"... in August 1980, a UFO landed near an alarmed building within the WSA complex at Kirtland AFB and only hurriedly left when an armed Air Force security patrol arrived."
|
Self-styled “Professor” Simon Holland is a British
science filmmaker who also fancies himself an expert on UFOs/UAP.
Unfortunately—as several of his YouTube videos clearly demonstrate—he is
thoroughly, negatively biased on the topic and has in the past routinely
rejected evidence supporting the fact that advanced craft of unknown
origin are operating in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. Indeed, based on
what I have seen him pontificate about thus far, it seems that any
other explanation for what eyewitnesses report in a given case is
preferable in his mind to the most likely one—an unmistakable UAP
presence at the time of the incident in question.
|
By Robert Hastings
The UFO Chronicles
3-21-25
|
Regarding Holland's recent, highly-imaginative
remarks concerning
the well-known, well-documented UAP sightings in Rendlesham Forest and at
nearby RAF Bentwaters airbase in the UK, in December 1980—which Holland
confidently tells us were actually due to the witnesses unknowingly observing
events related to a Top Secret paranormal experiment conducted by the US
government—I make the following observations:
First, as my UFOs and Nukes book
chapter
on the incidents reveals, dozens of former or retired US Air Force personnel
who were stationed at RAF Bentwaters or nearby RAF Woodbridge have gone on the
record regarding what were unambiguous UAP sightings—involving anomalous,
airborne, structural craft—during the late December time-frame.
The information presented in the chapter—including that derived from my
tape-recorded interviews with a score of those former US Air Force
witnesses—convincingly confirms that the multiple incidents reported involved
genuine UFOs, some of which were tracked on radar. Therefore, the mysterious
events reported were not in any way related to some fanciful, allegedly
classified, paranormal experiment in the woods, as Holland claims.
Importantly, key witnesses including RAF Bentwaters Deputy Base Commander, Lt.
Col. Charles Halt, a number of USAF Security Policemen (SPs), and one member
of the 2164th Communications Squadron, all confirm that one focus of the
anomalous activity was the nuclear Weapons Storage Area (WSA) on the base. At
one point, a hovering, circular craft with flashing lights directed multiple
beams—laser-like in appearance but unknown in composition—down onto one or
more of the reenforced concrete bunkers in which large numbers of the weapons
were stored.
Although Col. Halt dutifully refuses to acknowledge the presence of nukes in
the WSA, in keeping with official USAF policy of never publicly confirming the
location of stored nuclear weapons, their presence has been established via
the testimony of some of the SPs who were on base at the time, as well as the
findings of various researchers.
Specifically, at that time, the Bentwaters WSA held the largest stockpile of
US tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. Had war with the Soviets erupted, the
purpose of those “battlefield” nukes was to blunt the anticipated, massive
Russian tanks-and-troops thrust into Western Europe predicted by US military
analysts.
As my book documents, UAP activity at American WSAs extends back to the late
1940s—at the first atomic bomb storage depots located at Kirtland AFB, New
Mexico, and Fort Hood, Texas—and continued to take place at least into the
late 1990s, at WSAs located on USAF ICBM bases, including Malmstrom, Minot,
F.E. Warren, Loring, Wurtsmith, Grand Forks, and other locations.
Indeed, in August 1980, a UFO landed near an alarmed building within the WSA
complex at Kirtland AFB and only hurriedly left when an armed Air Force
security patrol arrived. So, the events at the Bentwaters WSA four months
later were merely part of a decades-long pattern of UFO activity at nukes
storage sites that had occurred for decades and would continue in the future.
In any case, a number of US Air Force witnesses independently interviewed by
British researcher Gary Haseltine and myself have confirmed for the record
what was clearly a UAP incursion—possibly on two different nights—at the RAF
Bentwaters WSA in late December 1980.
If Holland is even aware of those reports, he doesn’t mention it in his video.
Instead, he cites a single first-hand source, "Rick, the US Air Force
mechanic" who alleges that all of the intriguing goings-on at the base
actually related to a highly secret US Government experiment involving
unspecified paranormal phenomena.
Improbably, within a day of Holland posting his video about the supposed
experiment, he claims that several “scientists, members of the UFO community,
the military and the spooks” came forward to confirm, presumably via email or
texts, that the paranormal incident had actually occurred.
Really?! Unless Holland already knew those persons and had previously verified
their scientific bona fides or military/intelligence community credentials,
how can he be sure that the individuals who approached him were who they said
they were and, more importantly, were part of, or at least knew about, the
alleged secret experiment? As anyone who follows social media posts knows,
large numbers of wannabes can be counted on to respond to any given article or
video, claiming to know “the real facts” about the subject at hand, whatever
it may be.
Clearly, despite Holland’s glaring naiveté in accepting on faith the claims of
the individuals who approached him, until all of those persons are publicly
identified, their claimed insightful testimony and alleged credentials should
not be taken at face value by the rest of us.
Injuries
Simon further mentions that some USAF personnel "were harmed" at Rendlesham
Forest in 1980, implying that those injuries occurred as a result of the
purported paranormal experiment. Actually, as far as I know, the only person
who was physically harmed—or at least has gone public with his medical
issues—is former SP John Burroughs. He has repeatedly publicized certain heart
problems he currently suffers from that may be due to radiation exposure.
Those clearly seem related to Burroughs’ now well-publicized approach on
foot—together with former SP Jim Penniston—toward a small, metallic,
triangular-shaped craft sitting on the ground in the forest. Indeed, radiation
traces were later detected in the three landing gear depressions in the soil
where it had landed. According to Penniston, after a short period the craft
took off at high velocity and was out of sight in the blink of an eye.
In a video showing
Burroughs’ attempts to remember the details of the incident via hypnosis, the
former Security Policeman frantically relives the encounter with the UFO,
speaking extremely rapidly and obviously under duress.
The key point that I am making here is that Burroughs’ subsequent health
issues apparently resulted from his experience involving an anomalous aerial
craft of unknown origin, with bright, flashing lights, that had landed in the
woods—not as a result of his unwitting involvement in some purported secret
paranormal project, as Holland would have us believe.
Ominously, some of the follow-up events at RAF Bentwaters, including the harsh
interrogation of SP Jim Penniston—that included the administration of a "truth
serum" type drug—occurred in response to Penniston's involvement in the same
incident, not because of his stumbling upon some highly-classified paranormal
experiment in the Rendlesham Forest, as Holland implies.
A Counter-Intelligence Presence
Holland Further alleges that Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI
or just OSI) and CIA personnel from Washington flew into the adjacent
Woodbridge base aboard a C-5A cargo aircraft prior to the experiment
taking place, presumably to provide extra security and to suppress any
information that might leak out about it. However, as the former Bentwaters
Deputy Base Commander, now-retired Col. Charles Halt, has repeatedly stated,
the OSI agents arrived in the UK only after multiple reports of UAP
sightings in the forest and at the WSA had taken place and began to spread as
rumors. In other words, OSI's presence was a response to earlier
security-related UAP events and had nothing to do with some purported
experiment, or project, that Holland self-assuredly claims required them to be
present before it took place. Nevertheless, in a follow-up
video Holland
insists that his own interpretation of events is correct. He says,
“What I’ve been told is that Deputy Base Commander Charles Halt now wants to
tell us—admit—that he knows about the project. He was briefed, he knew that a
team from the Air Force, from the CIA, from another agency had already arrived
in Suffolk, possibly on board the C-5A transport plane that landed at a secure
area at Woodbridge. And whatever happened in late December was a planned
project, and the planned project was to mess with people, to mess with
perceptions, to evoke the highly strange—maybe because Suffolk was the ideal
place, a ‘weak’ place of reality…”
While writing this article, I sent Holland’s two videos to Colonel Halt and
asked him to comment. He replied:
Recently I came across a couple of YouTube programs on the Bentwaters incident
by a “Professor” Simon Holland [which were also subsequently sent to me by
Robert Hastings]. I was shocked by the nonsense he presented as fact. I guess
some people will believe anything. I was one of the primary witnesses so I
feel obligated to comment. His statement that this was a secret government
experiment is nonsense, as more than 75 people witnessed the UAP event [that I
participated in] from more than seven different locations, some being a mile
or more away. There were even radar observations of the aerial objects.
Holland further stated that a C-5A aircraft with CIA personal arrived prior to
the event and parked on a newly-constructed parking pad. There was no new pad
and although a plane did arrive it was not until after the event. There's no
proof its arrival was even related to the event. There is suspicion but no
evidence that CIA personal were on the plane. I just wish Holland had done his
homework as he, like so many, just muddies the waters.
Once again, as several researchers have uncovered, the incident in which Col.
Halt was involved was only one of many over a four-night period—all involving
anomalous aerial objects. For example, I was the first person to
interview
the two USAF air traffic controllers at RAF Bentwaters, Ike Barker and Jim
Carey, who tracked on radar an unbelievably fast craft that covered 120 miles
in approximately 8-12 seconds. At one point, the UAP stopped instantaneously
and hovered not far from the control tower. Barker observed it and described
it as the twice the size of an F-111 fighter and looking like an “orangish
basketball with portholes around the middle”. After a few seconds, the UFO
raced away.
Summarizing, self-titled “Professor” Simon Holland gets just about everything
wrong when advancing his latest theory about the nature of the events
in Rendlesham Forest in December 1980. If one actually interviews the many
witnesses to what occurred, as I and other researchers have, and Colonel Halt
did, one quickly learns that the common element in all of their narratives is
the presence of what were clearly UAPs—several of them—during all of the
extraordinary events that took place.
