trees, the
lighthouse does not become directly visible until you are well into the forest.
This helps explain why it came as such a surprise.
It is sometimes argued that the airmen at East Gate would have seen the
lighthouse every night and hence could not have mistaken it for a UFO, but this
is not true. Their own statements make it clear that they were not familiar with the lighthouse at all.
The local police were of the opinion that the lighthouse was the light that had
been seen – see the comment from Inspector Mike Topliss of Suffolk constabulary near the
bottom of this page.
As Topliss noted, under certain atmospheric conditions the loom of the
lighthouse beam can be seen over the trees or can reflect off low cloud,
causing odd visual effects. It is possible that these effects added to the
overall strangeness of the sighting.
The height of the light is just right!
According to this Trinity House information page, the Orfordness light (they spell it as one word) is at a height of 28m above
mean high water. Hence it easily peeks above the intervening ridge, which has a
maximum height of 19m (OS spot height) in this region.
The position at the forest edge from which I took these photographs is between
the 20-m and 15-m contour lines on OS maps. Anyone standing here is close to
the same level as the lighthouse beam, which would shine directly into their
eyes.
How bright is the light?
At the time of the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident, the Orfordness lighthouse was
one of the brightest in the country with an intensity of 5 million candelas,
according to official Trinity House figures. Only St Catherine’s on the Isle of Wight (5.25 million cd) and Strumble Head in Pembrokeshire (6
million) were brighter in England and Wales.
Since then, the bulb in the lighthouse has changed twice, and the appearance of
the beam has changed along with it. At the time of the UFO sighting in 1980 the
lighthouse was fitted with a 3-kilowatt 100-volt filament lamp. That was
replaced in 1991 with a 1 kW 240V mercury vapour discharge lamp. It now has a
70-watt 12 volt metal halide lamp which runs off batteries, installed in 2000.
According to the Trinity House website, the current intensity is 635,000
candelas, about 13% what it was in 1980.
Another complicating factor when comparing the present appearance of the light
with 1980 is that the visibility of any distant light at night is strongly
affected by atmospheric conditions. Anyone visiting the site on a night of low
atmospheric transparency would not see the full intensity of the Orford light,
particularly now that the bulb is so much fainter. Fortunately my early visits
were all on clear nights, when I could appreciate how bright the beam appeared.
Indeed, it looked to be no more than a couple of hundred yards away between the
trees, much as reported by the original witnesses.
Scattering in the atmosphere causes reddening of a light (see Optical phenomena and optical illusions near lighthouses by C. Floor). The current metal halide bulb is not only much weaker but whiter
than the old incandescent bulb in use in 1980. Even so, it can still appear
yellow or even orange depending on conditions (see here).