Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart 3D Audio.

For full exposure, listen with headphones. On the night bridging August 13th and 14th, 1956, a UFO encounter involving both radar and eyewitnesses took place.

This incident occurred in a place you are already familiar with.

A US-controlled British Air Base on the North Sea coast of England called R.A.F. Bentwaters, 24 years before the

Rendelsham Forest incident.

The Conden Committee formed in the aftermath of the 1966 Michigan UFO sightings, released a report that included summaries of several difficult to explain cases.

This 1956 encounter labeled case number two in the report and

known informally as Lake and Heath Bentwaters featured a letter written in the

late 1960s and sent to the committee by a watch

supervisor at an air traffic control radar site on the night in question. The

Kondon report says that quote, one of the in the letter reproduced above, which was apparently written from memory 12 years after the incident.

With that recommendation, this is what happened that clear night, as excerpted from that letter, read by Martin Sweeney.

It begins with a call from another radar site.

The radar operator asked me if we had any targets on our scopes traveling 4,000 miles per hour.

They said they had watched a target on their scopes proceed from a 0.30 or 40 miles east to a 0.40 miles west.

The target passed directly over the RF station.

He said the tower reported seeing it go by, and it just appeared to be a blurry light.

The C-47 flying over the base at 5,000 feet altitude also reported seeing it as

blurred light and passed under his aircraft.

There was very little or no traffic or targets on the scopes as I recall.

Over one controller noticed a stationary target on the scopes about 20, 25 miles southwest.

The target should not have been picked up on the scopes unless it was moving. But there it was. They called to another

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