Best-Documented Close Encounter of the Third Kind

Grainy B&W image of supposed UFO, Passoria, New Jersey Edited version of Image:PurportedUFO NewJersey 1952 07 31.gif. By Bach01. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Perhaps the best-documented close encounter of the third kind took place on 27 December 1980, when airmen at two RAF stations in East Anglia witnessed something extraordinary. First radar operators at RAF Watton in Norfolk picked up an oddity on their screens. Then RAF Phantom pilots reported seeing intense bright lights in the sky. Former radar operator Mal Scurrah said: `As the Phantoms got close the hovering object shot upwards at phenomenal speed ” monitored at more than 1,000 mph.’ Later, airmen stationed at RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk investigated a mystery fire
in Rendlesham Forest. Sergeant Jim Penniston witnessed the encounter with airman John Burroughs. Penniston said: `The air was filled with electricity and we saw an object about the size of a tank. It was triangular, moulded of black glass and had symbols on it. Suddenly it shot off faster than any aircraft I have ever observed.’
The next day the object returned. Base commander Lt Col Charles Halt saw the flying saucer himself: `I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It looked like the rising sun with a black pulsating centre. It appeared to be dripping molten metal.’ Hall acted coolly, taping and photographing the object engineered by `an intelligence which didn’t originate on Earth’. His tape and film were confiscated by visiting US defence officials. Former British Chief of Defence Staff Lord Hill-Norton has claimed: `Someone is sitting on information that should be in the public domain.’
Believability: 9/10.
Possible explanation: what the airmen saw may not have been a UFO, but a prototype of the Stealth bomber, which has a black triangular shape, a strange radar print and was, in 1980, ultra-secret. Project Aurora, a new ultra-ultra-secret Pentagon Black Budget reconnaissance aircraft, is probably responsible for all subsequent UFO sightings.