RADAR Development

[IanR]

Anyone got any ideas as to why nobody showed any interest in what was going on?

I thought it had been established that the noises Halt et al heard came from muntjac deer in the forest. These make a noise like a woman screaming, which is what JB heard on the first night. As far as I am aware, that field was, and still is, used for growing crops not for grazing animals. Even if there were cattle around, don’t farmers bring them in at night during the winter? (Excuse my ignorance on this point, I’m a townie.)

So, in my view, the reason the farmer didn’t come out to see who was disturbing his animals is because he had no animals to be disturbed.

Ian

[John Burroughs]

I figured out what happened to us it was just a bad dream and thats why nobody heard or saw anything!! Just like you guys said that nobody else saw anything but then they did and someone posted a article about that.... From what I was told the farmer was interviewed and did state he saw somthing and beleive it or not he was moved to a different part of the country or maybe that was just a dreame also.. Or maybe we were all hypnotized by the light house stars aaaaaaand satelitte that came down or even better blinded by the spot lights on the Helocopter that was hauling in the appolo space capsule. Or last but not least the ailiens made everbody forget....................................

[puddlepirate]

Halt's words were:

HALT: 01.48. We’re hearing very strange sounds out of the farmer’s barnyard animals. They’re very, very active, making an awful lot of noise.

Where and by whom was it established that Halt was wrong and that what he heard was Mountjack deer?

[puddlepirate]

Ooops...muntjac

I, too, am a townie and wouldn't know one if it hit me on the head!

[Robert McLean]

I wasn't Halt who heard muntjac deer. Halt heard farm animals. Muntjac deer don't sound like farm animals. When they want to defend their territory or become alarmed, they sound like a person screaming -that's what John Burroughs heard.

[Robert McLean]

That is one thing that I have always found a bit strange...a squad of USAF personnel walk over 2 miles out then 2 miles back in the middle of the night, across a farmer's fields - with at least one of them falling into a stream (if nothing else that guy must have been wet and very cold, yet no mention is made of that).

In fact, Halt's crossing the stream is on the tape:

HALT: 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 just crossed the, the crick . . .

BALL: Here we go, come on.

Halt has said it was the same stream Burroughs, Penniston and Cabansag crossed and got wet in. John, is there anything you can remember or tell us about this event?

I have always assumed that they got their legs/feet wet. After all, if you got totally soaked, you wouldn't be able to stay out for hours in near freezing conditions.

[Robert McLean]

Anyone got any ideas as to why nobody showed any interest in what was going on?

Even if there were cattle around, don’t farmers bring them in at night during the winter?

So, in my view, the reason the farmer didn’t come out to see who was disturbing his animals is because he had no animals to be disturbed.
Ian

Although there isn't any proof, what Halt heard was probably cows. Depending on the weather, cows are sometimes out in the fields in December.

The farmhouse which is directly in front of the forest at Capel Green (the "Boast" house) is a farm worker's house, and no farm worker is going to come out with a shotgun because some cows are making a noise.

However, there is a point here, because the field between the Boast house and the forest is an arable farming field, and cows are never put out in such fields. Nowadays pigs sometimes are housed in sheds on arable fields during the winter (but not, so far, that field), but this is only a recent practice due to animal welfare concerns.

This is another discrepancy in the "traditional" landing site, which is supposed to have been 100 to 200 m west of the eastern edge of the forest. At this location, the nearest places cows could have been are about 500 m east of the eastern edge of the forest, meaning Halt was about 700 m away from where cows (or chickens, or whatever) could have been.

I suspect it was all the noise and lights from Halt's team which disturbed them, but regardless of what got the animals going, they wouldn't have been that noisy from 700 m away, so why did Halt mention it on the tape?

The reason, I believe, is that Halt was at a different location (about 600 m south and east of the traditional location), which would have placed him about 100 m away from a small and fairly sheltered field on the easten side of Oak Wood, where cows (to this day) are kept in the winter with their feed supplemented by hay. The cows probably got hungry thinking Halt's lights were the farmer come to deliver their hay.

[IanR]

Depending on the weather, cows are sometimes out in the fields in December.

Thank you for that piece of local knowledge. But it was near-freezing at the time.

The reason, I believe, is that Halt was at a different location (about 600 m south and east of the traditional location), which would have placed him about 100 m away from a small and fairly sheltered field on the easten side of Oak Wood, where cows (to this day) are kept in the winter with their feed supplemented by hay.

So why does Halt keep taking camera crews (e.g. the Sci Fi Channel and The UFO Hunters) to the "traditional" site?
http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham5b.htm
And if he wasn't at the traditional site, where is the farmhouse across the field that he refers to?

Ian

[Observer]

Sorry folks, but i cannot help smiling as we are now debating farm animals which is yet another example of this forum going off on a tangent. Whatever turns you on i guess.
Halt said on at least 2 interviews that the farmers animals were playing up and he could hear them so why are people now doubting this? I suggest you take it up with Charles Halt, he said it not me.
Obs

[puddlepirate]

Hi Obs - the issue is not about whether or not Halt heard farm animals but which farm were they on. It has been established that the farm associated with the Boast's house is arable land and therefore did not have livestock. Thus Halt had to be further south, near Oak Wood and the farms at Capel St Andew: Home Farm and Laurel Farm. If this is true. he could still have been on a heading of 110 magnetic, heading just south of east but from a position at the southeast of Oak Wood he would have had a clear view north and south ('it's coming in from the south now...' etc) but his view to the east would have been blocked by the slightly higher ground of Burrow Hill. This means he remained in Rendlesham Forest, passing to the south of the farmer's field, then crossed the B road before following a route along the southern edge of Oak Wood to where the land slopes down towards a stream. In this case the fields he and his men crossed would not have been those at the Boast's house but those at Capel St Andrew farms

Also, if the above is true, then it means the landing site Halt refers to is further south and within the area of the roadblock mentioned by LW. It also brings the site nearer to Hollesley Bay Prison. Also, it does not dismiss what LW saw because that could be related to what Halt saw further to the south. Taking that a hypothetical step forward, if Halt saw something to the south of the object LW saw and if both were related, then it suggests something was coming in on a southerly track. If it was usual practice for aircraft to approach Woodbridge from north or south and not overfly Orfordness (to avoid the masts etc etc) and use Butley Abbey as a marker, then a few bits and pieces start to fit.

The question of the 'barnyard animals' might seem to be a trivial one but it is significant. There has been confusion over which landing site (of three, I believe) was the real site. Perhaps the real site is, as RM has proposed, some 600 metres south of what was previously believed. This would certainly fit with other factors and makes much more sense.

This is very much a case of the dog that barked in the nightime. Apparently unimportant but potentially very important.

[Observer]

Thanks Puddle
I was never sure which farm Halt was referring to, but you certainly have made it more clear.
Having done loads of plane spotting at RAF Woodbridge over a lengthy period of time, i can confirm that approximately 80% of landings are from the East, with the approach roughly over Orfordness but not always. Planes on finals over the Ness would still be up around a 800-1000 ft may be a tad higher than that and well clear of any masts etc.
There were landings from the West/take offs to the East but were generally in the minority. This was all due to the prevailing winds which were mostly Westerly.
Aircraft approaching from a southerly direction would have to make a pretty tight turn to miss the Ness and still get onto the right glide path for a landing. Never ever saw that happen. On nearly every occasion the A-10 started its glide approach about 5 miles out to sea. In fact most USAF aircraft adopted this long airliner approach whether it be a fighter or a transport.
At BW the glide approach was more over land but still about 5 miles on finals.

Obs

[IanR]

If you watch that UFO Hunters epsiode on RFI, Halt is walking around the field at Capel Green quantity surveying.

Yes, Halt has been quite specific about this and I cannot understand why we are going over old ground again, particularly as Robert McL told me in a PM only the other day that he had seen the map on which Halt had marked the landing site for Brenda, and it was right at the place where we always thought it was.

I looked through some old notes that Brenda sent me of a talk Halt gave at Quest International in Leeds in July 1994. This provides some useful additional information, including partial answers to some of the questions raised here recently.

According to Brenda's notes, Halt said that after they passed the farmer’s house and crossed the next field “I fell into the same stream as Sgt Penniston and Burroughs fell in. We couldn’t see it. We crashed around it, we got all wet... Went into the second field, which was a ploughed field.” This was were they saw the two lights to the north and the one to the south. Halt estimates that they were probably half or three quarters of a mile away from the forest, which would place them in the region of Butley Abbey but nowhere near Burrow Hill.

He also gives an estimate for the duration of the whole expedition: “This time frame started around 10.30, 11 o’clock at night and went on until after 4 o’clock in the morning. The object [i.e. the one to the south that beamed down lights] was still in the sky at 4 o’clock in the morning, we were exhausted, we had been up all day, I had been up since 9 o’clock in the morning... tired, hungry, we were wet... So we went back up towards where the lightalls were. They were still playing with the lightalls. I said pack it in and gather them up, let’s take everything back to the base.”

This suggests that they never did get the lightalls working.

Ian

[puddlepirate]

The reason we are going over old ground is because something doesn't add up. Halt heard 'barnyard animals' yet the farm at the Boast's place doesn't have livestock. Also

Halt said that after they passed the farmer’s house and crossed the next field “I fell into the same stream as Sgt Penniston and Burroughs fell in. We couldn’t see it. We crashed around it, we got all wet...

. It was a cold, December night. The temperature (from The Times weather reports) was around 2 deg C. If a person is 'all wet' from crashing around in a stream, they would be too cold to continue walking around for several hours.

Anyone who has ever done a Dartmoor exped or who has been sailing will know just how cold you get if your clothes get wet - even on a warmish day. To walk around in wet clothes in 2deg C will result in hypothermia, not in hours but in relatively few minutes.

Muntjac deer bark, unless they are startled in which case they scream. Halt did not mention barks or screams. He mentioned barnyard animals. Had he heard barks he would probably have mentioned dogs. Had he heard screams he would have said so. If he heard barnyard animals then he could not have been at Capel Green. He must have been elsewhere. Unless of course, the tape is a fabrication, concoted back in the office for whatever reason. And that is an interesting proposition because as far as I am aware there are no sounds of farm animals on the tape - which I would have expected if they had been making so much noise he felt it necessary to comment. I've got a copy of the tape recorded from a BBC radio transmission and I can't hear any animals sounds on it.

I believe it is very important to resolve this because (a) the location of Halt's landing site depends on the outcome and (b) if the tape was recorded later then the whole RFI odd lights scenario falls apart. Comment?

[John Burroughs]

I did get wet and I kept going and I was just fine. When you listen to the tape there is radio traffic on it and that is real as afr as if Halt edited the tapge that is posible but only by cutting out certain parts of the incident that could cause security problems not faking the tape....

[IanR]

If he heard barnyard animals then he could not have been at Capel Green.
Comment?

What he actually says is "We’re hearing very strange sounds out of the farmer’s barnyard animals." So if the sounds were "strange" perhaps they weren't "barnyard animals" at all.

Ian

[Observer]

This is getting quite entertaining, Can some body get hold of all the animals mentioned sound recordings, normal sounds and in terror sounds.
Obs

[puddlepirate]

Ian from your transcript of the Halt tape:

HALT: 01.48. We’re hearing very strange sounds out of the farmer’s barnyard animals. They’re very, very active, making an awful lot of noise.

Any reason to believe Halt wouldn't know farm animals when he heard them?

If Halt said he heard barnyard animals, even if they were making strange sounds, that is what he heard. Anything else and he would simply have said 'strange animal noises' - he must have been close enough to a farm with animals to know the noise was from the livestock. Therefore, he was not at Capel Green.

If we take only those parts of the tape that suit our purpose and ignore other parts, then the tape becomes worthless. If Halt says he saw a red light, then he saw a red light. If he says he heard barnyard animals then he heard barnyard animals. The issue is where was he when he saw what he saw. It has been established he could not have been at Capel Green because there were no livestock on that farm, so he had to be elsewhere.

[AdrianF]

This is getting quite entertaining, Can some body get hold of all the animals mentioned sound recordings, normal sounds and in terror sounds.
Obs

Here are the sounds of the muntjac deer and at this site you will find just about every outdoor sound created in the UK. My favorite is "outside a death metal club in Peterborough city centre, 9pm on a Friday night"

http://www.nickpenny.com/muntjacdeer310508.mp3
http://www.nickpenny.com/muntjaccall050508.mp3

I was fortunate enough to have walked over the areas in question with Robert McLean a few weeks ago. Being on the ground and walking out over the route that Robert suggests, some missing pieces of the puzzle do seem to fall into place, for the first night at least.
It's a shame that Jim Penniston has not contributed to the forum, as he has been back to the forest relatively recently, aware of it's changes, and identified a different site to Halt's. I hope that JB gets a chance to go back there and retrace his steps, as this might help to confirm the route taken out from the East Gate.

Adrian

[IanR]

he must have been close enough to a farm with animals to know the noise was from the livestock.

Or he *assumed* it was from livestock. Since it was dark and he had no way of knowing what was making the noises, he could, I submit, have been mistaken.[/quote]

Therefore, he was not at Capel Green.

In that case he must have been as lost as you are.

As Obs rightly says, this discussion has become farcical. I shall say no more on the subject.

Ian

[Robert McLean]

So why does Halt keep taking camera crews (e.g. the Sci Fi Channel and The UFO Hunters) to the "traditional" site?
http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham5b.htm
And if he wasn't at the traditional site, where is the farmhouse across the field that he refers to?

Ian

Halt was not familiar with the forest. He was taken out there by others and did not know where he was. From the 2004 Sci Fi Channel documentary:

<Snip> [At 1:17:44 Halt, Penniston and Thurkettle are at Penniston’s landing site. The narrator explains how they have discovered that there must have been two separate landing sites.]

Narrator: Armed with this new revelation, Penniston and Halt take forester Vince Thurkettle to the second site identified by Penniston. Prior to this, Thurkettle strongly believed the airmen had mistaken the Orfordness lighthouse for a UFO.

Penniston: You know I only had one site.

Halt: As far as we were concerned . . .

Thurkettle: That was it. I had only ever heard of one site

Halt: I made an assumption. They took me out. I say they, the police took me out and said ‘This is it’.

It's not surprising Halt has got it wrong. There is an unfortunate symmetry in the orientation of the field forest boundaries at Capel Green and in the field to the south of Oak Wood, plus there are two east/west logging roads, Road 12, now called Road 8, and to the south of this Road 13. Road 13 is the one which passes by the campground.

Question for John - do you remember the campground and the road which leads eastwards into the forest at this point?

Burroughs, Penniston and Cabansag took Road 12 that night, but the next morning, I know that at least some police/security guys were using Road 13 to get out to the clearing where BP&C had their encounter with the lights. Neither the lighthouse nor the lightship could have been visible from that clearing because it is in a hollow in the landscape. BP&C were NOT seeing the lighthouse or lightship when they entered this clearing and saw the bright and/or coloured lights. Several witnesses have described this clearing, which was inside the forest. John, if you do remember this clearing, please tell us what you remember.

I have uploaded one map and 8 more photos on Flickr which explains what I think must have happened during Halt's trip from the landing site to Burrow Hill, including photos which show the route taken by Halt and how the light approached the farmhouse from the left hand side and with the farmer's house apparently "on fire":

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28296368@N02/

If you're not familiar with Flickr, above each photo there are a number of buttons. Click on All Sizes to see the map/photos at full resolution.