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(Image: DS/JONAUSTIN)

Colonel Charles Halt was deputy base commander at RAF Bentwaters, in Suffolk, at the time of the infamous Rendlesham Forest incident in 1980 and blew the whistle after an extraordinary sequence of events.

Over three days numerous unidentified, triangle-shaped objects were spotted hurtling through the sky.

They were seen close to the RAF Woodbridge, which was then being used by the US Airforce.

The case has been dubbed the "British Roswell" – named after the alleged UFO crash in the New Mexico desert in July 1947.

And just like Roswell Col Halt, who held one of the highest positions in the US military, claims there was a cover-up by a clandestine agency.

The former Director of the Inspection Directorate for the US Defence Department, overseeing the entire US military establishment, said: "There is an agency, a very close held compartmentalised agency, that has been investigating the whole UFO subject including this incident for many years.

"It’s kind of scary isn’t it? In the last six years the British have released a ton of information, but has anybody ever seen what their conclusions were, or heard anything about Bentwaters officially?"

During the Rendlesham Forest Incident several security police claimed they saw a triangular shaped UFO land in the woods near the twin airbases of RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge.

One airman Jim Penniston claims he got so close he managed to touch the object.

(Image: SG)

He also drew sketches of what he claimed was a spacecraft and strange symbols, similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics, on the side.

Three indentation marks were left on the ground following the close encounter.

And a Geiger counter expert found radiation in the three imprints ten times higher than normal background radiation, according to a subsequent probe by the MOD "UFO" desk Airstaff 2a.

Col Halt, who made a 20-minute tape recording of his sighting, wrote a memo just days later which he sent to the Ministry of Defence.

But Whitehall chiefs remained silent.

(Image: NGN PICTURE LIBRARY)

Decades later, his memo was released under the Freedom of Information Act and is now considered as the "smoking gun" evidence that extra-terrestrials are real.

Yet, when the British Government released its own files relating to the incident a few years ago, Col Halt says some were missing.

He said: "When the documents were released, the time frame when I was involved in the incident is missing – it’s gone missing.

"Nothing else is missing. I have never been harassed over the reports I made about the Bentwaters UFO incidents – probably for a couple of good reasons.

"Number one, my rank and some of the jobs that I have held, but also very early on, I sat down and made a very detailed tape and made several copies of everything I know about it and they secluded away.

"Maybe I’m paranoid, but I think it was time well spent when I made the tapes."

(Image: JONAUSTIN)

Just recently two former radar operators from RAF Bentwaters spoke out for the first time about how they tracked an unknown object 120 miles in just eight seconds over the base.

Ike Barker and Jim Carey recalled how the target zig-zagged across their radar screens while they were working in the air traffic control tower at the time when Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union were at their peak.

Halt has now written an explosive new book with John Hanson, a retired CID police officer in the West Midlands Police, called ‘The Halt Perspective’ which sheds new light on the 36-year-old mystery.

John Hanson first became interested in UFOs in 1995 when he received a phone call from a police colleague telling him about a huge saucer shaped object he had witnessed in the Stirchley area of Birmingham.

John, who runs Haunted Skies publishing, said: “The evidence of this book about UFOs is just in itself explosive in nature and speaks volumes.

"There is a colossal difference, in my opinion, between low grade UFO files declassified by the MOD as part of their release into the public sector over the last 20 years, and so many other reports which go back to the mid to the end of the last century, many of which I have investigated that will never see the light of day.

“Over the years there have been many explanations offered for what it was that the airmen saw, ranging from the bizarre to ridiculous - the lighthouse, fertiliser on fire pranks, moth traps, downed aircraft, and of portals opening in the forest.

“Each and every one of these claims comes under the scrutiny of the man who was there and witnessed for himself examples of that UFO activity – Colonel Charles Halt - who now, for the first time ever, merely wishes to set the record straight.”

Colonel Halt is among the world’s most high ranking officials to have expressed a belief in UFOs.

He served several combat tours in South East Asia and was a USAF F-16 base commander in both Korea and Belgium and served 28 years in military commission service before retiring in June 1992.

Meanwhile, a detective who probed the London terror bombing may be set to crack the Rendlesham Forest Incident mystery.