MoD bows to pressure to release UFO file

VITAL evidence indicating a top-level investigation was ordered into claims from American servicemen that they saw a UFO near their Suffolk air base has been released.

The Ministry of Defence has bowed to sustained pressure and finally opened the official file on the world famous Rendlesham Forest UFO.

The file has been made public nine years early after the Admiral of the Fleet Lord Hill-Norton demanded answers in the House of Lords to issues raised by author Georgina Bruni in her book, You Can't Tell The People, billed as the definitive account of the unidentified flying object mystery.

The mystery arose after a memo written after Christmas 1980 by Colonel Halt, deputy commander at Bentwaters air base, detailed the sighting of ''unusual lights''.

Two patrolmen who investigated saw a metallic triangular object hovering or on legs with a pulsing red light on top and a bank of blue lights underneath. It disappeared through the forest and animals on a nearby farm went into a frenzy.

After the Government file was opened on Tuesday Ms Bruni said: ''The official view has always been that the US Air Force and MoD did not take the UFOs seriously and that they were of no defence significance.

"For 21 years the Ministry of Defence has claimed that the only report in their file was Colonel Halt's memorandum, that the incident was of no defence significance and that no UFOs were tracked on radar.''

David Clarke, a researcher at Sheffield University who is writing a book on UFOs, has asked for five more files to be released.

They are being withheld on the grounds that they contain confidential briefings to ministers, relate to national security, or affect Britain's relations with the United States.

Lord Hill-Norton has been campaigning for several years to persuade the Ministry of Defence to give more details on the object which was supposedly seen by Americans near the east gate of Woodbridge air base after Christmas 1980.