(1980/09/08) RAF Bentwaters UFO landing

At Kirtland, September 8, 1980 "several UFO landings were reported by security policy at the Manzano Weapons Storage Area — supposedly the largest atomic bomb storage site in the world. 'Significant' is hardly adequate to describe these events. But if this is what the public is being allowed to see, what else is being suppressed? To paraphrase Roy Neary in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, we just want to know what the hell is going on here."

A series of UFO events occurred near RAF Bentwaters in late December 1980. Fawcett said that after he gave a lecture at a college in Connecticut last February, a young man approached him and told him about the incidents. This soon led to the filing of about 50 FOI requests by CAUS research director Robert Todd for information about the incidents. The Department of the Air Force and other agencies claimed to know nothing about the case.

Only one unit responded favorably — headquarters of the 513th Combat Support Group, a document management group for the Third Air Force, which includes RAF Bentwaters.

"They released a document which must be regarded as one of the most stunning revelations in the history of UFO research," said Fawcett. The document was a memo to the Royal Air Force from Lt. Col. Charles I. Halt, deputy base commander at RAF Bentwaters, relating three separate UFO incidents just outside the base. The first occurred about 3 AM on Dec. 27, 1980, when two U.S. Air Force security policemen saw unusual lights outside the back gate of the base. They were given permission to go out and investigate and, according to Colonel Halt's memo:

"The individuals reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest. The object was described as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three meters across the base and approximately two meters high. It illuminated the entire forest with a white light. The object itself had a pulsating red light on top and a bank(s) of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering or on legs. As the patrolmen approached the object, it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared."

The next day, Halt said, three impressions 1 1/2 inches deep and 7 inches in diameter were found where the object had been seen, and moderately high radiation was found.

Later that night, Halt said, "a red, sun-like light was seen through the trees. It moved about and pulsed. At one point it appeared to throw off glowing particles and then broke into five separate white objects and then disappeared. Immediately thereafter, three star-like objects were noticed...the objects moved rapidly in sharp angular movements and displayed red, green and blue lights. The objects to the north appeared to be elliptical through an 8-12 power lens. They then turned to full circles."

At the end of the memo to the RAF, Colonel Halt said that numerous individuals saw the events of the final night — including himself.

"This document," Fawcett said, "proves three things: One, the events occurred; two, a UFO left physical traces; three, the Air Force lied to us under the FOIA. The existence of this document is also an indication that other documents exist and that the Air Force was deeply involved in a cover-up of the story."

The story of the RAF Bentwaters encounter eventually appeared in the British press and "as a result of the publicity, the Air Force has refused to respond to any further inquiries, thus reinforcing our long held belief that the UFO phenomenon is of such significance that the military finds it necessary to suppress all public discussion of the matter," Fawcett said.