The landing site [later general discussion]

[IanR]

Where do you think or understand the alleged 'Halt site' to be?

Let's look at the evidence.

Firstly, the received wisdom from Jenny Randles, Brenda B and Dot S in their book Sky Crash was that the landing site was somewhere near the eastern edge of the forest, exact position not very well specified. This is also the area where Vince was shown the supposed landing marks, and from where my BBC TV footage was shot.

Georgina came up with this photograph of the landing site, taken the morning after the first encounter
http://www.rendlesham-incident.co.uk/im ... -photo.jpg
Daylight can be seen between the trees, indicating that the site was no more than about 100 yards from the forest edge.

The local police were called out on the first night and said the only lights they could see were from the Orford Ness lighthouse, so they must have gone to the eastern edge of the forest. The following morning the police said they were called to a site 2 miles east of East Gate to see the supposed 'landing marks' (i.e. the site in the photograph mentioned above). Two miles is something of an over-estimate, but it is added confirmation that the site they visited was at the eastern edge of the forest.

Now, let's turn to what Halt says. We know he was called out to investigate the landing site two nights after the initial sighting, and we presume this was the site shown in the photo. During the proceedings, someone draws his attention to a flashing light seen between the trees. Halt and his men then move to the forest edge. Halt on his tape speaks of watching a flashing light "like an eye winking at you". In subsequent interviews he has said he was looking east across the field with the farmhouse right in front of him, and that the light was almost in line with the farmhouse. This ties his location down very accurately to somewhere close to Point 4 on the UFO Trail.

Listening further to Halt's tape, he tells us he crossed the farmer's field, passing the farmhouse, and then crossed a second field in an attempt to reach the flashing light, which of course turned out to be further off than he first thought. I have put a map and some photographs on this page:
http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham2.htm

A reconstruction of the sighting was broadcast recently on the History Channel in a programme called UFO Hunters. In this, Halt was filmed at the forest edge, looking across the field to the farmhouse from somewhere close to Point 4. So we have Halt's own endorsement of this location as being the site he was at.

That much is, I think, non-controversial. Where people have been somewhat misled is that Halt has consistently said the lighthouse was some 30 degrees off to the right of where he was standing, and he repeated this on the UFO Hunters programme. However, anyone who stands at that location can see for themselves that the lighthouse is not 30 degrees off to the right at all. Halt is simply wrong. Had the UFO Hunters not taken Halt's word for it but waited until it got dark, they would have seen that it is in fact almost in line with the farmhouse, just where Halt saw his flashing UFO. Hence we can be 100% certain that Halt misidentified the lighthouse, because he has inadvertently told us.

(What did he see instead? Probably the Shipwash lightship, which used to lie in that direction but has now been replaced by a much less prominent buoy.)

Make sense?

Ian

[robert]

Hello Ian R,

I was just wondering what your take is on Larry W and Charles Halt being out there on the same night.

Do you believe they were in different positions, Vantage points, as regards seeing lights or are you of the opinion that Larry wasn't there at all.

I will have to nail my colours to the mast, as it were for I believe Larry was there despite what Charles Halt would have us believe.

Is it possible he (Halt) just didn't see Larry?

Kind Regards

Robert

[IanR]

I was just wondering what your take is on Larry W and Charles Halt being out there on the same night.
Is it possible he (Halt) just didn't see Larry?

I have no difficulty accepting that LW was out there on the same night as Halt. LW has said that he was south of Halt's position, evidently in the southern half of the farmer's field. He just wasn't part of Halt's immediate team, so Halt wouldn't have known he was there at the time.

Ian

[robert]

Thanks for that, Ian


Is it therefore possible do you think that they didn't see each other and that they possibly saw different lights or do you think they saw the same lights from different angles?

And one last querie if you don't mind. I have it down as two nights of occurrences or possibly three.
Has anyone tied it down for certain as to how many nights were involved?

Wouldn't the Duty Roster be a clue as to who was working on which days and Hours or is that not available?


Kind Regards

Robert

[puddlepirate]

Ian

From your transcript of the Halt tape...

HALT: There is no doubt about it – there is some type of strange flashing red light ahead.

Following what Halt said quoted in your post above, he then goes on to say:

HALT: We’ve passed the farmer’s house and are crossing the next field and now we have multiple sightings of up to five lights with a similar shape and all but they seem to be steady now rather than a pulsating or glow with a red flash.
HALT: We’ve just crossed a creek...

VOICE: Here we go...

HALT: ...and we’re getting what kind of readings now? We’re getting three good clicks on the meter and we’re seeing strange lights in the sky.

HALT: 2:44. We’re at the far side of the farmer’s...the second farmer’s field and made sighting again about 110 degrees. This looks like it’s clear off to the coast. It’s right on the horizon. Moves about a bit and flashes from time to time. Still steady or red in colour. Also after negative readings in the centre of the field we’re picking up slight readings, four or five clicks now, on the meter.

As far as I am aware, there is only the one lighthouse, not five; only the white light can be seen from the edge of the farmer's field (I still remain to be convinced of that); Halt crossed a creek - the only creek on the map in that locality is at sea level but between that point and the lighthouse the ground rises to 15 metres. So Halt is now at sea level, between him and the light is high ground and he is following a red light in roughly south of east direction. Although the light(s) are in line with the lighthouse they are in the sky. Now call me old fashioned but (a) from your own photos and accompanying text only the very top of the lighthouse can be seen from the edge of the forest at the top of the farmer's field which is also at 15 metres so if Halt descends to sea level it would have disappeared from view almost immediately he crossed the field. Also, as shown in your BBC video the light is white, not red. Further to that how did the light house end up in the sky with pieces shooting off it? As far as I am aware - perhaps Trinity House can verify - the Orfordness light is a substantial structure fixed permanently to its base on Orfordness.

Carefully re-reading the transcript, it now seems more likely that instead of following a hoaxer, he was actually looking at the Cosmos rentry -and if that was tracking across the sky on a heading of approx 110 and was some way off to the east then that would probably explain the red lights, the height off the horizon, the distance off the coast, the multiple lights and pieces shooting off.

If it was Cosmos, then Halt's sighting is irrelevant to the RFI because it did not involve a craft landing in the forest. However, it does not explain what Penniston or LW saw nor does it explain the need for lightalls and over 40 (from LAEG) personnel plus senior officers searching the forest. I now suspect that getting hung up on what Halt saw is a complete red herring - but for Halt, it was a useful basis on which to construct his memo to cover other activity. After all, the best deceptions are always built around a truth.

One last point your map reading is a bit off Ian.... a line from the lighthouse through Chantry Point runs through Capel Wood - and Capel Wood is about 1 mile south of the farmer's field. I'm using OS Explorer 212 (many libraries stock the OS Explorer series so anyone from the UK on the forum can check this for themselves). To be 1 mile further north puts the observer further behind the lamp shield so if anything at all can be seen from the farmer's field at Area 4 it should be no more than a tiny speck of white light bearing due east (090 deg). If Halt saw a light at 110 - 120 then he must have been further up the field and the light would not be in view at all - as has you have said, it is only visible through a dip in the trees and even then only from a precise point in line with the dip and I believe others have said that point is at Area 4, right on the southern most edge of the field.

[IanR]

Is it therefore possible do you think that they didn't see each other and that they possibly saw different lights or do you think they saw the same lights from different angles?

I honestly don't know. I have simply concentrated on Halt's account from that night.

And one last querie if you don't mind. I have it down as two nights of occurrences or possibly three. Has anyone tied it down for certain as to how many nights were involved?

There are two nights from which we have documentary evidence: Night One, when Burroughs, Penniston and Cabansag went out into the forest, and what I call Night Two, when Halt was involved, which was actually two nights later. LW insists there were also events on the intermediate night, although we don't have any documentary evidence from that night. There are also plenty of anecdotal stories of people going out into the forest for many nights following Halt's expedition. Whether they saw anything or not I don't know, but of course the more nights on which something was seen, the more likely it is they were seeing something permanent rather than a genuine UFO.

Ian

[redsocks]

I was just wondering what your take is on Larry W and Charles Halt being out there on the same night.
Is it possible he (Halt) just didn't see Larry?

I have no difficulty accepting that LW was out there on the same night as Halt. LW has said that he was south of Halt's position, evidently in the southern half of the farmer's field. He just wasn't part of Halt's immediate team, so Halt wouldn't have known he was there at the time.

Ian

Amazing ive just posted the same thing for LW on another thread......What are your thoughts Ian claimed by other airmen that LW indeed wasnt on duty on the second night the night he claimed he was there.

Redsocks

[IanR]

from your own photos and accompanying text only the very top of the lighthouse can be seen from the edge of the forest at the top of the farmer's field which is also at 15 metres so if Halt descends to sea level it would have disappeared from view almost immediately he crossed the field.

Which is of course exactly what happened. He now says that the light broke up, but there is no mention of this remarkable event on his tape.

In any case, we know that the light hadn't really broken up at all because, as he tells us on the real-time tape, he subsequently sighted it again "clear off to the coast" (he somehow forgets to mention this bit in his more recent interviews).

What we don't know is where he was when he made that second sighting, other than that he was on the far side of what he terms "the second farmer's field". No one has tried to reconstruct his movements after having crossed the creek (which, incidentally, he fell into), and I doubt that Halt himself could now remember with any certainty. So we will just have to take his word for it that he did sight the light again, even if we don't know where from.

Ian

[puddlepirate]

Hi Ian

But in part three of your transcript of the tape, Halt mentions 'pieces coming off it'.....Also, and this is the key factor, he only ever mentions chasing a red light - and no red light is visible from the forest, not from the lighthouse at least. You can only see the red sector light at sea or from the very edge of the coastline. There is no red light in the BBC video - only a very out of focus white one (which makes it appear much bigger than it actually is - maybe a film crew assistant in dark clothes standing some way off in the background flashing a torch every five seconds, perhaps Only joking.). One of his men makes reference to something at an eleven o'clock position, so from where they were at sea level either at the stream or in the second field, with high ground in front of them, this puts whatever it was in the sky, high above their left shoulders.

I also think it worth remembering the Halt was a Lt Col in the USAF, not an untrained civilian unused to seeing navigation lights and so forth. He knew full well that what he was looking at was unusual but it was not the lighthouse nor the Shipwash lightship. The lightship would not come toward them on a northerly bearing, nor would the lighthouse - and both the main light on the lighthouse and the main light on the lightship were white, not red.

[IanR]

But in part three of your transcript of the tape, Halt mentions 'pieces coming off it'.....

But that's long before they lose sight of it. The relevant part of the transcript is some way further down: "HALT: We’ve passed the farmer’s house and are crossing the next field and now we have multiple sightings of up to five lights with a similar shape and all but they seem to be steady now rather than a pulsating or glow with a red flash." In other words, he lost sight of the main flashing light and his attention was transferred to several quite different lights, although he doesn't tell us enough about them to decide whether they might be celestial objects or warning lights on the aerials at Orford Ness.

Also, and this is the key factor, he only ever mentions chasing a red light

Don't get too hung up on the colour. He is the only one to describe it as red - in fact, one of his men immediately corrects him and says it's yellow. Which is certainly how it photographed back in the 1980s, when it was an ordinary incandescent bulb.

The lightship would not come toward them on a northerly bearing, nor would the lighthouse

At that stage they were misinterpreting bright stars, I'm sure. Read this page again:
http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham3.htm

Ian

[puddlepirate]

Hi Ian, rather than make a lengthy post I've sent you a PM. The stars article makes interesting reading and certainly valid for some of what he saw. Not sure about the explanation of the fast moving light coming in from the south on a northerly heading though.

[Observer]

So we are back to the landing sites again. I can understand the reasons for trying to find where these places were but you will never establish their locations, not now not never.
No i'm not being a pessimist just a realist.

Obs

[IanR]

So we are back to the landing sites again. I can understand the reasons for trying to find where these places were but you will never establish their locations, not now not never.
No i'm not being a pessimist just a realist.

Oh, that is a pessimistic view. One great legacy that Georgina left us was this photograph of the landing site taken the morning after the first sighting:
http://www.rendlesham-incident.co.uk/im ... -photo.jpg
From this and other lines of evidence I think we can conclude that what Brenda Butler told Andy (”directly in line with the light house and about fifty yards into the trees”) was pretty much spot on. See this aerial view:
http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/aerialview.jpg

One thing that has troubled me for months about the landing site photo was the position of the impressions, which Admin darkened up for us. The one at right front is obviously wrongly placed, as it makes the triangle far too asymmetrical. But I couldn’t work out the correct position -- until late last night. I found another scan of this same image on which it was clear that the third stick is next to Verrano’s left leg.

With this corrected position, the distribution of the impressions now matches those in Vince’s sketch shown on this page:
http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham5.htm

Perhaps Admin will produce a corrected version to replace the existing one. Over to you, Jan.

Ian

PS: Thanks to Andy for making me look at this again. Indeed, the various questions I have had from Forum participants over the past year or so, and the pieces of information several of you have contributed, have helped me to clarify and firm up my explanations on various aspects of the case.

[Observer]

So with your 'firmed' up beliefs, what made those indentations in the ground? If they are as once suggested just Rabbit scratchings, how can they remain significant?
Yes, i'm pessimistic about establishing the exact locations of the landing sites to the nearest degree, but you are obviously excited about this re your light house theory. A 28 year cover up over a P--Y light house, get out of here.
There is no way you will ever prove the landing site locations which is why i am a realist. At best your evidence can only be circumstancial and that is how a court of law would see it.

I have some 'firmed' up beliefs but in a totally different direction.

Obs

[IanR]

So with your 'firmed' up beliefs, what made those indentations in the ground?

I think it's fairly obvious to anyone who has looked at the close-up photographs what they are:
http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/884131E3 ... orton2.pdf

A 28 year cover up over a P--Y light house, get out of here.

You're the one who is claiming the cover-up!

Ian

[Observer]

Yes, the Yeti's foot prints how did i miss that.

Not quite right, many of us have said it was a cover up not just me.
Obs

[puddlepirate]

To be fair to Observer, many people both on this forum and elsewhere have used the term 'cover up' but what does that actually mean? Simply pretending something didn't happen just because the government decides we mustn't know because we live in a nanny state? Or is there a much wider reason for the government deciding not to release certain information at a particular time? Defence of the realm perhaps? It simply would not do for our enemies to have known about everything that went on. What about public disorder? Dozens of protestors descending on the twin bases, riots in the streets, marches in London and so forth. Sometimes we simply do not need to know. Taking a hypothetical case - what if a nuclear weapon had been accidentally dropped in Rendlesham forest - what would those who lived in east Anglia with their families and so forth have done had the government said "Sorry, chaps. Just to let you know the USAF are flying over your heads with nuclear weapons that could turn your part of Merrie Olde England into a desert and the odd one or two are known to fall off now and again. Absolutely nothing to worry about though...." What would you have said? "Don't worry dear. Put the kettle on and we'll have a nice cup of tea..." I don't think so. There would have been uproar. After all, the USAF wasn't even supposed to have nuclear weapons on UK soil for a start never mind actually arming aircraft with them before flying over our heads.... If that had ever come out it would have made the Poll Tax riots look like a slightly boistrous tea party on the local vicar's lawn.

Sometimes a 'cover-up' is necessary. Not just to save the government's butt - but for the welfare of us all. The problem. however, is that once a 'cover-up' is revealed for what it is, then the government is shown to have been fibbing and if they fibbed about one thing, then how many other things have they fibbed about? Therefore, the information has to be kept secret for many, many years until it is no longer of any importance and most of those who instigated the original 'cover-up' have passed on.

Don't knock Obs for suggesting it was a 'cover-up' because I'm another who thinks it was....and let's not forget 'You can't tell the people....'

[AdrianF]

I've been watching this thread closely over the last couple of days. What has amazed me the most, is that there is still ( quarter of a century plus later ) a conversation going on as to whether or not the lighthouse can or cannot be seen from what might be the "established landing site". Apologies if I've got this part wrong.

Whilst in the area in April I decided to go down to the site and do a few tests, just to see how I could cover this at a later date. I took a shed load of equipment with me and probably looked liked the Terminator walking the forest tracks. Unfortunately, whilst loaded with enough technology to cripple a small government, I still managed to leave my torch in the car. Not a great move, as it meant taking notes was difficult. Also seeing lens markers properly, using the lcd screen from my other camcorder, was not easy. Therefore my apologies for this not being as scientific as it should be.

Anyway, I've uploaded a video clip to my website, which I hope will establish that the lighthouse can be seen from the forest edge at least. The area I've established, that the lighthouse can be viewed from, runs approximately 100 yards along the edge of the field. It can also, at times, display different colours. To view the clip you will need Quicktime 7.

http://chillfactorfilms.com/codename/lighthouse.html

Cheers

Adrian

[Observer]

Adrian
This 'saga' of the light house and where or where not it can be seen from is realy getting boring and i wonder why?
I came to the conclusion some years ago that the incident in the forest and the alleged sightings of the light house were two seperate unlinked events both have over time become entwined to the point that some people cannot differentiate between the two. Thankfully most of us have now seen the difference, but quite frankly the only reason this thread is still running is because a certain credibility has to be protected.
This thread is now truly threadbare.
Obs

[puddlepirate]

It makes me laugh. Every time something appears on this forum that might move our collective research a little further forward, up pops the lighthouse theory to divert our attention yet again. Now, why is that? Just whose side are some contributors on?

It looks to me as if those of us who are genuinely interested in solving this mystery are being hampered by disinformation and obfuscation. Perhaps the real discussion should take place off line?