What cover up

[John Burroughs]

DS8 Mod is British and I don't know if he heard British voices.

[Vortex]

Obs/Puddle,

I'm 100% behind you when you say that it's impossible for us to research theories such as time-travel as they are currently in the realms of science fiction. And I know that if it's hard proof that we want, we might be embarking on an impossible quest. However, I also think it's clear that most people on this forum are keeping an open-mind (thumbs up to all for that) and at the very least, this is opening up new avenues of enquiry. As John says, it's interesting that extremely similar scenarios have been retrieved from the subconscious minds of himself and Jim Penniston whilst under hypnosis. If these subconscious memories are not the result of contact with some sort of advanced, unkown technology, then the obvious questions are: why would such memories be implanted? and who would be responsible for this? If (hypothetically) all this trouble has been taken to cover-up some sort of man-made incident, in my opinion, it must be something pretty significant??

This has become a frustratingly complex case with as many dead-ends as new leads, but we're very lucky to have John Burroughs here engaging in such open and honest discussion.

Vortex

PS - Obs, I'll do my best to lose my forum lurker status as soon as I can! No more sitting quietly in the background from now on, I promise.

[puddlepirate]

Stupid of me. DS8 was the British Govt dept (or directorate) that had an interest in UFO's. So if DS8 were at the twin bases so soon after the event, then somebody must have informed MoD and given that Halt's memo was, apparently, only sent to Sqdn Ldr Moreland two weeks later, then there had to have been either a different memo or most likely a secure phonecall to MoD. That would make sense. DS8 must have made a report of some kind, even if it was only to justify their trip down to Suffolk. Further to that Halt's memo only shows a CC RAF i.e. an info or 'carbon copy' addressee. There is no action or 'to' addressee shown yet there must have been one. CC RAF suggests that the memo was sent as a carbon copy to the RAF so it must also have been sent 'TO' someone else and to send a memo two weeks later seems like a breach of protocol. There had to be a procedure for informing the host nation in the event of an off base alert. This might have taken the form of 'alert state increased due to unexplained activity outside permeter; threat being investigated by duty watch'... something like that. No point in waiting two weeks because British security services might have been required at very short notice. We had a similar situation in Hong Kong after your chaps bombed Libya. The alert state went from black alpha to bikini amber and the internal security platoon was mobilised and issued with the necessary kit but the HK Police, MARPOL etc were also notified of the threat.

Do you remember the date of your interview? Or the date(s) on which personnel from DS8 attended?

[Observer]

This is interesting, if DS-8 were allegedly there surely Nick Pope would have known about it and if so why has he not mentioned it. Or, is DS-8 another department that NP was not involved with. Even so his department grape vine would have revealed it at some point.

Obs

[Observer]

St

What do you think Halt meant by that remark.

Obs

[John Burroughs]

Puddle as far as the interview it was done on Penniston and he stated the DS8 part came out under Hypnois while he was be interviewed by OSI and was being injected with truth serum. As far as documents go besides his memo why did all of the reports disapear why would Gabriel come down and take documents and why would Williams fly the radio traffic recording to Germaney. Too many people say they were brought in and interviewed strange things come out when people are put under Hypnois. One of 2 things the Air Force and the Mod had no Idea what they were dealing with or there was a Major incident IE Test or Military Accident they had to cover up!!!

[Observer]

St

No way was that the document we are all familiar with.

Obs

[puddlepirate]

Hi JB

Just to quote from your last post:

or there was a Major incident IE Test or Military Accident they had to cover up!!!

That just about hits the nail on the head. From the very outset I have thought there was an accident with a nuke or DMU weapon - stuff happens - and the consequences of that, should it ever have become public knowledge, would have been enormous. There was absolutely no way that either the USAF or HMG could ever allow it to become known that the USAF had dropped a nuke off one of its aircraft overflying Suffolk. It had to be surpressed or there would have been absolute uproar. In parliament, in the streets, everywhere. The press would have gone crazy and there would have been demands for the immediate withdrawal of all US nukes from UK soil, plus it would have stopped the deployment of cruise. Neither of which could be allowed to happen - not at the very height of the Cold War, with the Soviets ranged along the Polish border and every possibility of the situation escalating into a hot war.

The situation had to be contained, the weapon recovered, the area made safe and most of all, all knowledge of such an incident had to be denied and anyone connected with it reminded of their obligations under the US equivalent of the UK Official Secrets Act (1911) - robustly reminded if necessary.

Only such an accident ticks almost all the boxes - from the damage to the trees, damaged landing lights, nocturnal activity in the forest, geiger counters, C5, stuff flown out to Ramstein AFB, cover story, Maggie's 'you can't tell the people', no defence significance, request to see the Watton radar tapes, the alleged prison evac alert.....the list is long.

If the flippin' thing had gone off it would have turned most of East Anglia into a radio active desert for a thousand years. Thanks chaps. No wonder you 'cant' tell the people' !! I suspect there was a discreet phone call to Downing St - 'It's some chap from RAF Woodbridge, Prime Minister, an American fellow....he sounds a tad apologetic and would like a word. Shall I put him through?....'

[Observer]

And the 2 week delay in sending a memo that was deliberately innocuous was so all angles were covered, all potential weak points tightened up and a cover story concocted. When every one involved was singing from the same hymn sheet the memo was sent. Its a very sceptical view point, but as puddle pointed out this scenario ticks way to many boxes to be ignored, in fact its streets ahead of any other theory purely on the boxes it ticks.

Obs

[puddlepirate]

If I were a betting man I'd be inclined to put my money on an F111 from the 48th TFW out of Lakenheath and from the same squadron/flight as the F111 with tail no 0069. Aircraft might have suffered a malfunction and had to go for an emergency landing. Probably only armed in readiness should something kick off. Possibly an out of routine mission being flown because of the increased tension in eastern Europe. Ditched weapons to save weight and keep airborne. Probably meant to dump the ordnance into the sea off Orfordness, from where the ARRS could have recovered the weapons later.

Pure conjecture of course, no evidence of any kind to support any of the above - but who knows? Anyone who has ever served in any capacity with any branch of the military knows what unbelievable cock-ups occur with alarming frequency. Some hilariously funny, others less so.

[Observer]

St

Things change and probably today there is much more transparency to these accidents that in 1980.
I suspect the RFI went straight on to a 30 year rule.

Obs

[Observer]

Thanks St

I have read it a few years ago but gave it away and have forgotten most of it now.

Remember she recently did a 'U' turn by saying that nothing of significance happened at Rendlesham Forest.

I think she got too close for comfort which rang a few alarm bells and some body had a quiet word in her ear.

Any way, your point is regarding my last post?

Obs

[puddlepirate]

During 1980 the USAF lost a surprising number of A10's and F111 aircraft flying out of UK bases. In September alone two A10's went down off the Lincolnshire coast.

The minuteman fire was contained in a silo - it went undiscovered for quite some time. But it was a US problem on US soil and did not pose any real threat. That is considerably different to dropping a nuke in a populated area of a host nation at a time when many of that nation's citizens were protesting about the proposed deployment of Cruise missiles in their country. There had already been demonstrations and marches in London and east Anglia against siting Cruise in the UK. Can you imagine the furore had it been disclosed that the USAF had dropped a nuke in Rendlesham forest? The press, the local population and every tree hugger or 'wimmin's' camp demonstrator for miles around would have gone ballistic. The upshot would have been the withdrawal of nukes and a refusal to site Cruise missiles in the UK at a time when they were essential to defence. An own goal if ever there was one so it could not be allowed to become public knowledge. Don't forget, the US was not supposed to have any nukes at all on UK soil and the very existence of such weapons was hotly denied by
HMG. To admit the USAF had lost one in Rendlesham forest would be to admit HMG had lied to the citizens of the UK.

The nearest incident to the RFI that I can find that mirrors the controversy of the RFI, is the disappearance of Cdr 'Buster' Crabb in Apr 1956 after he undertook an unauthorised dive to inspect visiting Russian warships in Portsmouth harbour. The file on that incident was closed until this year and even then, it was released some 22 years early. One reason for the file remaining closed was the huge embarrassement the incident caused to the UK government and possibly also to the CIA.

As with the Crabb incident, the reason the RFI had to be covered up was the tremendous embarrassment it would have caused HMG and the potential for damage to the UK/US relationship had the reality become known.

[Observer]

Just to add a we bit more history to puddle's last post, The United States Air Force have since they started carrying Nuclear weapons on aircraft [circa 1945/6 to date] lost or accidentally dropped over 68 nuclear devices. Not all were found and there is a conspiracy theory that one that was accidentally dropped in the Pacific ocean actually exploded. Luckily it was in a remote area. It was the Russians at the time that laid this claim to the UN. Of course it was hotly denied, but no smoke with out fire as they say.
So the Rendlesham Forest incident may not be so unusual an incident taking into account the USAF track record with nuclear weapons.

Obs

[Vortex]

Hi all,

Glad to see that this forum has sprung back into life again! There's been some very interesting points made about the RFI being a potential cover-story for some sort of serious weapons accident. Whilst I agree that this is entirely feesable (particularly the point about the political situation at the time, nuclear weapons being stored on UK soil etc.), there is one issue which still bothers me... I know this is a potentially controversial point and I certainly don't want to offend anybody, but if the RFI is merely a cover-story for some sort of military incident, where does this leave the testimonies of our eyewitnesses? Are we suggesting that all of the witnesses were genuinely mistaken and interpretted conventional military hardware as something 'unknown'? Or alternatively, are we to believe that all of the witnesses were somehow 'interferred with' by some goverment agency, who went to the trouble of planting false memories of UFOs in order to further bury the truth? It seems clear to me that all of the main witnesses believe that they encountered something that they could not explain conventionally and I feel that this must always be kept in mind.

Also, as I've discussed before, I still think that there is significance about the manner in which this case came to light in the first place. If the RFI is indeed a cover-story for some sort of military accident, great lengths were taken to ensure that the UFO story was leaked to the public (slowly but surely), pretty much from day one. UFO stories always attract a great deal of interest - particularly from the media, not just UFO 'enthusiasts' - so in my opinion, this is not the best choice of cover-story to use if you want to divert attention from the fact that an accident has occured on a USAF airbase (containing nuclear weapons) on UK soil. Surely a more 'down to Earth' and mundane cover story could have been conceived to fool the public, particularly when it appears that there were only a handful of public witnesses in the first place?

Something still doesn't fit for me? What does everybody else think? It would be interesting to look into some other military mishaps that occured around the same time-frame and see how these were handled.

A few points to mull over there!

Cheers,

Vortex

[AdrianF]

If the RFI is indeed a cover-story for some sort of military accident, great lengths were taken to ensure that the UFO story was leaked to the public (slowly but surely), pretty much from day one.

It looks as though most of the story surfacing, revolved around the sudden release of information around early January 1981.

Coming full circle on Observers original post, what was the nature of the cover up, if any?

If the most obvious answer is often the right one, then I would tend to look at the USAF/MOD saving face. What military or government ruling party would want to appear as if they had no control? Superpowers exist to be exactly what the name implies and in the process, being all seeing and all knowing. If you were one of the ruling powers and people in your charge were making claims of something that was completely outside of your area of knowledge and if this lack of understanding of the subject ( whatever it was ) were made public, how would you look in the public mind? Slightly out of control, probably. At the height of the cold war, I'm sure neither of the superpowers would want to admit to this.

The cold war spanned roughly the 50's through to the early 80's and by then the USAF/Gov. had become fairly used to dealing with these situations ( whatever your belief in what this is ) Dealing with the subsequent requests for information in a helpful but unconcerned manor reads to me playing it cool. Also, by the early 80's the USAF had probably become pretty good at using the UFO subject in their own interests, especially when it came to denying knowledge of unusual air activity.

The big problem I have with the Nuke accident theory is..If a nuke had landed in Rendlesham Forest, how come nobody ever came across any kind of clear up activity during the daytime?

Adrian

[Observer]

Thanks for that interesting angle on the RFI.

There have been a couple of USAF accidents in the UK involving nuclear weapons, one such accident involved a B-47 Stratojet which crashed while taking off from RAF Lakenheath in the 50's, This had a nuke on board and it was kept quiet for some time, and never got to the media immediately. I'm not sure of the circumstances surrounding this accident or the time lines or how the USAF dealt with it.

My point of view re the RFI is why hush up a UFO visit. I agree that this theory calls in to question all the witness statements, but this may not necessarily be the case.

We can only draw on what we know and currently a weapons accident seems to tick more boxes than any thing else. If any body can come up with another theory that ticks more boxes then lets hear it.
I am very happy to be proved wrong as I'm sure puddle is but lets have some convincing argument that says it was not a weapons accident.
Remember some of the more down to earth evidence such as the forest was absolutely normal during day light, come darkness it all kicks off again. So UFO's only visit at night then and are prone to crashing!

As for clearing up, the bomb was probably intact as it came down on its retard parachute, it was simply loaded onto a small truck by hoist [3 indentations in the ground] and carted off on the first night. The subsequent nights were just doing a sweep check with lights in case of any bits that might have come off.
Do it at night so no locals see you.

Obs

[Wolf]

Lakenheath Air Base, Suffolk, England - July 27, 1956

A B-47 bomber crashed at Lakenheath Airbase in Suffolk, England. While the bomber carried no nuclear weapons, it hit a concrete nuclear weapons storage bunker known as the 'igloo,' where three U.S. Mark VI nuclear bombs -- the same type of bomb dropped on Nagasaki -- were stored. In the collision, three of the bombs sustained damage that could have resulted in detonation. In explaining the accident, Gen. James Walsh, commanding officer of the U.S. 7th Air Division in England, sent a brief cable to Gen. Curtis LeMay, commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Command. "Aircraft then exploded, showering burning fuel over all. Crew perished. ... Preliminary exam by bomb disposal officer says a miracle that one Mark Six with exposed detonators sheared didn't go."

Wolf

[Observer]

Thanks Wolf, as i said i was not sure of all the facts and figures but i knew a nuke was involved. More to the point is how it was dealt with and how and when did the UK government get told. Also how did the media eventually get to know about it.
Its not so much the event but what went on around it.

Obs

[puddlepirate]

One other factor in any alleged cover up is that many of the key players are still alive, particularly Lady Thatcher and others who were senior members of HMG and the USAF at that time. It is quite usual for acutely embarrassing information to be witheld until several years after the deaths of those involved. That was the case with Cdr Crabb and one of the reasons why the file relating to that incident was withheld for over 50 years.

Almost all the witnesses reported seeing only strange lights but many witnesses reported being interviewed under very stressful circumstances and it is alleged that some were even injected with a drug of some kind. Extreme measures for seeing 'odd lights', surely?

I am not stupid enough to suggest that anyone told lies. Nobody did that. However, there is a gulf of difference between actual events and information released to the public. What is released to the public is driven by need to know and from HMG's/USAF perspective the public had absolutely no need to know. The mistake was in releasing the Halt memo. If that had not been released there would have been no story. Personally, I think the USAF took a classic gamble - they did not know what the enquirer knew so on the basis that to deny anything at all happened could result in a flood of other FoI requests (based on the belief the the USAF was hiding something) they arranged for the release of the Halt memo, expecting that would be sufficient to satisfy enquiring minds. Instead of putting the story to bed it had the opposite effect, it simply fuelled the RFI fire.

An example of how official info varies from the actual event is that of fishing boats operating in the northern Irish Sea. When trawling in the area, several fishing boats have experienced snagging their nets on something and being dragged astern or even pulled over. The skippers claimed they snagged their nets on submerged submarines and sought compensation from the Admiralty/HMG. The Admiralty/HMG have always robustly denied any such accidents, yet speak to any submariner and he will tell you such events happen fairly frequently - and I would not be at all surprised if, at a later date, the skipper received payment on the condition that he denied anything ever happened other than press of weather or some kind of mechanical breakdown.

Sometimes the greater need transcends the need for truth.