Document · 1997
MoD file DEFE 24/1995: UFO correspondence, July–December 1997
Also known as DEFE 24/1995, MoD UFO correspondence 1997, DEFE 24/1995/1
A Ministry of Defence file of the UFO desk's correspondence for the second half of 1997, opened at The National Archives in August 2010. Among the letters from the public is a sustained challenge over Rendlesham Forest: a correspondent who sent the desk the first detailed accounts by Jim Penniston and Charles Halt, published that year, and asked the Ministry to show what it had actually investigated in 1981. The reply restated the air-defence remit and the absence of corroboration for Halt's memo. The accounts themselves, abridged from a magazine article, are thus on the MoD's file in the witnesses' own words.
Source: The National Archives, DEFE 24/1995/1; page numbers are those of the Archives' PDF.
Facts and claims
- documented A correspondent from Galashiels wrote on 17 September 1997 asking how the Ministry could claim that “all available substantiated evidence was looked at” when it had never interviewed Halt or any witness, quoting Halt: “I sent the memo, but I never heard. I kept checking and asking but I never got a response”; he enclosed abridged transcripts of Jim Penniston's and Charles Halt's 1997 accounts from an article by the journalist AJS Rayl, and copies of Penniston's notebook sketches (pp. 70–85). Source: defe-24-1995.pdf
- documented The desk replied in November 1997 that “all available information was looked at at the time by air defence experts who were satisfied that nothing had occurred to suggest that the UK Air Defence Region had been breached by unauthorised foreign military activity on the nights in question. In the absence of evidence corroborating Col Halt's memo, which was sent some two weeks after the events in 1980, and in the light of the Department's air defence remit, no action was then deemed necessary”, and that the Department “does not routinely contact witnesses” (p. 68). Source: defe-24-1995.pdf
Connected files
Organizations
- Ministry of Defence (UK) (prepared by) — Correspondence of the MoD's UFO desk, Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a
- The National Archives (UK) (released in) — Opened in August 2010; our copy is the Archives' digital copy, in five parts merged into one file
Incidents
- Rendlesham Forest incident (about) — Pages 68–85: a correspondent's challenge of September 1997, enclosing Penniston's and Halt's 1997 accounts with Penniston's sketches, and the desk's reply of November 1997
Documents
Mentioned in this file
- National Archives and Records Administration (Organization)
- Jim Penniston (Person)
- Charles Halt (Person)
More documents
- The National Archives: guides to the Ministry of Defence UFO files (2008–2013)
- MoD file DEFE 24/2042: the Rendlesham papers released on the Parliamentary Ombudsman's recommendation (2002)
- MoD file DEFE 24/1983: UFO Parliamentary questions and correspondence, September 1995 – October 1996
- Ministry of Defence UFO files: release of 21 June 2013 (25 files)
- Ministry of Defence UFO files: release of 11 August 2011 (34 files)
- Ministry of Defence UFO files: release of 17 August 2009 (14 files)