Rendlesham Forest, December 1980

The first night. At about 3 am GMT on 26 December (Halt's memo misdates it as 27 December) the east-gate patrol saw lights descending into the forest and, thinking an aircraft had crashed, were allowed to investigate; three men, John Burroughs, Jim Penniston and Ed Cabansag, went in on foot⁠[2]⁠[1]. The memo says they reported a glowing metallic triangular object, about two to three metres across the base and two metres high, with a pulsing red light on top and blue lights underneath, hovering or on legs, which moved through the trees as they approached, and that farm animals nearby were in a frenzy; it was seen again briefly an hour later near the gate⁠[2]. Suffolk police, called shortly after 4 am, saw only the lighthouse; at 10:30 am they returned to look at three ground impressions and thought an animal could have made them⁠[1]. Astronomers' records show an exceptionally bright fireball over southern England at 2:50 am that morning⁠[1].

The second night. On 27/28 December (the memo says 29 December) Halt and others went to the site, measured radiation with an AN/PDR-27 survey meter (0.07 milliroentgens per hour in the depressions against 0.03 to 0.04 elsewhere, figures at the bottom of the instrument's range), and then saw a red light "like an eye winking at you" through the trees in the direction of the coast, which seemed to throw off glowing particles and split into five white objects; afterwards star-like lights to the north and south that moved in angular bursts, one of which beamed light down, and which remained for hours⁠[2]⁠[1]⁠[4]. Halt's tape records the party's bearings and remarks, including the flashing light's regular period⁠[4].

Afterwards. Halt did not see the RAF liaison officer until 12 January and wrote the memo the next day; the MoD's UFO desk circulated it, its defence intelligence staff could not explain it, the air defence staff were sceptical, and the lighthouse, US night movements and poachers' lights were listed as possibilities. No one interviewed Halt or the airmen⁠[3]. In 1985 the minister Lord Trefgarne noted that a real intrusion would not announce itself with a light show, and that the delay in reporting showed its low defence importance⁠[3].

The earliest accounts are the five handwritten statements by Burroughs, Penniston, Cabansag, Chandler and Buran, taken by the base in the first days of January 1981 and later released under FOIA⁠[4]⁠[6]. They describe lights, a red light and a blue light, movement through the trees, and a long walk toward a beacon; Burroughs' statement describes following it about two miles before realising it came from the lighthouse, and Penniston's puts him no closer than about 50 metres from the lights and says nothing about a craft⁠[4]⁠[6]. These statements were taken by the men's own chain of command within a week and are the baseline against which everything later should be read.

Halt's memo is the second layer, written two and a half weeks after the first night, from the airmen's statements and his own experience. Halt's recollections then grew: in a 1991 television interview he described beams falling on the base, which base commander Ted Conrad, who was present that night, said in 2010 that he and others never saw; at a 2007 press conference Halt said "whatever we saw was under intelligent control"; in 2010 he signed a statement that he believed the objects were extraterrestrial⁠[3]. In 2026, in a news interview, he suggested Penniston and Burroughs "may have been abducted"⁠[1].

Penniston's account changed most. In 1981 he reported lights at a distance. From 1994, in television programmes and books, he described approaching a landed craft, walking round it and touching symbols on its warm hull; in 2010 he produced a notebook with sketches and dates, and sixteen pages of binary digits he said had been transferred to his mind when he touched the craft, which others "decoded" into coordinates and text⁠[6]⁠[1]. The notebook's dates do not match the event, and the binary account has no support from his 1981 statement or from Burroughs and Cabansag, who were with him and reported only lights⁠[6]⁠[3].

Larry Warren's account, published in the 1997 book Left at East Gate, puts him in a clearing on a third night with a craft, small beings and senior officers including the wing commander Gordon Williams. Halt says Warren was not with his party; Conrad dismissed the story; Williams called it "a flight of fancy"; Warren's co-author Peter Robbins disowned the account⁠[5]. A former security policeman, Kevin Conde, has said he staged a prank with a patrol car's lights and fog in the forest in late December 1980; nothing ties it to these particular nights⁠[1].

Burroughs has said less than the others, and in 2015 obtained US veterans' disability benefits that his lawyer connected to the incident; the award does not establish what caused any injury⁠[1].