Interview with Squadron Leader Donald Moreland

[daveclarke]

Related to the discussion on the 'Conspiracy' thread, I thought you might all be interested to read part of the transcript of the interview I had with Squadron Leader Don Moreland, the RAF liaison officer at Woodbridge in 1980-81. This relates directly to the circumstances by which a) the Halt memo was produced and b) not acted upon by DS8.
This transcript extract is my copyright, 2003, and can be quoted off-list providing credit is given to the source. DC is Dave Clarke, DM is Don Moreland.

DC: You arrived at the base in November and then went off for your Christmas holidays...

DM: Yes, now let me explain. Because we had a house here and our children were away at schools, we tended to come home [to North Wales] for Easter and Christmas, open up the house and all get together. So although I had only been on the base for a few weeks I had organised my leave a long time before and they honoured it for me, they let me go. There wasn’t a lot a could do, I hardly knew anyone on the base and it could go happily along without me for two weeks. What the RAF commanders around the country did was before you went off on leave, you got someone who said he would cover for you, so if they needed RAF liaison they would go to that person. So that’s what I did, I can’t remember who I got now, but it was one of the chaps who wasn’t going home for Christmas, he would liaise for me. That’s why I went off over Christmas and New Year – two week’s leave. And it was when I came back, and a day or two later Chuck Halt wandered into my office with this story [laughter].

DC: Now if anything had happened while you were away, would you have been briefed about that on return?

DM: Not necessarily. They didn’t have to brief me operationally, because operationally they came under NATO and NATO would be directing their operations. But except in general terms, I didn’t. I couldn’t interfere operationally unless I thought there was something amiss. By and large the flying just went on – either the training under their own auspices or exercises under NATO.

DC: So Chuck Halt came into your office...when exactly was that?

DM: I can’t exactly remember now..it was the 15th I think I wrote that memo...I can’t remember whether his or mine was the 15th...

DC: So what did he say then when he came in. What was his demeanour?

DM: [laughs] ‘You’re never going to believe this Don.’ We were on christian name terms even though we had only known each other for a couple of weeks. He could come into my office and sit in the chair next to my desk and say, you’re never going to believe this Don. ‘What am I not going to believe?’ he said, ‘well, when you were away, this happened, you see..’ Well I said what have you done about it? ‘Nothing. What do you think we should do about it?’ So being a good staff officer I said I think you ought to make a report to me on paper. Which he did. I didn’t expect him to do it.

DC: What did he say had happened?

DM: He told me this story about erm airmen on duty in Woodbridge seeing some lights in the forest and thinking an aeroplane had crashed. Though why they thought an aeroplane had crashed I don’t know, they asked for permission to go off base which they did. And then they related this incredible story of flashing lights, and I believe the next night he went out with a team of policemen and they saw these flashing lights too, and I think that when he went out he recorded it all and he took a geiger counter with him..I don’t know why they did that, but anyway. It seemed very odd to me that they went out all equipped to do all this sort of stuff. You can imagine that if someone is sitting there telling you this in all seriousness, well all sorts of things go through your mind. Is he pulling my leg? Am I on the brink of some incredible thing happening...

AR: If it was such an important thing to Halt, would he not have spoken to the person who you had left in charge of liaison duties over Christmas?

DM: Precisely.

AR: And that didn’t happen?

DM: No. They waited until I came back.

DC: Doesn’t that strike you as a bit odd?

DM. Yes. That’s why I asked him to put it on paper, not expecting him to do it, thinking he had been pulling my leg you see.

AR: Did you check with your opposite number, the person you had left in charge?

DM: I honestly can’t remember that.

DC: Wouldn’t you have something on paper telling you what had happened while you were away, some kind of log or briefing paper?

DM: I didn’t. I’m sure I didn’t, although I can’t remember for sure as far back as that. I mean Chuck Halt obviously hadn’t told anybody else, from what he was telling me.

DC: But wouldn’t he have reported it up through his chain of command, the US one?

DM: Well I think he told his colonel and that never went any further than that, as far as I’m aware. You see this wasn’t any great deal at that time on the station.

DC: I’m trying to place this in the context of the time – there was all kinds of international tensions, Poland, Afghanistan, Ireland what if this had been the IRA?

DM: Well first of all, this had only happened off base in the forest, so it wasn’t an on-base thing, no one was attacking us, no one was climbing over the wire shooting or anything like that. It was just some American airmen who had wandered off into the woods and saw all these incredible lights, flashings and things darting off into the trees, which I can hardly credit, but there you are.

DC: There’s also the issue of this being British land, and them having not had permission to leave an American base...presumably not armed...

DM: Looking through some of the information you gave me, one of them makes a careful note of saying ‘I left my SA-80’ or something behind [laughs], what he did with his pistol I don’t know...they weren’t allowed off base armed...that was part of the regulations, they couldn’t wander around toting their guns.

DC: Did he mention the tape he had made when he came to see you?

DM: I don’t think he did at that time.

DC: Did he say anything about having tried to obtain photographs of these things or anything of that kind?

DM: No. Just the Geiger counter and you know these holes, these scrapes in the ground. The fact that there was an enhanced reading, you know that kind of thing.

DC: Did that concern you the fact there might have been some radiation there?

DM: Not really. The levels were quite low. Not that I knew very much about radiation. Chuck Halt was fairly excited about what he was telling me, but had it been aliens landing he would have been back to the United States or climbing up the nearest tree or something, I mean it was nothing like that.

DC: His memo is actually title ‘Unexplained Lights’, which is exactly what he saw.

DM: Yes. Now I have been taken to task on that, ‘why did I call it a UFO?’ Well I don’t know why I called it a UFO, I suppose when we were talking he was talking about UFOs, so I thought well it sounds like an unexplained flying objects, so that’s the channel, that sort of thing.

DC: You didn’t think he was pulling your leg?

DM: That’s why I asked him to write it down. I thought it was a big leg pull. I’m new on the base, a big American leg pull.

DC: Did you expect him to write it down?

DM: No.

DC: So what happened then when he turned up with his memo?

DM: I thanked him very much and flashed it off to MOD and thought, well that’s it. I’m not just going to sit on it. If its an inexplicable thing that’s happened just off base, it’s a NATO base, then the Ministry of Defence should know about it. So I inquired as to whom I should send it to and was told DS8, and I sent it off to DS8.

DC: And then what happened?

DM: Well, nothing! [laughter] I didn’t hear anything for awhile. Until I read all this correspondence I thought it was a long time, and I know I phoned up a few times, eventually I was told they had checked with the defence radars and nothing significant was seen. As far as MOD concerned if there was no defence interest and that was the end of the matter..someone had seen some flashing lights and some unexplained thing happening but there was no defence interest in it, there was nothing on the defence radars, there was nothing logged, no one else had seen anything...

DC: Did you get the impression that ‘defence interest’ would only occur if something like this could be corroborated by a radar contact?

DM: That wasn’t for me, I was an administrator sitting at Bentwaters. I don’t know how thoroughly MOD investigated it, but reading all the paperwork it strikes me that all they did was search through their logs, and because nothing unexplained happened, that was the end of the matter.

DC: Do you remember any explanations for the lights being offered by DS8 at this point?

DM: A bit later on I was told it could have been the lights from the Orfordness lighthouse which seemed to me, because one could see them flashing through the trees, so it seemed to me to be a rational explanation for it.

DC: Who suggested that?

DM: Someone at DS8. I can’t remember his name now, squadron leader...

DC: This was before the story got into the newspapers, with the News of the World story and the BBC film of the lighthouse?

DM: Oh yes. That was years later. I’m talking about 1981 now, that we were talking about the possibility of it being the Orfordness lighthouse.

DC: I’ve read somewhere that you actually went out to the place where the airmen said this UFO had landed. Is that correct?

DM: I don’t remember seeing anything in the correspondence you have given me, but I do remember going out at one time...I’ve got a vague idea that the trees had been cut down by the time I went out, I don’t remember now. But there was nothing untoward, just a bit of a clearing in the forest, and there is a lot of forest round there. It all looks the same basically.

DC: There is no way you could remember where that was? [shows map]
DM: I honestly can’t remember. If was on the ground now...we used to come out the back gate of one and come in the other, and go round, its a bit difficult... to put where it was, but I think it was roughly off the end of the runway, at one end of, probably the northish end of Bentwaters, of erm Woodbridge, somewhere, I don’t think it was very far into the forest because I don’t remember going very far, venturing very far into the forest.

DC: Do you remember who you were with when you went out into the forest?

DM: Probably Chuck Halt but I honestly can’t remember now.

DC: Did you ever listen to Chuck Halt’s tape recording at the time?

DM: I was aware of the tape’s existence and I think I had heard a bit of it while I was at Bentwaters. I have since been sent a CD of it by Georgina Bruni. I started to play it but it is just an awful lot of noise and I can’t make anything out when I played. My recollection of it is just a lot of shouts and not very much information comes through on it, from the little bits that I heard.

[AdrianF]

Dave

Thanks for posting this interview.

What are your views, having interviewed Donald Moreland, on the date of his return to work following the Christmas holidays? Did you discuss this point with him? Georgina Bruni suggested the possibility that he may have returned a week earlier from the Christmas break, which would make some sense. It's a small point, but if Halt did approach Moreland on or around the 6th of January, then it does beg the question as to why given even longer to prepare the memo ( and possibly have it okayed ), there were still mistakes with the dates.

Cheers

Adrian

[daveclarke]

Hi Adrian,

That's a good question and as you can see from the interview Moreland wasn't too clear about it. It's possible he was back on the 6th, or thereabouts; I believe from memory Halt's memo is dated the 13th (?) in which case we can guess he wrote it somewhere between the 8th and the 13th.
If I get the chance to speak to Moreland I'll ask him if he can check his diary, if he still has it, and produce a more definitive date for his return from Xmas hols.