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ON OTHER PAGES
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Was the flashing light really the lighthouse? (continued)
Since the Orford Ness lighthouse was first
proposed as the culprit for the flashing UFO seen in Rendlesham
Forest, considerable additional evidence has emerged to back up
the identification. This evidence refers both to Night One
(when the flashing light was first seen by a group of airmen,
one of whom has since made various sensational claims) and from
Night Two, when it was seen by a larger group including the
deputy base commander of the joint air force bases at
Bentwaters and Woodbridge, Col. Charles Halt.
What follows on this page requires some
knowledge of the case to be fully appreciated. However, the
main points can be summarized as follows:
1. The testimony of the main eyewitnesses
on Night One and of Col. Halt on Night Two confirm that the
flashing light seen on both nights lay in the direction of the
Orford Ness lighthouse.
2. As well as lying in the same direction
as the lighthouse, evidence from Night Two shows that the light
flashed at the same rate as the Orford Ness lighthouse.
3. Although Col. Halt maintains he saw the
Orford Ness lighthouse in the southeast, it is actually east of
where he stood. Evidently Col. Halt confused it with another
flashing light in the southeast, probably the more distant
Shipwash lightship.
4. His mistake arose because he was used
to seeing the Orford Ness lighthouse in the southeast from his
home base of Bentwaters, which lies to the north of Woodbridge.
If you want the details, read on...
Night One
The most telling pieces of evidence from
Night One were unearthed by James Easton, a Scottish
researcher. Easton found copies of the written statements by
the airmen who were involved on that night in the files of an
organization in Arizona known as Citizens Against UFO Secrecy
(CAUS). These statements were collected by Halt following the
incident and formed the basis of paragraph 1 of his memo to the
British Ministry of Defence. He later gave copies to CAUS
where, ironically, they remained unpublicized for many years.
The statement of one of the main
witnesses, John Burroughs, said in part: “we could see a
beacon going around so we went towards it. We followed it for
about 2 miles before we could see it was coming from a
lighthouse”.
Easton also tracked down airman Chris
Armold, a USAF security policeman who called out the British
police on the first night. To see for himself what the fuss was
about, Armold went out to the site with Burroughs. As he told
Easton: “There was absolutely nothing in the woods. We
could see lights in the distance and it appeared unusual as it
was a sweeping light.” He added: “We did not know
about the lighthouse on the coast at the time.”
It’s worth recalling that the local police who were
called out also reported that the only lights visible were
those from the Orford Ness lighthouse.
These and other statements from the
first-night witnesses seriously contradict the more imaginative
accounts offered later, and demolish the oft-made claim that
the airmen were so familiar with the lighthouse that they
couldn’t possibly have mistaken it.
Night Two
Long before Easton’s investigation,
though, the tape recording made by Col. Halt on Night Two had
been released, and we could hear his own description of the
flashing light. I have compiled a transcript of this
tape. There are other versions
which differ slightly in detail, due to the difficulty of
interpreting the spoken words, but I believe this version to be
the most accurate available.
All versions agree that, having reached
the eastern edge of the forest, Halt estimated the light was
“two to three hundred yards away”. At this stage
Halt looked at the flashing light through a Starscope, which is
an image intensifier (night vision scope) used by the military
for seeing in the dark. On the tape he says: “It’s
like this thing has a hollow centre, a dark centre. It’s
a bit like a pupil of an eye looking at you, winking. And the
flash is so bright through the starscope that it almost burns
your eye.”
More spectacularly, in later interviews
Halt has mentioned that “molten metal” appeared to
be dripping from the light, but it seems that this effect was
illusory. As Halt explained to journalist Salley Rayl in an
online interview in May 1997: “We went out into the field
and tried to find any evidence, such as any burnt spots or
anything of that nature. Couldn't find anything.”
They began to walk across fields towards
the light but found it was farther off than they had estimated.
In recent interviews and talks, Halt has said that the light
“exploded” and broke into pieces. Oddly, this
spectacular event is not described on his tape made at the
time. All he said then was: “We’ve passed the
farmer’s house and are crossing the next field and now we
have multiple sightings of up to five lights”. Evidently
what had really happened was that Halt had lost sight of the
lighthouse as he moved downhill from the forest edge towards
the farmhouse. His attention was then caught by other lights
– either celestial objects or the red lights on the radio
masts at Orford Ness. Unfortunately we do not have a
sufficiently good description of these five lights to decide
what they were.
At this point on the tape we discover that
the original light had not broken up at all. Halt says:
“We’re at the far side of the second farmer’s
field and made sighting again about 110 degrees. This looks
like it’s clear off to the coast. It’s right on the
horizon.” Just where you would expect to find a
lighthouse, of course.
Several times Halt estimated that the
bearing to the light was about 110 degrees (he only ever
described his compass bearings as approximate). In fact,
allowing for the deviation of magnetic north from true north on
that date, the actual bearing of the Orford Ness lighthouse
seen from the forest would have been 99 degrees. An error of
some 11 degrees does not seem bad for a reading on an
intermittent light made at night. We don’t know whether
other equipment Halt was carrying, such as his hand-held tape
recorder, may have deflected the compass reading. [Note: I have
never seen any reference to the type of compass Halt was using
but it was presumably a standard military lensatic compass, the use of which is described here. These should not be used near metal or
electrical equipment. They must also be held steady and level
for accuracy, and Halt was on the move much of the time.] Those
who deny that what Halt saw was the lighthouse have to explain
why he did not report seeing two bright flashing lights in the
same line of sight.
Halt’s tape also contains a clue to
the flash rate of the light, as first noted by Phil Klass. On
the tape, we can hear an unidentified airman call out:
“There it is again...there it is.” The interval is
5 seconds, the same rate at which the Orford Ness lighthouse
flashes.
James Easton found further useful
information in an online interview Col. Halt gave to Salley
Rayl on the Microsoft Network in 1997 May.
In answer to a question about the
lighthouse, Halt said: “The lighthouse was visible the
whole time...it was readily apparent, and it was 30 to 40
degrees off to our right. And if you were standing in the
forest where we stood at the supposed landing site, or whatever
you want to call it, you can see the farmer's house directly in
front of us and the lighthouse was, like I say, 30 to 35
degrees off to the right and the object was close to the
farmer's house.” This statement reaffirms what he had
told the same interviewer for Omni magazine three years earlier: "We
knew the Orford Ness lighthouse beacon beamed from the
southeast.”
Unfortunately for Col. Halt, as seen from
the supposed landing site in the forest to the east of the
runway at Woodbridge, the Orford Ness lighthouse does not lie
in the southeast. It lies virtually due east, the direction he
was facing. A glance at a map, or at the photographs on the
preceding page, makes this clear.
Why, then, did Halt think the lighthouse
was in the southeast? The reason is surprisingly
straightforward. Halt’s quarters and office were not at
Woodbridge but at neighbouring Bentwaters, 2 miles to the
north. From here, the Orford Ness lighthouse does indeed appear
in the southeast.
This is perhaps the crux of the whole
misidentification issue. Halt was conditioned to seeing the
lighthouse in the southeast, so when he saw a flashing light
virtually due east he did not think of Orford Ness.
Halt’s own words (“the lighthouse was...30 to 35
degrees off to the right...We knew the Orford Ness lighthouse
beacon beamed from the southeast”) undermine his claim
that he recognized the Orford Ness lighthouse on the night of
the sighting and make it more likely, rather than less, that he
mistook it for a UFO.
If Halt and his men saw a second light off
to the right, this must have been something other than the
Orford Ness lighthouse. Most likely it was the Shipwash
lightship (now replaced by a buoy), which is more distant and
hence fainter. Halt’s tape does confirm that a second
light was seen to the right of the main flashing light,
although no compass bearing is given and it receives only
passing mention. Oddly enough, at no stage does anyone on the
tape mention seeing a lighthouse, even though the Orford
lighthouse is, by its very nature, the most obvious nocturnal
reference point for miles around.
Content last revised: 2008 July
© Ian Ridpath. All rights reserved
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