Photos Of the Landing Site

[John Burroughs]

Several different people have come forword and stated that picture were taken of the landing site and when they were developed by the Base Photo Lab or in one case by the person who took the pictures they came back white instead of a picture what would cause this?

[puddlepirate]

Hi John

From the mists of time when I studied photography at college in the dark and distant pre-digital age....

Assuming the images were shot on standard 35mm roll film then if the prints came back white, the negs must have been totally black - a condition caused by over-exposure, In processed reversal film (transparencies) the opposite is true. In reversal film used for transparencies or slides, overexposure results in a very 'thin' negative with washed out colours. Such consistent, total overexposure of many films shot by different photographers suggests that the films were mishandled in the lab and exposed to white light prior to being processed.

I would have thought it highly unlikely that all the frames on all the films used by different photographers would be massively overexposed. I would have expected the opposite - that films used by amateur photographers and exposed in low light conditions using the average 35mm camera without a tripod would be (a) underexposed (b) parts of the image that were visible would be blurred because correct exposure would require a large aperture/slow shutter speed and as the camera was handheld then camera shake during exposure would blur the image. Only those frames exposed in the forest would be so affected. Frames exposed in normal light conditions and requiring the average f16/125sec or f11/250sec exposure would be fine. Obviously using flash would reduce aperture/exposure time but the drop off rate for flash is subject to the inverse square law, this means distance from the subject is critcally important if it is to be properly lit. Again, in a forest in very low light, with the photographer some distance from the subject, it is more likely that even if flash were used, the image - or parts of it at least - would be underexposed, not overexposed.

For all frames on all films to return white prints suggests something odd happened in the lab(unless by some peculiar chance all the films were purhased from the same source at about the same time and that batch of films happened to be faulty). In 1980 most people used colour roll film like Kodacolour for prints and something like Kodachrome for slides. Both films were manufactured to a very high standard and readily available from a number of outlets. The on base PX would have probably sold both. Kodachrome would have been sent to the Kodak processing plant at Hemel Hempstead so I suspect the onbase lab would have dealt with processing only B&W or colour print films. If that is true, i.e. that any reversal film exposed in the forest was sent to Kodak for processing (or the equivalent lab for other roll films such as Agfa or Fuji) then transparencies / slides shot by a competent amateur should have been OK. There must have been guys on base who liked taking photos of aircraft and offering their images to the aircraft mags hoping to make a few bob. Mags preferred transparencies over prints, therefore you need to find someone who was a good photographer, who shot slides and who was in the forest taking photos......

[John Burroughs]

Puddle
Thanks but not only was the film that was developed at the Base Photo lab Military which the film came from the military white but also pictures that were taken and devolped by somebody else who developed them himself and all of the photos that were taken of that area came back white like maybe was caused by high radation.

[puddlepirate]

I'd forgotten about radiation. That was a big problem when the major airports introduced x-ray machines (which leads us to the images taken on the Moon passing through the Van Allen belt unharmed but I won't go there... ). If all the films taken by all the photographers, both amateur and professional military photographers, were so affected then radiation could well have been the cause. Did anyone suffer any health problems that could have been attributable to radiation exposure? Heck, in 1980, if you had an x-ray at an hospital or a dentist, to protect the bits of the body not being x-rayed, they used lead shields.....

I seem to recall that x-ray fogged film but didn't completely ruin all the frames on the film. If it was radiation that ruined all the frames on all the films then it must have been more than just a couple of clicks worth.....perhaps other contributors can explain the effects of radiation on film....

[puddlepirate]

John

This site gives a lot of detail about the effects of radiation on unprocessed film. Note that it does not produce a white print. Instead, the image is fogged - and bands of fogging can appear. The extent to which the fogging affects the film depends on various factors - not least the strength of radiation.

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/ ... html#SEC43

[AdrianF]

Several different people have come forword and stated that picture were taken of the landing site and when they were developed by the Base Photo Lab or in one case by the person who took the pictures they came back white instead of a picture what would cause this?

Somebody switched the film? Who was it that developed their own film? As PP put it, it's unlikely that photos were taken during the night at sunny f16 ( f16-125 or equal exposure ). It's highly likely that an inexperienced photographer, taking pictures of lights in a dark forest would either underexpose or overexpose, therefore a null print. Film can also be ruined by x rays etc. High speed films tend to be more prone to this. The streaking or bands of fogging I would imagine occur because the film is within it's canister ( rolled ).

Good thread. This is one area of this case where there is some actual physical evidence, so I think is worthy of more discussion.

Most of the USAF issue was B&W print film, from what I've been told, similar or the same as the film stock used in the Ray Gulyas photos.

Adrian

[puddlepirate]

The photographic evidence, such as it is, is intriguing.

If you look closely at the image of the ground traces in GB's book 'You Can't Tell the People', the one with the USAF officer and the UK policeman apparently looking at the ground in the forest, you will see that something appears to be wrong. The men and the ground traces seem to be on a different plane and the men seem to be looking at a different spot on the ground. It looks as if an image of animal scrapings has been overlaid on an image of the men....

Of course, that is only my interpretation and I could be mistaken. There might not be anything amiss - but to me at least, something about the image looks wrong.

Thus investigating the photos and particularly the probs with processed images could be interesting.

John, do you happen to have any of the original prints, or more importanly the negs, that came back from the lab? Penniston's film was apparently ruined - did he retain it at all?

[puddlepirate]

one other comment...

As Adrian stated, radiation tends to affect high speed film more than lower speed film.... most amateur films have a speed of around ISO 200 / ISO 400.... 200 is probably most popular. 400 is better for low light conditions as it is 'faster' (and therefore slightly more grainy) than the slower 200. For these relatively slow speed films to be totally wiped by radiation would require exposure to a fairly hefty amount of radiation - even after five passes through an x-ray scanner an ISO 800 film retained some visible image (see http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/ ... html#SEC43 for the example). The obvious course of action is to ask Kodak for their opinion on the amount of radiation required to totally erase the image - but before doing that it would be useful to know more about the film stock used.... manufacturer, speed, type and so forth.

[John Burroughs]

I will work on getting all of that information but I do beleive at least one report of what came back on the film stated the picture were foggey...

[John Burroughs]

Puddle Jim and I both had problems after. I had my mouth (gums turn white) developed vision and heart problems. When I came in no Heart murmer after the incident a Heart murmer and vision problems white and black spots in my eyes. When they sent me to Wolford Hall to see a speciliest the first thing he asked me was I ever exposed to Radiation....

[puddlepirate]

Wolford Hall, San Antonio, Tx ? I was in San Antonio around '93/94 and remember a bar named Hooters somewhere near the River Walk. Named, apparently, after the attributes of the waitresses - but I digress. It would be good if JP still has the film and was willing to let someone like Kodak analyse it or at least a portion of it.

[AdrianF]

The film used in the landing site photos, taken by Ray Gulyas is Kodak Safety Film 5063, otherwise known as Tri-X ( Black & White ). I think that this was standard issue at the time and the film used by the photo squadron. I guess it was possible to buy colour film on base or in Ipswich and was probably more used for personal photos than B&W film. Tri-X is a relatively fast film.

Adrian

[puddlepirate]

Tri X Pan (panchromatic) - that takes me back. You could buy that in 24 or 36 exp 35mm film from the better high street photo stockists. Good B&W film - fine grain but fairly high speed with good exposure latitude which gave decent results in low light.......probably an ideal film to use in the circumstances. Pro military photographers should have captured some good images with Tri X. Whilst still in the camera the film would have been rolled on a spool (if they were using medium format cameras with 120 film) or in the standard 35mm cassette....so, although I'm no expert, if the film was subjected to radiation in the forest, I would have expected the film to show the same banding type fogging as in the examples on the Kodak website. For all the films to be affected to the point where the negs were totally useless suggests something happened in the lab.

As an irrelevant aside, Robert Capa went ashore with US forces on D-Day and shot several rolls from Omaha beach only to have the lab ruin much of his film (overheated in a film drier or something)!! Stuff happens as they say. What is not recorded is what Capa said when he found out......

[winkeech]

Really fascinating effects on the film and a great thread,
It does sound like some form of radiation and much greater than the background measurements would suggest ... bearing in mind that the Geiger Muller tube detectors will only measure ionising radiation (alpha, beta and gamma). Alpha wouldn't make it through the film canister too easily and beta would struggle through the camera body (unless a massive dose) ... gamma could do it, but is low at ionisation and you would need a good dose.
My hunch would be microwave radiation ... I have encountered it many times (along with emp pulses) in my time standing around the wheatfields of Wiltshire with IR cameras trying to film crop cirlces happening ... before I moved to digital SLR's and IR cctv the film SLR's sometimes suffered this bleaching of the recorded images when close to real formations (as they happened )- even once had the focusing ring on an SLR camera partially melt ... which I consider a good indication!
I would suspect from this that any film cameras close to the event ( and even close to the subsequent site some time after due to secondary emmision from the soil) could be affected.
Note the physical effects of people within 1/2 mile of the 777 crop formation upto a week after it happened ... headaches, clouded thought, dry metalic tasting mouth etc. ... that event left me ill for a fortnight, cooked my mobile phone (memory was fried) and an energy/emp pulse knocked out the cctv synch for 1/3 sec before auto recovery ... that's why I had to use shielded vhs vcr and triple redundant power supplies ... dvr's just get cooked.
As an aside, Larry showed me a photo he states he took at the time - it was blurred, but unclouded ... that would suggest to me, that Larry was further away from the source of the white fogging than the others?
Hope this slightly different view may be of help,
best wishes,
win.

[puddlepirate]

Microwave radiation - now that is interesting. That suggests radar - and that could lead us back to the techies taken from Orfordness into Bentwaters after Cobra Mist closed down in 1973 or experiments at Bawdsey - or perhaps both and in particular 3D or OTH radars.

[puddlepirate]

Whilst trying to find out a bit more about microwaves and radars I came across this:

There is no date shown on the paper but the list of references includes:
4. Lin J.C., The microwave auditory phenomenon, Proc. of the IEEE, vol. 68, nr 1, 1980, pp. 67-73.

4. A proposal of safety limits for pulse power density in general public
A proposal of safety limits for pulse-power density of EM radiation in general public
has been mainly designed to protect humans against microwave auditory effects.
In addition, the above hearing phenomenon occurs with nonauditory effects, like stress and
annoying. Even the investigators who underlined that there exist doubts as to whether or not
this hearing effect is a hazard, suggest that it is reasonable to establish the power density limits
of maximum peak-pulse value ( Speak) for general public and base the limits on hearing effects.
The microwave auditory phenomenon has been recognised as one of the most interesting
biological effects of microwave (MW) radiation. Short pulses of microwave radiation produce
audible sound into heads of humans and animals. The energy of MW radiation is converted
into heat and produces a small (» 10-6 º C/s) but rapid rise (»10 ms) of temperature. This rise of
temperature generates rapid thermoelastic expansion of tissues in the head, which launches an
acoustic wave of pressure. The auditory phenomenon evokes similar effects as sound
exposure.

Note the comment which I have highlighted in bold. Could this be the reason for the noises made by the [sic] barnyard animals? If so, then could that, combined with the problems with the photographs, point towards some kind of experiment with high power radars - perhaps a mobile unit - being conducted under the cover of darkness in the forest? Could this also somehow tie in with the request to see the radar film from RAF Watton. I believe 3D radar was being tested at RAF Bawdsey at this time. Could it be possible that a highly classified test of experimental radar was being conducted by the techies from Orfordness now working at Bentwaters, the guys down at Bawdsey and a mobile unit in the forest? A quiet period between Christmas and New Year, when most personnel were on Christmas leave could have been an ideal time to run such tests.....

Was a highly classified joint UK/US radar experiment at the centre of the RFI?

The quote shown above was taken from a paper entitled:

MEASUREMENT OF MICROWAVE RADIATION FROM ROTATING RADAR
ANTENNAS AND PROPOSALS FOR LIMITING EXPOSURE TO PULSE MODULATED
RADIATION IN GENERAL PUBLIC AND OCCUPATIONAL

Roman KUBACKI 1), Stanislaw SZMIGIELSKI 1), Halina ANIOLCZYK 2)

1) Department of Microwave Safety, Military Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Warsaw Poland.

2) Institute of Occupational Medicine, Lodz Poland

[redsocks]

Interesting thread this and proberly the first possible hard evidence of the theory put forward thats favours an experiment.There was some weird stuff going on at the MOD Orfordness site in years gone by and something we have covered in the past with the possibility of experiments etc and this could be the link.I think in the past maybe we have been looking to much at Cobra Mist when what was actually going on there was something very different,in fact Cobra Mist never worked,why was it there could it have been a "red herring" for other activaties? remember this place was a secret site.
Just one other thing it was mentioned in a previous post that maybe there was a collaberation between the MOD and the American military,I know for a fact that American servicemen guarded the Orfordness site,this was mentioned on the tv series "coast" when the program took a look around the place and an ex employee mentioned the US guards.

Redsocks

[John Burroughs]

What if they were in the process of bringing somthing down IE Russian and were using the Radar to track it and maybe other equipment to bring it down. Also what if the russian landed a team off the coast to recover what we brought down!!!

[winkeech]

Hiya John,
... when you made the last posting it sent a shiver down my spine! ... why? Well of recent date I have spent a lot of time effort and hard earned researching the 1974 Berwyn Incident - many similarities to the Rendlesham Incident, but some differences too. In that one something came down with a thump - well, a 3.8 on the richter scale thump to be precise. All the evidence shows that it was brought down by a combination of mobile (ship mounted) radar and two flights of harriers ... the primary radar was used to momentarily stun its avionics and the harriers brought it down ... a bit like lamping for rabbits, but with radar for a searchlight and harriers for hounds. It seemed to be a new tactic and was used successfully for around a year with multiple kills - it's just that this one came down on the Bala fault which amplified the shock. I digress.
The thing that caused a shiver was when you suggested the Ruskies ... guess what turned up dead near the crash scene ( 15 miles inland) ... a Russian frogman! ... and a Russian made radio tx was dug up in a field nearby a few weeks later. As this was six years earlier and we know the operation was ongoing - it could have become a whole lot more sophisticated and powerful by 1980 ... probably more ambitious too ... and who knows what the actual targeted technology was by then? One thing is for sure - if the radar is powerful enough to bring something down, it is going to be powerful enough to affect people. I live reasonably near the big dew line pave paws system in the NE of England - aside from changing the frequency of my terrestrial tv after around 9 pm as the night air cools and immobilising the engine management on my Jeep whenever there is a convection inversion (has been know to unlock the doors and turn the ignition on in the middle of the night ... and I'm a few miles away from it) ... reading some of my old NOTAMs it clearly states that being closer than 1.5 nm above 800ft agl for more than a minute can lead to disorientation and even unconciousness. Seems like food for thought in view of the effects suffered by many that night.
Sorry I don't have anything more concrete, but sometimes a new perspective is useful ... I am somewhat hindered by virtue of not being there on the night - but the upside is that I've been alot of other places and had many unusual experiences.

Also, great bit of digging there Puddlepirate - nice paper. I seem to remember that the dodgy geezer involved with Uri Geller, Andrija Puharij I seem to recall, patented a method of using microwaves to create intercerrebal voices ... and there was once (in the early 70's) a novelty transistor radio that went around your neck that retransmitted the radio signal at low power that was picked up by nerves in the neck and interpreted by the brain as sound ... I don't think it was much of a commercial success though!
Best wishes,
Win.

[DoRayEgon]

Hiya John,
... when you made the last posting it sent a shiver down my spine! ... why? Well of recent date I have spent a lot of time effort and hard earned researching the 1974 Berwyn Incident - many similarities to the Rendlesham Incident, but some differences too. In that one something came down with a thump - well, a 3.8 on the richter scale thump to be precise. All the evidence shows that it was brought down by a combination of mobile (ship mounted) radar and two flights of harriers ... the primary radar was used to momentarily stun its avionics and the harriers brought it down ... a bit like lamping for rabbits, but with radar for a searchlight and harriers for hounds. It seemed to be a new tactic and was used successfully for around a year with multiple kills - it's just that this one came down on the Bala fault which amplified the shock. I digress.
The thing that caused a shiver was when you suggested the Ruskies ... guess what turned up dead near the crash scene ( 15 miles inland) ... a Russian frogman! ... and a Russian made radio tx was dug up in a field nearby a few weeks later. As this was six years earlier and we know the operation was ongoing - it could have become a whole lot more sophisticated and powerful by 1980 ... probably more ambitious too ... and who knows what the actual targeted technology was by then? One thing is for sure - if the radar is powerful enough to bring something down, it is going to be powerful enough to affect people. I live reasonably near the big dew line pave paws system in the NE of England - aside from changing the frequency of my terrestrial tv after around 9 pm as the night air cools and immobilising the engine management on my Jeep whenever there is a convection inversion (has been know to unlock the doors and turn the ignition on in the middle of the night ... and I'm a few miles away from it) ... reading some of my old NOTAMs it clearly states that being closer than 1.5 nm above 800ft agl for more than a minute can lead to disorientation and even unconciousness. Seems like food for thought in view of the effects suffered by many that night.
Sorry I don't have anything more concrete, but sometimes a new perspective is useful ... I am somewhat hindered by virtue of not being there on the night - but the upside is that I've been alot of other places and had many unusual experiences.

Also, great bit of digging there Puddlepirate - nice paper. I seem to remember that the dodgy geezer involved with Uri Geller, Andrija Puharij I seem to recall, patented a method of using microwaves to create intercerrebal voices ... and there was once (in the early 70's) a novelty transistor radio that went around your neck that retransmitted the radio signal at low power that was picked up by nerves in the neck and interpreted by the brain as sound ... I don't think it was much of a commercial success though!
Best wishes,
Win.

I do beleive something crashing into the earth with enough force to produce a 3.8 richter reading would have wiped out the whole mountain, last time i looked it was still there
Lucky that radar thingy didn't knock the harriers down as well