US airmen report a landed craft in Rendlesham Forest over three nights

There is no known film of the events. What exists instead is documentary: a memo written by the deputy base commander two weeks afterwards, and an audio recording made in the forest on the third night as personnel moved through it. The memo describes a metallic object, triangular in shape, that reportedly illuminated the forest floor before moving off through the trees. On the later night the recording captures personnel describing lights in the sky and indentations found in the ground.

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, then deputy commander of RAF Bentwaters, wrote the memo and later stated publicly that he witnessed lights he could not account for. Sergeant Jim Penniston and Airman First Class John Burroughs, who went into the forest on the first night, have both said they encountered an object at close range. Their accounts of what they touched or saw have shifted in emphasis over four decades, and they differ from one another on points of detail. The Ministry of Defence's own file records that the department assessed the reports and considered them of no defence significance.

The UK Ministry of Defence released its Rendlesham file through the National Archives, which is why the memo is a public document rather than a claim about one. The MoD position was that nothing of defence significance occurred and that no further investigation was warranted. It did not offer an identification of what the airmen saw. A conventional explanation has been proposed by others, chiefly that the Orfordness lighthouse and a bright meteor account for the sightings; several of the witnesses reject it, and it has not been adopted as an official finding.

No official body has said what the airmen encountered. The ground indentations were never independently analysed to a conclusion. The radiation readings recorded in the memo have been read as both slightly elevated and as within background, depending on who is interpreting the instrument. The witnesses' own accounts have grown more detailed over time, which is a known feature of long-recalled testimony and makes the earliest statements the more useful record.