By Pete Harrison

LONDON (Reuters) - The British government tried to cover up one of the country's most famous sightings of an unidentified flying object, a parliamentary watchdog ruled Tuesday.

The "Rendlesham Files," which were finally published on the Internet Sunday, contain eyewitness accounts by U.S. Air Force officers at a military base close to Rendlesham Forest, near Ipswich in eastern England, who saw a brilliantly lit object land in the forest in December 1980.

The incident is widely regarded as one of the most significant-ever UFO sightings -- the British equivalent of the 1947 incident in which a spacecraft supposedly crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, with aliens aboard.

Several people had complained to the British parliamentary ombudsman, Ann Abraham, that the Ministry of Defense had refused to divulge full details of the Rendlesham witness accounts.

Abraham ruled the ministry had "withheld three documents relating to reported sightings of unexplained aerial phenomena in 1980 -- the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident."

A ministry spokeswoman however said the files had not been deliberately withheld and had always been available to anyone who asked.

In late December 1980, U.S. officers investigating what they thought must be a crashed plane in the forest saw a triangular "strange glowing object" that sent farm animals into a frenzy.

"The object was described as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three meters across the base and approximately two meters high," reads a report in the file by Deputy Base Commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt.

"It illuminated the entire forest with a white light," he added. "The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering, or on legs."

Skeptics say the witnesses were merely seeing the beam from a lighthouse on the nearby coast.

But the report adds that the next day three depressions seven feet in diameter were found in the grass and that readings of beta and gamma radiation were ten times higher than normal. Disturbances were also noted on airforce radar at the time.

Later in the night, a second UFO was seen, described as a red sun-like light. "At one point it appeared to throw off glowing particles and then broke into five separate white objects," said the file.

A Ministry of Defense (MoD) memo in the file notes that: "No evidence was found of any threat to the defense of the United Kingdom. In the absence of any hard evidence, the MoD remains open minded."

Until last week, only around 20 members of the public had seen the file. The government said it would also be publishing other files on reported UFO sightings on www.mod.uk.

The Rendlesham File contains an MoD memo suggesting British requests for audio tapes made by the American officers at the time were brushed aside by the U.S. Later reports by UFO enthusiasts claimed that photographs and tapes were taken away by senior U.S. officers.

-- Anonymous, December 03, 2002

Answers

...approximately two to three meters across the base and approximately two meters high,

okay, a meter is around 39 inches, right? so call it three feet. so, six to nine feet across by about six feet high. oh hell, let's call it 7-10 feet by 7 feet.

...the next day three depressions seven feet in diameter were found in the grass...

the feet were as big as the ufo? i would surmise that it was a sensor package, or very small aliens.

Maybe the leprechauns have developed space flight and were recconoitering prior to invasion?

Curious that the footprint depressions are not described as to depth, which would help to indicate the weight of the vehicle.

Yeah, I think I would stick with a sensor package of some sort.

Kinda like the ones we've sent to other planets in the system only bigger.

-- Anonymous, December 03, 2002

'Glowing object' lit up forest U.K. reveals UFO report Peter Goodspeed National Post

Wednesday, December 04, 2002 Britain has released a report into a UFO sighting in a forest surrounding a Royal Air Force base in eastern England in 1980. U.S. officials who investigated the sighting were unable to explain what they had seen. ADVERTISEMENT Click here to find out more!

After two decades of secrecy and alleged cover-ups, Britain's Ministry of Defence has been forced to release all its files on a reported UFO sighting that has long been dubbed "Britain's Roswell."

As the result of an experiment in more open government, Britain's Parliamentary Ombudsman has ordered the Ministry of Defence to open its "Rendlesham File," which details a 1980 sighting of a glowing triangular-shaped UFO that allegedly crashed in a pine forest surrounding a Royal Air Force base that was being used by NATO to store nuclear weapons.

Over the years, the sighting at RAF Woodbridge, near Ipswich in eastern England, became a classic close encounter of the third kind, with some published reports claiming U.S. military police stationed at the air base had met and conversed with intergalactic aliens who were 1.5 metres tall and dressed in nylon coated pressure suits.

The aliens were said to have spoken in electronically synthesized voices with a strong American accent. And in some reports, the Americans are said to have helped the aliens repair their damaged space ship. Over the years the incident has become almost as famous among UFO enthusiasts as the allegedly secret recovery of the bodies of space aliens from a crashed spaceship in Roswell, N.M., in 1947.

For the past 20 years, UFO enthusiasts have inundated British officials with requests for more information regarding the alleged sighting, only to be repeatedly told the incident had been dismissed after "no evidence was found of any threat to the defence of the United Kingdom."

Last week, however, Britain's Parliamentary Ombudsman Ann Abraham ordered the Ministry of Defence to release its "Rendlesham File," named after the forest outside the base, after concluding defence officials had repeatedly suppressed documentation on the case.

Fewer than 20 people had seen the file prior to last week's ruling. Now, the archive documents surrounding the sighting have been placed on Britain's Ministry of Defence Internet Web site (www.mod.uk).

While they contain no reference to any direct contact with aliens, the documents do depict two bewildering and frightening nights in late 1980 in which at least seven U.S. servicemen encountered something strange and unexplained in a misty forest surrounding their nuclear weapons base.

A memo drafted by Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Halt of the U.S. Air Force, the Deputy Commander of RAF Bentwaters, which was adjacent to RAF Woodbridge, describes the two unexplained sightings in detail.

Around 3 a.m. on Dec. 27, 1980 two U.S. Air Force security police patrolling the perimeter of RAF Woodbridge reported seeing unusually bright lights at the back of the base.

"Thinking an aircraft might have crashed or been forced down, they called for permission to go outside the gate to investigate," Lt.-Col. Halt's report says. "The on-duty flight chief responded and allowed three patrolmen to proceed on foot. The individuals reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest. The object was described as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three metres across the base and approximately two metres high.

"It illuminated the entire forest with a white light.

"The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank[s] of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering or on legs.

"As the patrolmen approached the object, it manoeuvred through the trees and disappeared."

The security detail reported that as the UFO departed, animals on a nearby farm "went into a frenzy."

The next day, as U.S. officials investigated the UFO site, they discovered three depressions in the ground approximately "1.5 inches deep and 7 inches in diameter."

The ground appeared to be "blasted or scruffed-up" and trees in the vicinity had been scarred on one side, in a circle, all around the landing site. Tree branches, some as thick as an inch in diameter, had been broken off surrounding trees as high as three metres.

On the night of Dec. 29, Lt.-Col. Halt and a team of three other military experts toured the site, equipped with a Geiger counter and a Starlight night vision scope.

When they checked the depressions in the ground allegedly left by the UFO, the investigators recorded radiation readings that were "significantly higher than the average background readings" one would expect to find.

"Beta/gamma readings of 0.1 milliroentgens were recorded with peak readings in the three depressions and near the centre of the triangle formed by the depressions," Lt.-Col. Halt said. "A nearby tree had moderate readings on the side of the tree toward the depressions."

As the men worked, they also tape recorded their conversations.

Around 1:30 a.m., just after the bells of a local church tolled across the dark, cold forest, the U.S. military investigators noted that there were "very strange sounds out of the [nearby] farmer's barnyard animals."

"They're very, very active, making an awful lot of noise," Lt.-Col. Halt says into his tape.

Just then, the team members all witnessed a sudden bright light among the trees of the forest.

"It's a strange, small red light, looks maybe a quarter to a half mile, maybe further out," Lt.-Col. Halt reports as he and his men started to move through the woods trying to get a closer look.

"A red, sun-like light was seen through the trees," he reported later. "It moved about and pulsed. At one point it appeared to throw off glowing particles and then broke into five separate white objects and then disappeared.

"Immediately thereafter, three star-like objects were noticed in the sky, two objects to the north and one to the south, all of which were about 10 degrees off the horizon."

The objects "moved rapidly, in sharp angular movements and displayed red, green and blue lights," the report says. The two objects in the north appeared to be elliptical when viewed through binoculars, then they turned into full circles and disappeared, after hanging in the sky for an hour.

The object to the south remained visible for up to three hours, hovering over RAF Woodbridge while it "beamed down a stream of light from time to time," Lt.-Col. Halt said, adding that "numerous individuals witnessed the activities."

A Ministry of Defence memo included in the file shows considerable skepticism about the sightings, although it said the department was "open-minded" about them.

"No evidence was found of any threat to the defence of the United Kingdom, and no further investigations were carried out," the memo said.

"No further information has come to light which alters our view that the sightings of these lights was of no defence significance. No unidentified object was seen on radar during the period in question, and there was no evidence of anything having intruded into U.K. airspace, and landed near RAF Woodbridge."

British officials theorized that the U.S. airmen actually saw the beam of the Orford Ness lighthouse, located about 11 kilometres up the coast from RAF Woodbridge, "with distortions being caused by the beam having been seen through the trees."

"There were also suggestions that fireball activity might explain some of the lights," one departmental report says.

"In the absence of any hard evidence, the MoD remains open-minded about these sightings."

pgoodspeed@nationalpost.com

-- Anonymous, December 04, 2002