UK 'Roswell' Files Released

The National Archives have released the latest set of documents relating to UFO sightings in Britain. The 'Rendlesham Forest Incident' reveals a political embarrassment in the making.

In late December 1980, two senior U.S. airmen in Suffolk reported seeing strange bright pulsating lights in the sky. The effect, they said, caused nearby farm animals to react in a frenzy. Archive documents reveal the Ministry of Defence was at a loss to explain the sighting but they concluded there was no threat. The day after the sighting radiation was detected in the area, as were some depressions in the ground. Documents also reveal that Lord Hill-Norton, former head of Britain's armed forces, had written to Defense Secretary Michael Heseltine, to register his concern about the lack of any plausible explanation. His main concern centred on the possibility of some unknown incursion into British airspace.

British airspace and territory are vulnerable to unwarranted intrusion to a disturbing degree, said Hill Norton.

Despite repeatedly questioning the UK Government Lord Hill-Norton never did receive the explanation he sought. To this day Lieutenant Colonel (later Colonel) Charles Halt, then deputy base commander of USAF Bentwaters and Woodbridge, remains convinced of what he saw BBC news report that spikes in UFO sightings tend to occur around the same time as popular TV programmes like the X-Files, or Movies such as Stephen Speilburg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. UFO sightings jumped from 117 in 1995 to 609 the following year, the same year the sci-fi movie Independence Day was released. Dr. David Clarke a UFO expert and lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, points out that UFO sightings tend to reflect what people see on the screen. In the 1950s it was discs and flashing dials, but by the 1980s the shape changes more towards the triangle, notably the same shape as US Stealth aircraft.