Case files / rendlesham-1980
Rendlesham Forest: the Halt memo
- When
- December 27 to 29, 1980 · 1980 on the timeline
- Where
- Rendlesham Forest, next to RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, England
- Reported by
- Lt. Col. Charles Halt, deputy base commander, U.S. Air Force
- Released
- U.S. Air Force, under FOIA in 1983
- Status
- Officially reported, never explained
On January 13, 1981, Lt. Col. Charles Halt sent the British base commander a one-page memo titled "Unexplained Lights." It says that at about 3 a.m. on December 27, two security police patrolmen saw unusual lights outside the back gate of RAF Woodbridge. Three went out on foot and reported a glowing object in the forest, metallic and triangular, about two to three meters across, with a pulsing red light on top and blue lights underneath. It moved off through the trees as they got close, and animals on a nearby farm "went into a frenzy."
The next day, three small depressions were found where the object had been seen. On the night of December 29, the memo says, Halt's team measured radiation readings there, highest in the depressions. Later that night they saw a red, sun-like light that pulsed and broke into five white objects, then three star-like objects that moved in sharp angles, one of which "beamed down a stream of light from time to time." Halt signs it as a witness.
The memo was released under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act in 1983, and the Pentagon's FOIA office sent The Black Vault its copy in 1997. Britain's Ministry of Defence later released its own files on the case. Some researchers, such as astronomer Ian Ridpath, have argued that the Orford Ness lighthouse and bright stars explain much of what was seen; Halt and other witnesses disagree.