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THE CRASH countryside. 154 REVELATIONS RENDLESHAM It should first be realized that the area in question has a long tradition of being associated with advanced military research. It is in that region that radar was first deployed in the early years of World War II. The facilities that can be seen above ground are said to be dwarfed by the network of shelters and storage areas buried below the East Anglia The two bases belong to the British but are leased to the United States under the terms of a NATO agreement. The American 81st Tactical Fighter Wing flies four squadrons of A-10 antitank aircraft from Bentwaters and another two from Woodbridge. The latter base, according to Jenny Randies and her co-authors, also hosts the elite 78th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron, specialized in the type of emergency intervention that would be required should a team of U.S. astronauts have to make an emergency landing anywhere on the planet. At the time of the events, Wing Commander Gordon Williams was the Executive Officer for both bases, and Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt was Deputy Base Commander. Brenda Butler, an independent investigator of strange phenomena who lives in Suffolk, first heard of the Bentwaters case through an American friend who was in the Air Force. She managed to find other witnesses who agreed to talk to her. She quickly recognized that the exact date of the incident was a matter of some confusion. There were conflicting rumors of helicopters and other aircraft crashing in the forest, and of weapons going wrong. Another airman who spoke to Brenda told her the base had suddenly become active late on December 27; trucks had driven off in convoy toward the forest. At the time, he was actually told by his superiors that a UFO had just crashed half a mile from the end of the runway. This fact should already alert us. In actual UFO cases the attitude of the military has always been one of denial. Only as a last resort, and after extensive investigation, does the Air Force admit that a phenome- non might be "unidentified." Here, on the contrary, the notion of a