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by Brian P James

The 20th anniversary of the Rendlesham Incident passed in December 2000, but interest in “Britain’s Roswell” continues to grow. This is no doubt helped by Georgina Bruni’s recent book You Can’t Tell The People (Sidgwick & Jackson/ISBN 0 283 06358 0).

One of the pieces of ‘evidence’ in the public domain since 1984 has been the ‘nth’ generation copy of “The Halt Tape”. This is the tape allegedly made by Lt.Col. Charles Halt while he was leading an investigations team on a night-time reconnaissance into the Rendlesham Forest at Capel Green, after at least two or three nights of UFO activity and possible landings (the question why this investigation was not carried out in daylight is still one to ponder…)

The tape that has so far been in the public domain was very poor quality, and to be honest didn’t sound as it if were recorded while people were in a forested area – there was a total lack of background noise that would be normal in such conditions. During her diligent research into the Rendlesham Incident, Georgina Bruni managed to acquire the 1st generation copy of the original tape, and Georgina is now making this recording available to the public.

To say this ‘new’ copy of the tape is an improvement over the previous copies is an understatement. We now have background noise of other members of the team going about their business while in the forest, and this includes Sgt. Adrian Bustinza on the radio to his controllers back on Woodbridge base. Until Georgina Bruni acquired this tape, Halt always denied that Bustinza had been present (although that does seem to have been a common thread of his in denying that other witnesses were present). However, given that we now have some background noise, I am still curious why no sounds of footfalls on the bracken floor, nor the sounds of clothes or equipment being brushed against bushes or tree branches, can be heard – try walking through any similar forest for yourself and listen…

In this article I am not going to cover the investigations that Halt and the team were making, as they clearly did indicate that the team were recording damage to vegetation, as well as various anomalous effects and radiation readings. However, those of you who have heard either version of the tape, you will know that Halt and the rest of the team became very curious, not to say excited, by a number of ‘UFOs’ that became visible at various points of their horizon during the night. Now that I have the chance to listen in more detail to Halt’s recording, it is possible to hear clear indications of times, and of compass bearings and elevations for the ‘UFOs’. I took the opportunity to listen to this section of the recording while running the StarryNight astronomy/planetarium software, and these have put a different possible perspective on the ‘UFOs’ they appear to be observing. The one advantage of StarryNight over other astronomy software such as RedShift or SkyMap is that StarryNight depicts the sky as it appears to the eye, with the brightness of stars and planets being imitated on screen – so it could be described as ‘real-time’ depictions and animations of the sky.

It is true that we do not know the exact date that Halt went into the forest to conduct his investigation, but supposedly it must have been no later than the night of Sunday 28/29th December 1980 (would they really have done this on a Sunday?), but I think it may have been two or three days after this – I will explain why later.

Those of you who have visited the Rendlesham Forest at night in recent years (perhaps like me since Larry Warren’s Left at East Gate book was published) will realize that the forest near Capel Green now bears little resemblance to what it must have been like in December 1980. The effects of the “October Storm” of 1987 were devastating in that part of East Anglia (some suggest that attempts at weather control got out of hand), and huge sections of the forest were felled by the storm. This means that now, the density of the trees is much less than 1980, and the trees now are nowhere near as high as the mature pine trees in 1980, so our perceptions of what the area must have been like on the night(s) of the incident(s) are open to conjecture. Despite the insistence of Ian Ridpath, it is obvious that the Orford Ness lighthouse was no more directly visible in 1980 than it is now, and clearly never was, and never will be, an explanation for all of the sightings! However, I do genuinely wonder why neither Halt, nor the other men present, referred to any sighting of the light from the beam, which should have been visible to them once they were at the Capel Green clearing – one might imagine they would refer to it, if only as a known point of reference.

Given the overhead canopy of the trees, Halt and his team would have had a limited view of the night sky - assuming that the sky was clear at the time - my own weather records for the time (for my local area in Oxfordshire) were of skies with patchy cloud, although this should not be taken as a definite record of the weather in East Anglia. The view to the horizon at eye level would have been interrupted by the hundreds of tree trunks that surrounded them. It wouldn’t have been until they reached the Capel Green clearing that they would have had a better view, especially eastwards. I have to confess the one issue that I find curious is that at no time does Halt refer to the Moon, which would have been clearly visible if they were in open ground, as it was waning in the southern sky – but would it have been ‘hidden’ by the tree canopy initially? Even so, it should have been clearly visible once they were at Capel Green. Of course, over the period of a few nights, the waning Moon would have slid lower to the horizon, and by the early hours of the 29th, would have been so close to Jupiter and Saturn that it would have been obvious, and would have made another known point of reference for any observation. So does this indicate that Halt was in the forest on a later night when the Moon was moving closer to the Sun, and thereby not rising during the darkness? This may make the date of his reconnaissance to be later in that week, perhaps Thursday 1st or Friday 2nd of January 1981, by which time the Moon would not have been visible until 0430 hrs at the earliest, by which time most witnesses indicate they were heading back to base.

Let’s now consider the UFOs that Halt and his team observed.

Halt gives a clear timecheck at 01.48 hrs and one of the team observes the first ‘strange light’. Halt indicates that it is at approximately 120° from the site, and that it pulsated, changed brightness, with beams coming to the ground. This is the part of the recording that Ian Ridpath took to dismiss, sorry I mean explain, the sighting as being the lighthouse – the lighthouse is below the horizon here, so it is quite obvious that any lighthouse beam, if it were visible, would sweep up and round the sky, not downwards!

Halt later states that the light is at approximately 110°. Looking at StarryNight, it is somewhat alarming to see that Jupiter was low to the horizon at that bearing - in fact it was at Altitude: 13° 20' 51" and Azimuth: 111° 53' 28", with a magnitude of -2.0. While no-one seems to be quoted on the weather at the time, some infer that it was misty - is it possible that Halt and his team were misinterpreting Jupiter being distorted by swirling mist and coastal fog? Later Halt indicates that there were two objects. Saturn was very close to Jupiter (not dissimilar to their positions and appearance in the winter of 2000/2001) – Saturn was at Altitude: 13° 43' 8" and Azimuth: 110° 51' 50", at a magnitude of 0.8.

If the fog and mist were swirling, it is not impossible that various apparent optical effects of bright astronomical objects could have been observed, which might suggest movement and certainly an apparent movement towards or away from the observer as the brightness varied.

Later in the recording Halt indicates that other bright lights were seen around the horizon to the southwest and north, and indicating that at least one had lost altitude during the time they had been watching (nearly two hours). Again using StarryNight, it is all too obvious that Sirius was low towards the southwest and sinking to the horizon all the while - many of you will know just how Sirius can become severely distorted due to atmospheric conditions. To the east Arcturus would be rising, and think of the northern horizon – Vega is very low (Altitude: 3° 35' 12" and Azimuth: 9° 22' 45", magnitude 0.03), with Deneb close by. Again, were Halt and his team being lulled into misperception by bright stars being distorted by variable mist and fog?

The next task will be to source local meteorological records for the possible nights of the events, to gain more clues as to what the visibility was really like.

One would hope that servicemen would not have been fooled by distortions of astronomical objects, and I am certainly not accusing them of being so, nor am I trying to fully explain (or indeed dismiss) the ‘UFOs’ they observed. However, we must take into consideration the fact that the UFO/lights they observed were very close to the positions that first magnitude (and brighter) stars and planets were in the sky. Remember that this might have been the first time that these servicemen had even been in the forest, so they may not have been familiar with the surroundings. In fact I would hazard a guess that there would be many readers of this magazine who would be far more familiar with the forest now that Halt and his team were on that night.

However, having speculated that Halt and the team may have been lulled into misperceptions of mundane objects, this does not of course take anything away from the earlier night’s sightings, nor explain the anomalous effects at the ‘Ground Zero’ landing site that Halt and his team were investigating.

A downloadable trial version of StarryNight Backyard is available from www.space.com