1 - The Black Vault

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janyone clings to any other possibility they are wrong to do so.
For a decade the above simple truth was not thought to be true. Even when the Woodbridge
police claimed a different date for the initial sighting in late 1983 an~ when l ~ound ~ very
early note by Brenda Butler which confirmed that her source (the st1ll mystenous a1rman .
Steve Roberts) had initially told her that it occurred on ~6 December (bu~ then changed thiS
claim to the following day) we were reluctant to accept 1t because the we1ght of other
evidence argued against.
Primarily this meant Colonel Halt's insistence about his mem?, compiled (~~ assumed) from
witness statements but in reality from his memory alone. ThiS was so pos1t1ve that the
dates were 27 December and 29/30 December. And he was backed by other witnesses
(such as Larry Warren) then willing to go on public record.
This reliance upon false information was a serious problem for the investigation. It
compromised not only efforts to obtain information from the authorities (Brenda Butler and
Dot Street asked Woodbridge police to comment within weeks of the sighting but asked
them about the wrong night and so were never told about the police suggestion that the
lighthouse was visible from the forest as the might otherwise have been).
It also meant that we dismissed more readily than we would otherwise have done Ian
Ridpath's theory that the initial light in the sky was a bright meteor. One of these was
visible on the night of 26 December and could have triggered a misperception. Yet,
officially, the sighting did
not happen on that night. It happened on the next night when there was no meteor. So, of
course, we tended to be skeptical of this idea in the early years.
The MoD file shows that the authorities were equally thrown off the track by this
fundamental error. They had the wrong dates to check out and so any study was pretty
meaningless. It was not even realised by the MoD as quickly as it was by UFOiogy since
Halt and the British squadron leader Donald Moreland stood by the dates (as you might
expect them to do) and so
the MoD, again naturally, believed trained military personnel and their contemporary
records.
It cannot be underestimated here what a simple error did to this case.
It is hard to appreciate why this cock-up happened, if the events were significant. Halt
could have studied the signed witness statements and the correct date was in the base log
book (the blotter). So why wrong dates were imposed onto the case and then allowed to
stand firm for so many years is always going to be a contentious issue.
I da_re say some skeptics might contend that it was preferable for UFOiogists and witnesses
to nd the spectre of explanation by standing by a false date. But I was really glad to have
the ~ates sorted out in 1989 and it started the slow process towards resolution. UFOiogists
are, m the mam, here to solve cases and not to perpetuate mysteries. And - do not forgetit
was one of the original witnesses who clarified the correct dates for me - without
hesitation - so this hardly suggests that there was a plot to obscure the damaging truth.
No the problem with the dates - seriously misleading as it was - occurred through an
apparent m1stake rather than any devious plotting.
Th.is was the first cock up to inspire beliefs about a conspiracy - many of which persist to
thls.day. But 1t wa.s not the last and it is a great shame that the error was not spotted
earlier because th1s case may have unravalled long before it did - since the correct dates
are the key to finding answers.
UFOiogy long did not have these dates. And nor, we now know, did the MoD. Both paid the
price for being innocently mislead - until the story had become a legend amidst its own
phenomenon.
This is an object lesson to all people involved in UFO study - including the MoD. Check and
http://www.flyingsaucery.com/Rendlesham/comjen1.htm 22/10/01