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ON OTHER PAGES
Rendlesham Forest UFO –
the witness statements (page 1)
On the next page are the original statements provided by five of
the main participants on the first night of the Rendlesham
Forest UFO sighting (1980 December 26). Paragraph 1 of Col.
Halt’s subsequent memo to
the Ministry of Defence was based on these statements and his
own interviews with the witnesses. The statements were later
presented by Halt to Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) and
were unearthed in 1997 by Scottish researcher James Easton, to
whom I am grateful for providing these scans. Their
authenticity has been confirmed by Col. Halt and the witnesses
themselves.
One of the statements is by
the officer in charge at Central Security Control (CSC) on the
night in question, Lt Fred ‘Skip’ Buran, who helped
gather the statements from the others. It is sometimes said
that the statements were deliberately toned down or sanitized,
but Buran told me by email on 2007 December 30: “I did
not ask anyone to edit their statements in any way. Had
anything occurred other than what appeared in the statements,
those facts should have been included.”
These statements should be read in
conjunction with the report of the local
Suffolk police who were
called to the scene of the incident on the first night and
again the following morning.
A number of points are worth making:
1. The
statements give the correct date for the sighting (December
26). This makes it even more surprising that Col Halt got the
date wrong in his memo. Penniston’s statement is the
exception, as it is undated (but see Point 4 below).
2. The only
witness to claim he saw a mechanical object was Penniston. The
others have only ever described seeing lights. During the
incident, Penniston estimated that he got no closer than about
50 metres to the object and that every time he tried to
approach it, it moved ahead of him. This was relayed at the
time by radio to his supervisor, Master Sergeant Chandler, who
confirms it in his own statement. There was no mention at the
time of the much closer and extended encounter that Penniston
has since claimed (see Point 4).
3. Burroughs
and Cabansag confirm that they chased the lighthouse for about
two miles before realizing what it was. Evidently they were not
as familiar with the lighthouse as proponents of this case like
to claim – see also Point 8 below.
4. In more recent television interviews Penniston
has exhibited a notebook in which he claims he made real-time
notes and sketches of a landed craft for about 45 minutes (see picture below).
However, there are serious problems with this claim. For one
thing, the date in the notebook is December 27 and the starting
time is noted as 12:20 (presumably meaning 00:20). This, as we
know, does not accord with the established date and time.
Burroughs, who was within a few yards of him throughout the
incident and saw no craft, told me in an email on 2006 March 22:
“Penniston was not keeping a notebook as it went
down”. In a further email dated 2008 January 17 Burroughs
emphasized: “Penniston did not have time to make any
sketches in a note book while this was going on and did not
walk around it for 45 min.” So what are we to make of
Penniston’s claims?
Airman Jim Penniston showed
this notebook on the Sci Fi channel documentary UFO Invasion at
Rendlesham first broadcast in 2003.
The first page, shown here, is headed with the date “27 Dec 80”. Below is written “12:20. Response notes. A/C [i.e. aircraft] crash”. The rest is hidden behind his hand.
Penniston claims
to have made these notes at the time of the
incident. The Sci Fi programme did not ask him to
explain the inconsistency in date and time with the
known date and time of the incident. (Screen shot
courtesy Gary Anthony)
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5. Penniston’s statement and accompanying sketch map (reproduced on the next page) clearly refer to the “traditional” landing site on the eastern side of the forest, where the supposed landing marks and tree damage were found and which the local police were called to see the following morning. However, on the Sci Fi channel programme mentioned above Penniston claimed there was a second landing site on the near side of the forest, only a few hundred yards from East Gate, where he approached the craft. This site is not attested to by other witnesses and is not referred to in his original statement or sketch map. Again, what are we to make of this more recent claim by Penniston?
6. In recent TV
interviews, Burroughs and Penniston have said that the supposed
object took off over the trees, but there is not hint of that
in these statements, which simply refer to the light(s) moving through the
trees and disappearing without explanation. Master Sergeant
Chandler, who was at the edge of the forest monitoring events
and would have been well placed to see anything taking off,
says in his statement that he saw nothing at any time.
7. According
to Burroughs, the initial sighting of the object apparently
coming down in the forest was made by Bud Steffens, with whom
he was riding on patrol. Steffens did not go out into the
forest and was not asked for a statement. Steffens has never
spoken publicly about the event.
8. In
addition to those who provided written witness statements,
there was another significant participant in the events of
Night One: Chris Armold, the USAF law enforcement officer who
placed the call to the British police and later went out to see
for himself what was happening. James Easton tracked him down
in 1997. This is part of what Armold had to tell him:
“My flight chief [at Bentwaters]
asked me if I wanted to head out to Woodbridge to meet up with
Burroughs and see what was up. I grabbed the back gate keys and
took the back way to RAF W/B [Woodbridge]. I met Burroughs at
the East Gate of WB. We left our guns with the guy riding with
Burroughs and drove to the end of the long access road. We left
our vehicle and walked out there.
“There was absolutely nothing
in the woods. We could see lights in the distance and it
appeared unusual as it was a sweeping light, (we did not know
about the lighthouse on the coast at the time). We also saw
some strange colored lights in the distance but were unable to
determine what they were.
“Contrary to what some people
assert, at the time almost none of us knew there was a
lighthouse at Orford Ness. Remember, the vast majority of folks
involved were young people, 19, 20, 25 years old. Consequently
it wasn't something most of the troops were cognizant of.
That's one reason the lights appeared interesting or out of the
ordinary to some people.”
Easton published the interview in full on
his website (note: the original site has long
disappeared; this link is to an archive server which is very
slow in responding.) The first part of the linked page details
the background and reaction to the initial release of the
witness statements. Scroll down about two-thirds of the way to
reach the section on Armold.
9. In 1998,
Easton heard from Bernard Donahue, who at the time of the
incident was Area Defense Counsel at Bentwaters with the rank
of Captain, the lawyer charged with defending personnel charged
with offences. He said: “Most of us on base were
embarrassed by this ‘incident’. We didn’t
believe the UFO hype for one minute. The next day, I personally
read the Security Police Blotter [the Bentwaters police log]
describing the incident in detail. It seemed to document
hysteria rather than hard facts.”
Content last modified 2008 March
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