The Rendlesham Forest Incident

Yet another recent TV documentary ('starring' a well-known liverpudlian comedian) trotted out the usual suspects to dismiss the famous December 1980 UFO landing as the Orford Lighthouse seen through the trees. Let's dismiss this ludicrous suggestion once and for all!

Take a look at the photos below: the first is the view across the open Capel Green fields from the edge of the forest. The lighthouse can just be made out in the 'notch' on the horizon. It was demolished a couple of years ago, but was a familiar sight to anyone who walked out to the eastern edge of the Forest: but only from a fairly limited section of the boundary.

The next two photos show increasingly magnified images of the lighthouse: as you can see, it was not exactly dazzling, and wasn't visible - even at night - from the region of the Forest where Colonel Halt (then Deputy Base Commander) and his security team encountered the reported object.

• A lighthouse could not have moved through the forest between the trees
• It could not travel upwards through the canopy
• It could not have hovered over the weapons stores at the airbase
• It could not have shone a parallel-sided beam onto the ground in front of the searchers
• After years of service, the majority of the military witnesses were very familiar with the lighthouse (and the Shipwash Lightship)

On numerous occasions I have walked through the forest with Colonel Halt and listened to his recollections: even forty-odd years on, his memory of events is consistent, unexaggerated and impressive.