Possible John Burroughs visit summer 08

General discussion about the Rendlesham forest incident

Postby Observer » Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:26 pm

Puddlepirate

Knowing the forest intimately and before the great storm [I used to shoot there at night with a friend remember] There is no way a vehicle like that would get down the small logging tracks and especially where the 3 indentations were found, and be able to manoeuvre and back up into that position.
The forestry lads used narrow logging carts towed behind a tractor, i know as i hitched a few rides so they could go down the narrow tracks which by the way are much wider now than they were. Even today with the wider tracks, that truck would struggle to get through.
Funny no tyre marks were found especially as it would have weighed many tons..

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Postby AdrianF » Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:22 pm

Also why did Halt write the memorandum? He was ordered to come up with something once it became public - again, a cover story. His chain of command was USAFE not MoD. The US DoD would not have sought documents from MoD to answer a US FoI request unless they wanted to create and perpetuate a cover story. My personal view is that the memo is a diverson. Ditto the tape and probably also the witness statements.

Puddlepirate,
I agree, I've always had a problem with this part of the story and your use of the word diversion is an interesting one. I'm not saying that I believe Halts memo and the statements were fake, but certainly the way they came into the public domain is still very suspect.

I realise admin has found JB's contribution to be helpful but personally, I don't think JB has added anything of any real value.

It might be that JBs claims about the C-5 back up the idea that the focus should be on what was going on inside the bases.

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Postby puddlepirate » Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:24 pm

Hi Observer

I don't doubt it.....

It was claimed that approx 70 to 80 USAF personnel were in the forest and here is a very tenuous link to 69 of them....

Source: http://www.hill.af.mil/library/factshee ... sp?id=5739

'...Vehicle development began in October 1977 and field trials of the prototype Transporter/Erector/Launcher (TEL) got underway in 1980. The first GLCM launch from a TEL came in March 1980 and the first launch using guidance data from a mobile LCC happened in February 1982.

The TEL was fifty-six feet long and eight feet wide. It weighed 80,000 pounds and could carry four GLCMs. Deployment came in "flights" comprised of two Launch Control Centers, four TELs (each having four spare missiles in addition to the four loaded aboard), sixteen support vehicles, and sixty-nine USAF personnel. In peacetime, the GLCM flights would remain on their home bases in hardened shelters. During wartime they would disperse into the surrounding countryside and set up operation....'


Like I say...utter b****ks with regard to Rendlesham but interesting nonetheless. I wouldn't mind betting that given Pym announced in the House in June 1980 that Cruise would be stored in the UK, several trial runs to test launcher deployment had been completed many times before then. They would not leave it until the weapons arrived and I am also inclined to believe the weapons were here some quite time before the public announcement.

Also, eight feet wide isn't exactly huge.
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Postby puddlepirate » Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:47 pm

Hi Observer

Forgot to add...if you look at the phot you will see the vehicle is multi-wheeled with big off road tyres. It looks like a 12 wheeler. That arrangement would spread the weight over quite a large surface area. It weighed 80,000lbs so I'd guess each wheel had an approximate load of around two tons. Not sure of the contact area of each tyre but probably something like a couple of square feet. That would give a load of around one ton per square foot. On hard ground, as was the case in December, it probably wouldn't leave many tyre marks. After all a reasonable sized family saloon weighs in at about a ton so each wheel supports around 1/4 of a ton on a contact area about the size of the palm of your hand - about 1/10th of a square foot. Which, if my dodgy maths is correct, is actually a greater load per tyre contact area than that of the launcher.....
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Postby ghaynes » Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:22 am

Hi Puddlepirate,
Can we drop this Cruise theory? :?
Greenham Common (501st Tac Missile Wg) didn't receive its missiles till November 1983 and Molesworth (303rd Tac Missile Wg) didn't receive its missiles until December 1986. As I said in an earlier post on this thread, I was based at Molesworth in 1985. The shelters/silos were still being built...there were no missiles there at that time or prior to it.
Regards.

Graham

puddlepirate wrote:Hi Observer

Forgot to add...if you look at the phot you will see the vehicle is multi-wheeled with big off road tyres. It looks like a 12 wheeler. That arrangement would spread the weight over quite a large surface area. It weighed 80,000lbs so I'd guess each wheel had an approximate load of around two tons. Not sure of the contact area of each tyre but probably something like a couple of square feet. That would give a load of around one ton per square foot. On hard ground, as was the case in December, it probably wouldn't leave many tyre marks. After all a reasonable sized family saloon weighs in at about a ton so each wheel supports around 1/4 of a ton on a contact area about the size of the palm of your hand - about 1/10th of a square foot. Which, if my dodgy maths is correct, is actually a greater load per tyre contact area than that of the launcher.....
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Postby Observer » Fri Feb 29, 2008 8:35 am

Thanks Graham

Thats another theory put to bed.

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Postby Wolf » Fri Feb 29, 2008 10:42 am

Tamper proof, eh? While we're on the subject...


Looks like a scratched ocp or faulty fuser unit. It would be interesting to get a look at the original document, if it it still available. The same inconsisteny can be found on page 1 of the Station record form.

Also the redaction on this document is inconsistent. There may have been an exemption or exception applied to it under FOIA or EIR regs etc.

V/R

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Postby Deep Purple » Fri Feb 29, 2008 11:06 am

I dont belive the incident was a hoax . There is a possibility that some elements of the event may have been a hoax, but only to support a cover up. I dont think the event had anything to do with ET either.
At any stage in the early years all Halt had to do to put the thing to bed was say the troops were chasing the lighthouse or it was airmen scaring other airmen with lights etc--- he never has.
Also if it was a hoax why write the memo to command suggesting it wasnt and why keep a tape recording. This I would have thought been a pretty serious matter for an officer with the possibility of court matial.
Given the flap around the base and the nature of the event a UFO , why was Halt promoted, surely commanding officers would have also heard the rumours of a hoax. Would you promote an officer who had encouraged / took part in a serious hoax which ended up in the public domain? come on.
Do we have any ex police officers who could interperate the police log Admin have kindly sent in.
The log states " We have found a place where a craft of some sort seems to have landed"---- if it was animal marks was this not quite a conclusion to jump to. Could it be they knew a craft had landed, took further advice and it went down on the log as animal marks.
It would be nice to see more off the log as you could see if the marks applied to the rest of it. The log I would imagine would have been printed out on an early dot matrix or something similar and as such would not have had marks on it. Once you dont have the genuine article its easy to tamper with paper work.
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Postby Observer » Fri Feb 29, 2008 11:30 am

Deep Purple

I agree with your comments. However, its worth bearing in mind and from my experience in the Police and ROC that often a rank or an Officer are promoted to get them out of the way. Its often done to get them out of the arena of litigation. Its an option often used over a courts martial as a less evasive way of getting rid. This may be why Halt was promoted and out.
There is one other senario in that Halt's promotion was in the pipe line any way and it was just coincidental.

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Postby puddlepirate » Fri Feb 29, 2008 5:30 pm

HI Graham, my very last word on cruise missiles;

You are correct in that Cruise was not delivered to Greenham Common or Molesworth until much later. However having now undertaken a bit more research I have learned that the US launched a whole series of psyops against the USSR commencing Feb 81. The psyops involved flying US bombers towards Soviet airspace before turning back at the last moment; attempting to penetrate Soviet waters near to sensitive naval bases; patrolling the GIUK gap etc.. They probably also included deploying Cruise in forward areas. The purpose was to put the USSR on edge, to test its defences and generally wind up the Soviets to the point they would think they are about to be invaded. In response to all of this, the Soviets initiated Operation Ryan.

I still maintain that nothing happened in the forest, not as we have been led to believe. What happened was, I suspect, a diversion - preparation for an element of pysops. USAF personnel were deployed to the forest to search out suitable sites for positioning the GLCM launchers that arrived in the C-5 on the Monday. If lights other than the lighthouse and so forth were seen over the previous few days, then it was to test the reaction of the locals (who, as we know, assuming the activity as stated did take place, neither saw nor reported seeing anything unusual) and to divert the attention of any Soviet agents in the local area (and there must have been several). The total weight of the Cruise launcher squadron is almost equal in weight to the total payload of a C-5, including the number of personnel the C-5 has seats for.

Operations on that scale cannot be started overnight. They have to be carefully planned and units placed in position. Moving Cruise to a forward position would increase the tension on the Soviets and would be part of the pysops programme. To move Cruise into position at the end of Dec 80 would fit with the commencement of pysops in Feb 81. Pym had already granted, in June 80, permission for Cruise to be based in the UK and the US simply flew them in. The forest was ideal. Halt and co used what was known - the Orfordness Light, the meteor shower, the re-entry of Cosmos to their advantage to build a story based on a UFO landing to cover activity in the forest and make everyone look the other way should details of what was really going on ever leak out. And if any of this is considered to be total nonsense then read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83

And finally:

source: http://www.ausairpower.net/TE-Cruise-Missiles-1985.html

BGM-109C Ground Launched Cruise Missile bursts out of its launcher. The GLCM provides NATO theatre nuclear commanders with a precise retaliatory weapon capable of striking 1500nm deep into Russian held territory......

The missile is carried on a mobile launcher which is also air transportable in a C-5 class transport.'
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Postby John Burroughs » Fri Feb 29, 2008 6:03 pm

The C-5 didnot land to bring anything in! Also nothing was placed in the forrest. What when on with the C-5 crew and what was going on in the forest had to do with them looking for somthing. I spent 26 years in the Security field and I can tell you this if they put a missle out there we would have know about it at the base. Also I do agree with the UFO cover to hide somthing else that was going on and it might have had somthing to do with Russia. I feel Halt might have been set up but after it happen not before.
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Postby AdrianF » Fri Feb 29, 2008 6:17 pm

Also I do agree with the UFO cover to hide somthing else that was going on and it might have had somthing to do with Russia.


John, do you remember having any conversations with Jim Penniston over those following days as to the possibility of being set up? Or just generally, do you remember discussing your experience much with each other?

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Postby puddlepirate » Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:08 pm

H John, thanks for clearing that up. One thing though, the C-5 is a heavy lift aircraft - the biggest you guys have got. Whatever they were looking for must have been pretty big and very heavy to need a C-5. Otherwise they could have used a smaller aircraft, C-130 Herc for instance.

Given your role at east gate plus your comment re something Russian (possibly) and the order not to use your radios but to call in via telephone and to ignore the various movements through the east gate at that time, do you have any idea at all as to what they found?

Given that activity appears to have increased substantially after the arrival of the C-5 did they unload anything at all? Perhaps handling equipment necessary to recover and transport something very heavy and bulky from the forest to the aircraft?

I would like to clarify why a C-5 was used if they didn't unload anything, didn't find anything and didn't load anything.
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Postby John Burroughs » Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:15 pm

Adrian
We never did talk about it. Jim never brought it up after it happened and as a young airmen I really didnot know what to say. UFO back then were somthing you didnot talk about. I did ask Jim in later years why he didnot talk about it and his answer was it was a on going investigation because he kept getting called into OSI about it. He also stated he thought I was being called in and he never would talk about things that were in a on going investigation....
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Postby John Burroughs » Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:30 pm

All I can say is it probley was what they brought in. Halt said one of the things they came in to check was the codes in hot row.... That was what he stated and I can say no more on that. There was also statements made about a special team that came in on it with equipment. They parked the C-5 back in a area where it was impossible to see what they were doing and they took care of there own security. I can also say there was allot of Helicopters flying around the forrest and vechicles going into the woods. The Russian part has been talked about for years in many different ways. One of the theories was we brought down a Russian Sat and we came into to recover it. It also was stated they could have tried something on us I donot feel it had anything to do with inside the Base but a outside source!
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Postby John Burroughs » Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:59 pm

(SRT) Security Response Team 2 man patrol was in charge of a area. Like a aircraft parking area. There would be ART in the area and the SRT would back them up. Jim was the SRT at Woodbridge. Hav eno Idea about the boots other than night scopes could pick up polish on Boots and the BDU was developed so that it could not be picked up at night
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Postby puddlepirate » Fri Feb 29, 2008 11:09 pm

JB - just to be clear in my own mind. The C-5 came into Bentwaters, not Woodbridge. Is that correct?
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Postby John Burroughs » Sat Mar 01, 2008 4:43 am

Yes it landed at Bentwaters
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Postby puddlepirate » Sat Mar 01, 2008 8:58 am

JB. Thanks. When did it leave?
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Postby John Burroughs » Sat Mar 01, 2008 5:44 pm

Mid week
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