Rendlesham Forest UFO case
The supposed radar sightings
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Summary
Reports that the Rendlesham Forest UFO was tracked on radar are investigated. No
evidence is found to substantiate these reports, either from Ministry of
Defence files or from those who were on duty at the time.
The claims
“The first sighting of the craft over England was recorded on a radar screen at
RAF Watten [sic], 50 miles away from where it landed. They reported: ‘Tracing [sic] unidentified object.’ Radar operators followed the progress as it flew over the East Coast until it
disappeared.”
So reported the News of the World in its front-page story about the Rendlesham Forest UFO on 1983 October 2.
[Pedantic note: the actual wording differed slightly between two different
editions of the paper due to re-editing.]
Various other accounts of the case have made similar claims, which would surely
be of considerable defence significance if true.
One website asks: “Some sceptics have suggested various explanations for this [UFO] event,
including the lighthouse being seen from the forest, an experiment to see what
the men’s reaction would be to a threat close to a nuclear base, and even a meteor. If
this is indeed the case, how can they explain the radar sightings?”
The answer is that the supposed radar sightings are simply part of the
Rendlesham mythology. In my researches on the case stretching back to 1983, I
have never found any evidence that the supposed Rendlesham Forest UFOs were
tracked on radar. Recent release of the Ministry of Defence file on the case
confirms that there were no radar sightings on any of the days the UFOs were
seen.
Here follows the documentary substantiation of that statement.
Questioning the MoD
As part of my initial investigation, I wrote to the Ministry of Defence on 1983
October 9 asking for their comments on the apparent radar sighting of a UFO
about the time of the Rendlesham Forest incident. My letter bears the folio
number 151 in Part 5 of the released MoD file on the case.
On 1983 October 19 Pam Titchmarsh of Defence Secretariat Division 8 (DS8) replied, noting that “no unidentified object was seen on any radar recordings during the period in
question and that the News of the World article was inaccurate on this point”. Her reply is folio 149 in the MoD file, but the link above is to a scan of the
original in my possession.
On 1983 November 14 I pressed the MoD again on this matter, asking if it was
true that they had begun to investigate the case even before Col Halt’s memo was received and whether radar records had been confiscated, as was being
alleged by some. My letter is folio no. 126 in Part 4 of the released MoD file (the sheets are not, alas, arranged in strictly chronological order). Pam
Titchmarsh replied on December 7, informing me that no investigations were carried out by the MoD
until Col Halt’s memo was received two weeks after the event, and that there was no truth in
the story that radar records had been confiscated. Her reply is folio 118 in
the MoD Rendlesham file, but again I show a scan of the original in my
possession.
Over a decade later the situation had not changed. By now Nick Pope was in
charge of the department that handled UFO inquiries. In 1994 January he
prepared an information note in response to inquiries from Central TV in England, which re-emphasized that “No unidentified object was seen on radar during the period in question”, and there was no evidence of anything having intruded into UK airspace nor of
it having landed near RAF Woodbridge.
The second night – a first-hand account
Particularly significant from the air defence point of view were the events of
the second night, when Col Halt reported three starlike objects hovering for several hours over Rendlesham Forest, apparently sending down
beams of light. While this was going on, Halt asked his command post to contact
Eastern Radar at RAF Watton, which was responsible for air defence of that
region. “Twice they reported that they didn't see anything,” Halt recalled for journalist Salley Rayl in an interview published in the 1994
April issue of Omni. Thanks to British researcher Nick Redfern we know that Eastern Radar logged a call from Bentwaters at 3.25 a.m. on December 28.
The senior operations officer on duty at RAF Watton that night was Squadron
Leader Derek Coumbe. In 2003 he recalled for BBC Radio 4 that several calls had
come through from Bentwaters asking them if they were seeing anything unusual
in the Bentwaters and Woodbridge area. “We scrutinized the radar time and time again completely, and kept a watch on it
through the whole period when these phone calls were going on and nothing was
seen. Nothing at all,” Coumbe told the BBC. (Thanks to Dave Clarke for the transcript. See also under
the heading “Radar and Radiation” on
this page from Clarke’s website.)
Undoubtedly, it is the lack of any radar contact that led the MoD to dismiss the
case as of no defence significance back in 1981.
Hence, unless some UFO researcher has evidence to the contrary which they have
not yet published, claims that the Rendlesham Forest UFO was tracked on radar
must be regarded as false.
A source of misinformation
One source of misinformation about radar tracking of the Rendlesham UFO was the Strange But True TV programme broadcast on 1994 December 9. This gave the impression that Mal
Scurrah, a former radar operator at RAF Neatishead in Norfolk, had seen the
Rendlesham object on radar. However, in the 1995 May/June issue of UFO Magazine (UK) Scurrah went on record as saying that his radar sighting, which took place
during a training exercise, had happened in late October or early November 1980
and was not linked with the Rendlesham case.
Now, if there was genuine evidence of a radar sighting at Rendlesham, why would
the makers of a programme about it choose instead to use a story they knew to
be unconnected?
Page updated 2012 August.
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