Charles Irwin Halt (born 1939) is a retired

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

colonel Colonel ( ; abbreviated as Col., Col, or COL) is a senior military Officer (armed forces), officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, a colon ...

and a former deputy

base commander The base commander is the officer assigned to command a military base. In the United States armed forces, a base commander is generally at least an O-6 grade officer, which means colonel (Army, Air Force, Marines) or captain (Navy, Coast Guard). ...

RAF Bentwaters Royal Air Force Bentwaters or more simply RAF Bentwaters, now known as Bentwaters Parks, is a former Royal Air Force station about northeast of London and east-northeast of Ipswich, near Woodbridge, Suffolk in England. Its name was taken fr ...

, near Woodbridge,

Suffolk Suffolk ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county ...

. After serving in

Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

and

Korea Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in 1945, it has been politically Division of Korea, divided at or near the 38th parallel north, 3 ...

, he was assigned to

Bentwaters Royal Air Force Bentwaters or more simply RAF Bentwaters, now known as Bentwaters Parks, is a former Royal Air Force station about northeast of London and east-northeast of Ipswich, near Woodbridge, Suffolk in England. Its name was taken fro ...

as deputy commander. He was an important witness to The

Rendlesham Forest incident The Rendlesham Forest incident was a series of reported sightings of unexplained lights near Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk, England, in December 1980, which became linked with Unidentified flying object, UFO landings. The events occurred just o ...

of late December 1980, which occurred shortly afterwards.

Rendlesham Forest Investigation

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 the investigation, they observed several unidentified lights, with the most prominent being a bright flashing light in the direction of

Orford Ness Orford Ness is a cuspate foreland shingle spit on the Suffolk coast in Great Britain, linked to the mainland at Aldeburgh and stretching along the coast to Orford and down to North Weir Point, opposite Shingle Street. It is divided from th ...

as first pointed out by a local forester, Vince Thurkettle. Later in the night they witnessed bright starlike objects hovering in the sky for several hours. In January 1981 Halt composed an official Air Force memorandum listing details of the events. The memo was then dispatched to the

Ministry of Defence A ministry of defence or defense (see American and British English spelling differences#-ce.2C -se, spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is the part of a government responsible for matters of defence and Mi ...

. Halt also made an audio tape recording of the incident.

Post-military

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

. 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 five listed below. In June 2010 Halt issued a notarized affidavitCol Halt's affidavit – differences from the original story
/ref> 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."

Bibliography

* *

TV documentaries

* Unsolved Mysteries – Bentwaters UFO * U.S. Sci Fi Channels "UFO Invasion at Rendlesham" �
available to watch here
– First broadcast December 1, 2005
U.S. History Channels "UFO Files – Britain's Roswell
�
available to watch here
– First broadcast December 17, 2005 * Galileo Mystery – Das UFO von Rendlesham Forest (German TV show about the UFO landing in Rendlesham Forest) * Paranormal Witness – The Rendelsham Files

References

* * *

External links

Charles Halt - Guests - Coast to Coast AM

Rendlesham UFO Incident - Shows - Coast to Coast AM
{{DEFAULTSORT:Halt, Charles I. United States Air Force officers Living people 1939 births