| Charles I. Halt | |
|---|---|
| Allegiance | United States of America |
| Service/branch | United States Air Force |
| Rank | Colonel |
| Commands held | Kunsan Air Base, Korea; RAF Bentwaters |
Charles I. Halt is a retired United States Air Force colonel and the former base commander of RAF Bentwaters, near Woodbridge, Suffolk. After serving in Vietnam, Japan and Korea, he was assigned to Bentwaters as deputy commander.
The Rendlesham Forest incident of late December 1980 occurred shortly after that and he was an important witness to events on the second night of sightings.
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In the late hours of December 27, and early December 28, 1980 then Lieutenant Colonel Halt led a patrol to investigate an alleged UFO landing site near the eastern edge of Rendlesham Forest. During this investigation they witnessed several unidentified lights, most prominent of them being a bright flashing light in the direction of Orford Ness. In January 1981 Halt composed an official Air Force memorandum[1] listing details of the events. The memo was then dispatched to the Ministry of Defence. Halt also made an audio tape recording of the incident.[2]
After retiring from the US Air Force in 1991, Halt made his first public appearance in a television documentary, where he confirmed the authenticity of the Rendlesham Forest incident. In 1997 he was interviewed by Georgina Bruni for a book about the Rendlesham event, You Can't Tell the People. He has also appeared in several television documentaries, including the three listed below.
In June 2010 Halt issued a notarized affidavit in which he summarized the alleged events of the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident and concluded: "I believe the objects that I saw at close quarter were extraterrestrial in origin and that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted – both then and now – to subvert the significance of what occurred at Rendlesham Forest and RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practiced methods of disinformation."
However, there are some contradictions between this affidavit and the events as recorded by Halt at the time of the incident.[3] Halt’s then commanding officer, Col Theodore (Ted) Conrad, has said “[Halt] should be ashamed and embarrassed by his allegation that his country and England both conspired to deceive their citizens over this issue. He knows better.” [4]. On the other hand, his first recordings are similar in many points to another witness' statement : Rick Bobo, who served at the base at the time of the incident told author Robert Hastings: “The main object hovered out there for a long, long time [he had previously told Georgina Bruni “it was up there for about five hours, just hovering”]. It never really moved anywhere else. It was kind of hard to see, but it was slightly oblong, I guess, and I seem to recall it had bluish and reddish lights on it. When the object first caught my eye, it was already stationary, I didn’t see it move to where it was and I didn’t see it leave. After it was hanging there a long while, I saw things shooting off it, really, really fast, like little sparks or something. Maybe four or five of them... They were shooting off in all directions, but up into the sky, not down to the ground.” [5]
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