Nick Pope - Encounter in Rendlesham Forest: The Inside Story of the World’s Best-Documented UFO Incident

Encounter in
Rendlesham Forest

Nick Pope

All Rights Reserved

This edition published in 2014 by:

Thistle Publishing

36 Great Smith Street

London

SW1P 3BU

www.thistlepublishing.co.uk

To Elizabeth

With all my love, forever

Contents

Acknowledgements

This book owes its existence to a large number of people.

Firstly, I would like to thank my literary agent, Andrew Lownie. I have been agented (I'm not sure if that word' will get past my editor!) by Andrew for nearly 20 years now and I know that as an author himself, he gets it'. He has consistently given me excellent advice and worked tirelessly to get the best possible deals for my books. In a world where the word is sometimes misused or abused, he has genuinely steered me to "bestseller" status.

I would also like to thank all those at St. Martin's Press who have worked so hard on this project, helping to ensure that this final product is as polished as possible. I would particularly like to thank my editor, Peter Wolverton and his assistant, Anne Brewer, for their vision, words of wisdom and effort. They ensured that the editorial process was an absolute pleasure and added value at every step. Thanks to the graphics department for the striking and evocative front cover, and to all those in sales, marketing and PR who have put so much effort into making this book a success.

I should also like to pay tribute to other authors, journalists, broadcasters and researchers who have helped us uncover the truth about the Rendlesham Forest incident. Their hard work and perseverance helped blaze a trail and bring us closer to the truth. Most of those concerned have been acknowledged in the text itself, but I should like to highlight in particular John Alexander, Keith Beabey, Georgina Bruni, Jasper Copping, Darren DeBoy, Chuck de Caro, James Fox, Timothy Good, Neil Henderson, Linda Moulton Howe, Leslie Kean and Salley Rayl.

Thank you to astronaut and all-American hero Edgar Mitchell and to former Canadian Defense Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Paul Hellyer for sharing their views about this incident. Posthumous thanks to the former UK Chief of the Defense Staff Lord Hill-Norton for his indefatigable quest to uncover the truth about these events.

I am also grateful to all those who helped with the Rendlesham Code', bringing their respective energies, insights and expertise to bear on this most intriguing aspect of the case. Particular thanks are due to Nick Ciske, Joe Luciano, Gary Osborn and Kim Sheerin.

This book would not have been possible without the co-operation, advice and assistance of a large number of men and women based at Bentwaters and Woodbridge at the time of the Rendlesham Forest incident. I am grateful to all concerned, but in particular to Dave Coffey, Charles Halt, Charles (Chuck) Heubusch, Monroe Nevels and Gordon Williams. I offer my particular thanks to all those who served in the 81 st Security Police Squadron who, along with other colleagues, were caught up in these events. I hope you get the answers you are looking for.

Thank you to various staffs at the UK Ministry of Defense, the US Department of Defense and the UK National Archives for various technical assistance and thank you to various other people within government, the military and the intelligence agencies who have helped with information, insights or support, but who cannot be named.

My heartfelt thanks go to Pat Frascogna for being part of the team and for his excellent overview (reproduced in full in chapter 17) of the ongoing work to use the Freedom of Information Act to push various agencies to reveal what they know about the Rendlesham Forest incident. Pat has been a tireless campaigner on behalf of John Burroughs and Jim Penniston and has given most generously of his time and expertise.

Thank you to Patricia Bullock Williams for her painstaking analysis of the audio tape made on the night of the second and her meticulous transcript.

My most profound thanks, of course, are reserved for my two co-authors. John Burroughs and Jim Penniston were the two United States Air Force personnel at the heart of this incident. In the years since the encounter they have suffered Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other health problems, and have been frustrated as a mixture of half-truths, rumors, exaggerations and lies have been told about this case. These two men served their country with honor and distinction. It is high time that their loyalty was repaid.

I would also like to offer a heartfelt thank you and an apology to anybody who I have inadvertently forgotten to mention by name here. I am no less grateful, despite the omission.

Finally and most importantly, I am grateful to my wife, Elizabeth Weiss, for all her support. I love you.

Glossary of Abbreviations

ADGE Air Defense Ground Environment

AFOSI Air Force Office of Special Investigations

CAA Civil Aviation Authority

CDS Chief of the Defense Staff

CIA Central Intelligence Agency

CINCUSAFE - Commander in Chief United States Air Forces in Europe

DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

DIA Defense Intelligence Agency

DIS Defense Intelligence Staff

DoD Department of Defense

DS8 Defense Secretariat 8

FAA Federal Aviation Administration

FOIA Freedom of Information Act

LE Law Enforcement

MoD Ministry of Defense

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Agency

NBC Nuclear, Biological and Chemical

NCND Neither Confirm Nor Deny

NCO Non-Commissioned Officer

NSA National Security Agency

PRP Personnel Reliability Program

PTSD Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

PQ Parliamentary Question

RAF Royal Air Force

Sec(AS) Secretariat (Air Staff)

SME Subject Matter Expert

SOP Standard Operating Procedure

SP Security Police

SRAFLO Senior Royal Air Force Liaison Officer

UAP Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

USAF United States Air Force

VA United States Department of Veterans Affairs

WSA Weapons Storage Area

Introduction

Almost everyone has heard of the Roswell incident. Even if someone has no interest in UFOs and no particular beliefs on the subject, mere mention of "Roswell" will likely lead to some recognition: "Oh yes", people will say, "the place where a UFO is supposed to have crashed in 1947". Some believe it, others don't and a whole bunch of people are undecided, but the point is, just about everybody has heard the story. It goes further than this. Roswell is not only the subject of countless books and TV documentaries, but has become part of pop culture. When a video emerged in 1995, purporting to show the dissection of an extraterrestrial from the crash, the so-called "alien autopsy film" was front-page news all around the world. Roswell was name-checked in the science fiction movie Independence Day ; and the town of Roswell, in New Mexico, boasts a UFO museum and puts on an annual UFO parade where thousands turn out.

The problem is, whatever happened at Roswell took place well over 65 years ago. The last surviving witness, Jesse Marcel Jr., died on August 23, 2013. He was 10 years old back in 1947 when, as he recounted the story, his father an Air Force intelligence officer woke him up in the middle of the night and showed him strange debris, telling him it was from a spaceship, and that he'd never see anything like it ever again.

A US infantryman once wrote that "No war is really over until the last veteran is dead". Once this has happened, a war passes from living memory into history. So, with the passing of Marcel, Roswell has become part of history. This being the case, how can there be a meaningful discussion about UFOs, if the best-known and most often-cited UFO incident took place so long ago and no contemporary witnesses remain to shed any light on what happened? Surely there's a more recent UFO incident that can become the new focus of the debate? Can't we do better than dragging up Roswell yet again? The good news is, we most certainly can! This book tells the story of just such a UFO incident and unlike Roswell, the witnesses are very much alive and ready to tell their stories.