Rendlesham UFO – what was the flashing light?

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...

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.

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