Rendlesham Forest UFO - was it seen on radar?

“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.

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.

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.

n 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?