Halt memo: Unexplained Lights

Lt. Col. Charles Halt's one-page memo "Unexplained Lights", dated 13 January 1981, is the official account sent by the deputy base commander at RAF Bentwaters/Woodbridge to the UK Ministry of Defence about the Rendlesham Forest events of December 1980.

It describes security patrolmen seeing lights in the forest in the early morning (which it dates to 27 December, a day later than research has since established), approaching a glowing object they described as metallic and triangular, and finding three depressions where it had been seen, with radiation readings peaking in the depressions. It then records further lights seen by Halt and others later that week.

The memo was released under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act in 1983 and became the case's key document. The MoD concluded the events posed no threat to national security; sceptics attribute the lights to a fireball and the Orford Ness lighthouse.

Sources: Halt memo (1981) · Rendlesham incident record