Email re Lakenheath-Bentwaters case received by James Easton, July 1999


Voyager Newsletter - Issue No. 6, Date: 15/06/99, Re: Bentwaters and Lakenheath - 1956

UFO Research List

The following was received via e-mail during the past week and is a further insight into one of the classic, historical cases.

Although initially discussing the December 1980 'Bentwaters' incidents, the writer has correctly surmised that their father was referring to a much earlier event!

Dear Sir,

I recall seeing a TV documentary with this subject matter, I dismissed the testimonies of the contributors as a government experiment or "somesuch" and left it to others "with too much free time and imagination" to conjecture upon.

However, I mentioned the programme to my father, he "corrected" me, saying that the incident concerned occurred in the late1950s. I dismissed his notion, telling him that, as ever, he didn't listen to me. With the benefit of hindsight it would appear that we were talking about two very different stories.

He told me of a conversation with a long time acquaintance of his, a radar engineer working for Racal, a telecommunications Company. He told me that this man spun him a story about a colleague who was called to R.A.F. Bentwaters to test radar equipment, I have never bothered prying as my father would never let-up with barracking me if he thought I saw this tale as anything other than spooky nonsense, though his own postscript to the story was that the tale had never varied in its detail over the years.

In a nutshell, the engineer and his boss where called with some urgency to test ground radar at Bentwaters, he (the engineer) was surprised to see an American military technician from another base (Lakenheath) already running magnetic tape spools on a portable viewer, a C.R.T. and associated amplifiers, a radar without the radar, if you will. He was requested to check and test the consoles in the base's control tower. After several hours he pronounced the equipment to be in good working order.

Both he and his boss where obviously curious because of the more than usual lack of small talk with their clients and the brusque attitude of the normally friendly American from Lakenheath. Some weeks later the engineer related the morning in question to another technician working at an R.A.F. base in East Anglia, this fellow told the engineer he had heard from "someone who knew someone" that the evening before his callout to Bentwaters there was great panic at both Lakenheath and Bentwaters. The fellow said that fighter aircraft had been scrambled after erratic but "solid looking" radar traces where observed travelling from east to west on first sighting. He said that the personnel on site at Bentwaters (those on duty) all saw lights in the skies and that Lakenheath base control tower personnel had telephoned their concerns to Bentwaters.

As I have stated, it is a sketchy story to me at least, it doesn't seem to have any substance, no dates or names. I have not heard or seen of any mention concerning the alleged events but thought it an interesting tale to mention. Perhaps I have not looked very hard.

Best regards

[name deleted]

Although maybe nothing of new substance re what is presumably the renowned August, 1956 'radar' case, an interesting tale nonetheless.


Courtesy James Easton