Radar Returns

[observer]

You naughty boy sonic, I was based at Watters during the Lightning / F-4 change over. Because we were an air defence station, radar and QRA would have been fully operational 24/7.

The role of the USAF in the UK was not air defence as the US Government said that was the role of the RAF. USAF/UK stations role was ground attack. Both Woody and B/Waters were stood down for Christmas and no aircraft were on alert but a few crews were on standby [confined to base just in case it all blew up over Christmas] including an ARRS crew HH-53 JGG. Only the B/waters tower was SKELETON manned with ground radar working as that was a NATO requirement. The A-10 Thunderbolt was a slow but highly manoeuverable ground attack fighter and had no air defence capability.

Eastern radar RAF Watton and Neatishead would take care of all air defence radar and were a 24/7 operation.

Obs

[observer]

Hi

I agree, but local ATC radar would not have recorded an object coming in from thousands of feet up, Eastern radar would, which is why they 'allegedly' asked RAF Watton radar for a copy of the radar film hoping it would show the complete flight path for that time line. Interestingly, a RAF sergeant based at RAF Watton said there were no unusual objects recorded by their radar and no body had requested a copy. This is a very grey area because there have been conflicting statements from all sides. Read Ian Ridpath's account of the incident.

There is some good evidence to say the RFI was a Christmas prank, but no body is putting their hands up to it.

Good to talk to you, keep up the dialogue.

Obs

[guest]

ufoupdateslist.com/2010/sep/m14-003.shtml

"I was able to track down and interview the two USAF air traffic
controllers who had been in the Bentwaters tower that week,
James H. Carey and Ivan =E2=80=98Ike' R. Barker, both of whom report
tracking a high-velocity object during the period of the UFO
activity at the base. Barker also admits to seeing the object
momentarily, as it briefly hovered over the base, describing it
this way:

'I saw it out the window. It was basketball-shaped, and had sort
of an orangish glow. Not bright orange, uh, sort of dim, maybe
like the full moon would look behind a thin layer of clouds.
There seemed to be something across the center of it, lighter-
colored shapes like - don't laugh - like portholes or windows,
or even lights, in a row left to right, across its center. Maybe
six or eight of them. They were stationary, not moving across
the object. But it seemed spherical, not flat like a flying
saucer. I couldn't hear any noise. It wasn't huge, but I think
it was bigger than an airplane. I would say it was maybe twice
the size of an F-111. Now, there's a water tower at Bentwaters.
If you were in the air traffic tower, facing the runway, the
tower is almost behind you. [From my vantage point] the object
was directly over top of the water tower, or just past it. The
object [appeared] larger, maybe twice as large, as the tank on
the water tower. It stopped in mid-air for a few seconds,
probably 500-feet, uh, maybe a 1000-feet above the tower, then
it left. I didn't see it turn, uh, rotate or anything like that
before leaving. But what impressed me most was the speed this
thing had. I have never seen anything so fast in my life! It was
zoom, gone!'

Both Barker and Carey estimated that the object covered 120
miles in 8-12 seconds, based on the 60-mile tracking radius of
their Bright 2' radar scope."

In fact, the UFO appeared on radar for only 3-4 sweeps, the same
duration now reported by British radar operator Nigel Kerr,
according to Nick Pope. Also noteworthy is the fact that Kerr
did not officially report the tracking, just as Barker and Carey
did not report theirs, therefore precluding the existence of
written documentation on the incident.

[observer]

Guest

I have read this before but never the less still interesting if not controversial.
There have been other reports that an object was seen hovering above Rendlesham forest on one of the nights which is no where near the B/Waters water tower. This could be the same object but seen from different perspectives and distances. Ian Ridpath has his own explanations for this if you read his web site.

I know some one asked Heath Row radar if they had recorded any unusual movements and that was a negative.

Apart from RAF Watton radar there was the main Eastern radar air defence HQ radar at RAF Neatishead Norfolk and the newly invented 3D radar just down the road on the coast from RAF Woodbridge at RAF Bawdsey.
All 3 stations contributed to the Eastern radar chain, but neither of the latter 2 were contacted [as far as we know] for any unusual air movement records. Ironically, some fingers [both American and British] have been pointed at RAF Bawdsey and its new 3D radar as the culprit in this mystery, just how that works, I don't have a clue.
If radar film had been obtained [and its never been proven] from RAF Watton, what happened to it, and where are the written reports describing what was on the film.

[observer]

Let me know how you get on with your research and if I can be of any help, just ask.

As you say re the embelishments, most of the evidence we have been told is anecdotel.
The only statements worth looking at are the originals, subsequent descriptions are partly made up to make the story more interesting. Human nature!
I have to admit that I have always believed some thing did happen in those woods over Christmas 1980 but it may be less significant and more down to earth than our story tellers would have us believe. Like it or not, the light house is a small part of this mystery as are the bright stars in the sky, both were remarked on indirectly by Halt.

Look at it this way, I suspect several things were seen and observed over those 3 nights and not necessarily related to each other, but were all lumped together as components of one incident, then add on some embellishment by our lads and you have the RFI.

[snapper]

Hi Sonicfields - circus is about right. It's a pity because this incident (I've been researching it since about 2003 so I'm a novice compared to many) appeared to have so much going for it. Regarding anomalies and given the SP/LE were professional police / law enforcement officers, it has always struck me as being a bit odd that not all the original witness statements were on the official AF form (I think it was JB's statement that was handwritten on a piece of foolscap instead of the official form). I would have expected the outcome of the initial off-base search by JP's three man squad to involve a patrol sitrep submitted by JP to the duty officer in the CSC. If nothing else this would have been required to cover various backs should anyone inquire why JP and his men left the base to visit the forest and what they found while out there. After all, if you were in charge of the CSC and sent men off base to wander around a forest in a foreign land in the middle of the night, wouldn't you want to make sure your arse was covered?

It needn't have been a lengthy report and it need only have been from JP (as OIC) but it would be on the appropriate form and filed - just in case. SP/LE were responsible for base security and everything contained within the wire, They could not afford to be lax about reporting anything unusual, therefore their job would require proper reports and so forth. Well, I think it would - I've never served in the USAF so I'm just guessing. That said the US military are usually paranoid about security, dotting Is and crossing Ts etc so statements on scraps of paper don't sit quite right somehow.

It's probably nothing at all but SP/LE personnel not using the proper AF form for their statements sows seeds of doubt about the validity of those statements. After all, irrespective of what JP, JB and C saw or didn't see when they went into the forest, nobody knew how it would pan out. If something had happened at a later date that threatened base security the subsequent investigation would want to know what JP and his squad saw, so reports on odd bits of paper just wouldn't hack it. Therefore, any reports or statements would had to have been submitted on official forms.

For me and right from the very start, there is a problem. It's not what was reported but the way it was reported.

[Frank]

Snapper, maybe this information from Major Ed Drury (deputy to Major Zickler) in ‘You can’t tell the people’ (p243) helps to clear things up:

‘Later that morning I was in the shift commander’s office when some of them were making their statements. There was a pile of them because I recall going through them. On reading the statements I understood that it wasn’t very big, but it was bigger than a mini. There were marks on the trees, quite high up, and someone said they’d walked up to it and it had left depressions. I went out during the day and saw the marks on the trees and the ground depressions, which weren’t that deep, well defined and I suggested we send someone out there to do some readings.’

It’s clear that the statements Drudy read on the morning of 26 December never made it to the public domain – allegedly, the statements in the public domain were made for Halt on his personal request, after his own experiences in the night of 27/28 December.

[snapper]

Thanks, Frank. Interesting. I've got a copy of YCTTP so I'll take a look. The conundrum here is Drury's statement 'Later that morning I was in the shift commander’s office when some of them were making their statements. There was a pile of them because I recall going through them'

Drury is referring to the morning following JP, JB and C's off-base excursion when they were in the office, being debriefed. But why ' some of them' (referring to the personnel involved) and 'a pile of them' (referring to the statements)? Even if all the personnel involved on the previous night had made statements there'd only be half a dozen if that, so hardly a pile!

Therein lies the problem - obviously the meaning of 'a pile' is open to individual interpretation but using the generally accepted understanding of a pile, then the use of that term and the reference to 'some of them' suggests more personnel were involved on the first night than we have been told. And why would Halt ask them to make separate statements for his own use? Why not simply take copies of the statements already made?

Also on p.243: Sgt Rick Bobo states he was in the Bentwaters control tower on the morning of the 29th when he saw 'this huge ship over the forest. It seemed to be very low with lots of red and blue lights on it and I saw something come away from it and land in amongst the trees'. If Bobo saw 'a huge craft' then surely many people both on the base and in the local area would also have seen it but no mention has ever been made of this craft and there aren't (as far as I know) any radar reports of it.

It's these contradictions, inconsistencies and confusing statements that make it nigh on impossible to properly research the RFI - and the above refers only to the first night. What chance then for unravelling what actually occurred on the second night and beyond!

[Frank]

Robert Hastings also interviewed Bobo, he was with D Flight and remembers it was on his first midnight shift so that would be the night of 26/27 December, not December 29. This was the night in between the sighting by JP, JB, EC (25/26) and the sighting by Halt (27/28) www.ufodigest.com/news/1108/bentwaters8.html
Like so many others, Bobo probably never reported what he saw.

I think more personnel were send out on the night of JP, JB and EC.
Halt’s memo gives a clue: ‘The object was briefly sighted approximately an hour later near the back gate.’
Easton interviewed Jerry Valdez, one of the witnesses who was with a patrol that was send to East Gate while JP, JB and EC were still in the forest:.
“I could clearly see the lights from the gate, just outside the back gate [east gate]. It was next to the road.
They were intermittent lights, very bright, 15-20 feet above the ground.
They were pulsating and from what I recall there were 3 lights, red green and blue.
It made no noise, but it defied gravity. It was really weird and scary. We all knew what we were looking at, but no one really came out and said it.”
ufoupdateslist.com/1999/apr/m07-001.shtml

We can only guess why Halt requested statements several days later. Maybe the other statements were already gone, flown to Ramstein with the rest of the evidence.

I tried to reconstruct a timeline, but found out that this is impossible without making assumptions about who is embellishing and who is attempting to cover up. But in every case you have 7+ ‘front row’ witnesses that claim to have seen something ‘otherworldly’ and 0 ‘front row’ witnesses who claim to have seen something mundane. That must mean something..

[snapper]

Thanks for the link: ufoupdateslist.com/1999/apr/m07-001.shtml

interesting stuff. Particularly the mention of high volumes of flash traffic and use of FO (flash over-ride). This has been mentioned elsewhere - Georgina Bruni's book You Can't Tell the People makes mention of it. No senior officer in his (or her) right mind would call the President of the United States (or the UK PM for that matter) to report strange lights. It wouldn't even warrant flash precedence but it might make priority, or go to immediate if something was found. If the threat was real and imminent the precedence for traffic related to the event would go to flash but still no need to involve the President or the PM - yet.

What is overlooked in all this is that the bases might be US territory inside the perimeter but they were on UK soil and defence outside the wire was a UK responsibility, not US. Of course US forces could be called upon if the threat was beyond the capability of UK forces - but that would be highly improbable. Given US forces were involved then almost certainly it was something the US had done and knew all about - hence the F and FO calls. Panic had set in and someone, somewhere was crapping themselves.

Finally, if the threat to either of the bases was real and imminent then British forces would be leaping out of their beds because any such threat would, by default, also be a threat to the defence of the realm. As far as we know our lads slept soundly throughout the entire event.

Just occurred to me this is off topic re radar returns - oops and apologies!

[Frank]

Thanks for pointing out the info on the Flash traffic, Snapper – I never really studied that since I always thought it could be pure coincidence.

I don’t think they were calling the President or the PM, but they could have been communicating with General Gabriel, who was in charge of the USAF in Europe:

Georgina Bruni writes how the main switch at RAF Martlesham Heath was overloaded for several days after the incident due to an unusual amount of Flash traffic over the 24 lines between Bentwaters and Martlesham – even more than during exercises.
She also writes that Martlesham Heath was the communication ‘gateway to Europe’, so basically this means that people with Flash authority (like Commanders) were pushing high priority calls through to Europe after the incident.
Maybe there was intense communication with Ramstein about the case for a while? At the time of the Bentwaters/Rendlesham incident General Gabriel served as commander in chief, United States Air Forces in Europe and commander of Allied Air Forces Central Europe at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.

[snapper]

Thanks, Frank. Yes. The lack of info regarding radar returns is another issue that doesn't fit with what might be expected. Neatishead, Watton, radars on the bases themselves, West Drayton....each and every radar covering the east Anglia region should have provided the same information on aircraft in the area, albeit with different levels of clutter and so forth. Any strange craft, particularly a sizeable craft as Sgt Bobo described, would be pinged. If the aircraft was unidentified (and couldn't identify itself when challenged) it would be logged as a 'bogey' and the duty RAF flight scrambled to investigate.

It is understood there was no flying at the twin bases over the period but even with reduced manning of the control tower(s), the duty watch would still need to monitor the radar(s). Plus there were THOR(?) Bloodhound MkII missile sites at RAF Bawdsey and RAF Wattisham and elsewhere. Not sure what radar they were using in 1980 but at least two of the sites had Type 83s installed. Given their front line defensive role then none of these stations would have been stood down over Christmas - particularly when the Soviets were poised to invade Poland.

Thus there were umpteen active radars monitoring air traffic in the region yet the only radar specifically mentioned in the RFI saga is RAF Watton and the visit by unknown but possibly US 'civvies' requesting to view the radar films. If something unknown and therefore potentially hostile had entered UK airspace, the world and its dog would have known, the RAF would have scrambled a couple of fighter interceptors and the Bloodhound sites would have increased their alert state to Bikini Amber or possibly Bikini Red yet no mention is made of any of this. Not by anyone. Consequently, there can only be two options (a) nothing happened (b) the Americans knew full well what had happened. Given the volume of F and FO calls - something substantiated by several sources - then it could only be option (b).

Also on the list of unconfirmed peculiarities is the alleged evac alert at Hollesley Bay prison and the allegation of men in lab coats seen in the forest.

However, the increase in comms traffic might be a red herring. It might have been purely coincidental and nothing whatsoever to do with the RFI. It might have been related to the crisis in Europe or indeed the US hostages being held in Tehran.

[Frank]

Well, three radar stations did pick something up: Watton, Bentwaters, and according to Nevels, London detected something, too:

www.earthfiles333.com/real-x-files/episode-69-top-secret-raf-bentwaters-investigation/
Nevels:
“The story that I got from Lieutenant Englund was that the London tower, on December 25 when all this started, contacted the tower at Woodbridge base and asked them to identify the object that was above them because it was on their radar and they could not determine what it was.”
(tip: download this podcast while you can – it is Earthfiles material and access may be restricted some day).

On top of that, the Suffolk police log shows that the police contacted air traffic control West Dayton on the first night and learned that reports were received of aerial phenomena over Southern England during the night.

If there was a major incident in the woods, why did the USAF call the Suffolk police to inform them that unarmed troops are in the woods to investigate unusual lights in the sky beyond East Gate and that “we [the USAF] are terming it as a UFO at present”?
(They were called at 04:11 by the way, after Buran had already terminated the investigation and JP, JB, and EC were on their way back. Maybe they were called because of the sighting by the Jerry Valdez patrol near the gate?)

One of the Police Constables that responded to this 04:11 call was Dave King. He was interviewed by Georgina Bruni:
“We were actually on our way to visit the Bentwaters LE desk when the call came through. When we arrived at the Bentwaters base we were escorted through the back gate to the East Gate sentry post and were then taken to the forest by some security policemen. We had to follow their vehicle. They took us toward the spot where they said the other SP’s had gone and we were told they were still out there. We had to park the car and walk on foot. The Americans didn’t come with us. (…) We walked about half a mile into the forest (…) there were no Americans there, not a soul. We walked for some thirty minutes.”

On December 27, PC Dave King, who responded to the 04:11 call the night before, even was at the Bentwaters LE desk when reports of strange lights came in. “While I was there another report came in on the radio, a pocket radio, saying that there were lights in the forest at the exact same spot as the previous night. This would now be the early hours of the 27th. I was just about to go and have a look, thinking I might see something this time, when I got an emergency call to attend to a post-office break-in about ten miles away at Otley.”

This doesn’t sound like there was a major incident going on.

On the other hand, this story might interest you – it seems to point in another direction:
ufowaves.org/rendlesham/Rendlesham%20Incident%20Forum/www.rendlesham-incident.co.uk/forum/viewtopic234b-2.html?f=3&t=535#p4678

[snapper]

Thanks for the link and no, it doesn't sound like a major incident at all. Consequently, there could be three events occurring concurrently that over time have fused into one.

1. The COSMOS re-entry, the lighthouse (let’s not go there!); the warning lights atop the tall BBC World Service antenna masts on the northern part of Orfordness; other astrological phenomena and weather anomalies

2. The increase in high precedence comms traffic

3. Unverified allegations and similar that might have nothing to do with the RFI as we know it but played a part in the bigger picture, i.e. the Hollesley Bay prison evac alert; men in lab coats in the forest; ‘civilians’ believed to be Americans, visiting eastern radar at RAF Watton to view the radar film

Not sure why West Drayton would call Woodbridge ATC when they'd got eastern radar at Watton and another radar unit at Neatishead. I would have expected the call to go to the RAF, not USAF, particularly as Woodbridge ATC was virtually closed for business – and why Woodbridge and not Bentwaters? Calling the USAF and not the RAF suggests West Drayton already knew it was something the USAF was up to. And what was it about the RAF Watton film in particular that interested the alleged civvies? Even if the twin bases’ ATCs were on reduced manning surely their own radars had film or other means to record what the radars were seeing.

One little known fact about RAF Watton is that in the late 1950s / early 1960s U2 flights occasionally operated from there and the station was host to visiting USAF units. Could Watton’s role (MoD say flying ops ceased at RAF Watton in 1971) have been more than that of a radar gatekeeper? Was there something else going on and was MoD’s statement that flying at the station ceased in 1971 simply MoDspeak meaning only RAF flying had ceased but the station was still occasionally used by the USAF for whatever reason?

The waters are very muddy indeed – and very deep.

[Frank]

A small misinterpretation here, Snapper: It was the Suffolk Police who contacted West Dayton upon receiving the UFO call from the Bentwaters LE desk.

My personal opinion is that the waters are not as muddy as one might think. It is fairly easy to put all pieces of information together that surfaced over the years and construct a rough timeline.

What emerges is a very consistent story of strange lights that seem to move fast and deliberate, sometimes descending into an moving through the forest. They have been seen from all angles, by both military personnel and civilian witnesses, over a period of at least three nights.
Some ‘front row’ witnesses report seeing objects or even structured crafts. The objects are related to static electricity and seem to cause malfunction of vehicles and other equipment. They leave imprints, residual radiation, and residual heat when seen on or near the ground.

Both the MOD and the USAF classify them as UFO’s, and that is the only possible conclusion in my opinion.

The ‘mud’ is in the more spectacular accounts of people touching solid crafts, getting binary downloads, surrounding a structured craft and seeing the outlines of beings, recalling Halt talking to the electronics division about getting ‘parts from another world’, etc.
This makes it impossible to really fill in the details without making assumptions about who is embellishing and who is attempting to cover up. Maybe over the years this part of the waters will also clear up a little ..

Guess we just have to wait and see ..