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While Monday's release by the UK Government of its UFO sightings from the 80s and 90s answered some questions, it did little to resolve mystery surrounding the now infamous Rendlesham Forest incident in 1980.
Photo: Purported 1952 shot of UFO, Passoria, New Jersey. Credit: Public Domain/CIA
The National Archives release of its dossier on UFOs revealed that a spike in sightings at the time of the British run of the X-files, the TV series based on uncovering the extra terrestrial.
But back to Rendlesham. The archives revealed that Lt. Col. Charles Halt, the deputy commander of a U.S. Air Force base in eastern England was unable to explain an object with bright, pulsing lights in the night sky. He described it to British authorities as a "a strange glowing object" which "illuminated the entire forest with a white light."
The papers showed the UK's Ministry of Defence was also unable to decide what the object was, though concluded it offered no threat to the realm. Investigators searching the region the next day found unusual depressions in the ground and detected radiation readings.
Personnel at the base on the night of the sighting including Halt, had seen and described a "red sunlike light" in the trees that broke into five white objects.
The released documents show concern amongst the British establishment with correspondence from Lord Hill-Norton, former head of Britain's armed forces, to then-Defense Secretary Michael Heseltine, to say the "puzzling and disquieting" episode had never been properly explained.
Hill-Norton said that "British airspace and territory are vulnerable to unwarranted intrusion to a disturbing degree."
However a 1983 note contained in the file did suggest a possible earthly cause of the phenomenon: that the unusual lights were a combination of the nearby Orford Ness lighthouse, a fireball and bright stars.
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