All language subtitles for Episode 701

Our skies are full of mysteries...

Secretly investigated by government agencies

all over the world for decades.

People are absolutely
fascinated by this subject,

and there are so many people out there

who want to know the truth.

For the fit rstime,

we've collected sightings and reports

from around the globe.

The incident bneurd such
an impact in my memory

that I don't think I'll ever
be able to forget it.

Some experts insist many sightings

have rational explanations.

Even the most careful ufo researcher

can fall victim to a cleverly perpetrated hoax.

But a few continue to defy understanding.

Th uisfo incident
was and remains unexplained.

Are these visitors from other worlds

or natural phenomena?

And do the nation's governments know more

than they ever reveal to us?

The answer may lie in the files

of these untold stories of ufos.

Rendlesham, england, December 26, 1980.

On a high-security U.S. air base,

bizarre events are unfolding.

An unknown object caught on radar,

mysterious lights in the forest,

and the strange experience of
two air force security guards.

Then, all of a sudden, we came into a clearing,

and there was a bright light,

and the whole woods lit up.

We hit the ground.
We didn't know

we thought it was gonna
be an explosion or something.

The rendlesham forest incident

is one of the most mysterious
of all ufo tales.

This is clearly britain's most interesting

and compelling ufo encounter.

Rendlesham has since become
known as britain's roswell.

Now, 30 years later,

more evidence brings the case to life

once again.

Air traffic controller Nigel kerr

reveals his acuncot of an unknown object

detected on radar that night.

I saw something.

Bentwaters told me they'd seen something.

And you think, what really happened trehe?

Bentwaters U.S. military base.

It's the early hours of the morning.

Air force security guards John burroughs

and Jim penniston witness
a strange light over the forest.

It almost looked like a Christmas light,

like a display of different-colored lights.

Concerned it may be a crashing aircraft,

they go to investigate.

We decided to open up the gate,

drive down to the end of the road,

and see if we could get a better idea

of what we were dealing with.

Ase wgot into the woods,

it seemed like we were having
trouble gauging exactly

where it was at first.

And just when we thought we got close to it,

sometimes it wasn't there.

Then all of a sudden,
we came into a clearing,

and there it was.

What appeared to be like a bright light,

and the whole woods lit up at that point.

We hit the ground.
We didn't know.

We thought it was gonna
be an explosion or something.

At that point in time, it was no longer

an aircraft crash.

It was an unknown situation,

possible security hostile threat.

But their abnormal
night was about to get stranger.

As I got back up, the light diipssated,

and what appeared then
was a triangular craft.

Jim claims he made
notes on the bizarre experience.

I wrote down as many things as I could.

I wrote down the size.

It was a black craft,
shiny like glass, smooth.

Then it started to power up with the lighting,

and it lifted off the ground.

And whatever it was dimmed,
started to go up into the trees

and went out, out towards the coastline.

Once we realized we lost
complete contact wh itit,

we called it in, and we were told to return.

The truth of Jim and John's strange encounter

has been hotly debated ever since.

Nick pope manned the ministry of defense ufo desk

in the 1990s.

He feels the professional backgrounds

of the witnesses make the case
difficult to dismiss.

With many ufo sightings, you can say, "well,

maybe it's a misidentification
or something quite ordinary."

But when highly trained

air force security police personnel say,

"we encountered a landed ufo,"

either they're lying or hallucinating,

or what they say happened did happen.

But others are less convinced.

Inconsistencies exist
between the witnesses' accounts.

Jim is the only one claiming
htoave seen a landed craft.

Investigative journalist davela crke

believes there could be
a more rational explanation.

When you try and reduce it to its basics,

this is a group of American airmen

late at night, over the Christmas holidays,

reported seeing mysterious lights

in a forest.

Clearly, these airmen saw something

that was extraordinary
that they couldn't explain.

But a lot of ufo incidents,

when they're investigated thoroughly,

turn out to be quite ordinary objects

seen in extraordinary circumstances.

Later that morning, bentwaters security

callpos lice.

The request is reported in the police logs.

An officer heads to the site
where the ufo reportedly landed.

He finds only faint marks on the ground.

With little evidence of a crime scene,

the police take no action.

In 1980, two U.S. airmen spot

what looks like a ufo
in england's rendlesham forest.

At around 10 to 3:00

on the morning they entered the forest,

reports were made across southeast england

of a dazzling light in the sky.

Nigel henbest believes events in the cosmos

could provide the explanation.

The first light that appeared in the sky

over rendlesham was undoubtedly a meteor.

A lot of amateur astronomers

from the British astronomical association

who are guys who go out looking at the sky

every night saw a bright shooting star

crossing england at exactly that time.

When you see a shooting star crossing the sky,

it always looks closer than it actually is.

And people often report a shooting star,

a very bright one, we call it a fireball

if it's brighter than any of the stars.

They often report what is really brilliant meteors

as being a crashing aircraft.

Not just in the case of rendlesham,

but many other times, as well.

Had these trained airmen

mistaken the fireball meteor
for a falling aircraft,

or had something actually
come down in the forest?

It could, of course,
be that something was jettisoned

at altitude which came down in the forest.

But we he avno wreckage to show.

In terms of hard evidence,

what we need is wreckage,

and wreckage that we can take away

and analyze somewhere.

For some, there are problems.

The lack of hard evidence
and the years that have passed

since the witnesses made
their original statements.

I just think the story now,

it's been going for so long,

every time those airmen tell the story,

they're embellishing it a little bit more.

They're on the lecture circuit.

They're featured in books and articles.

They've become part of the ufo industry.

30 years later, rendlesham

continues to fascinate ufo enthusiasts.

Their curiosity prompted former
defense ministry official

Nick pope to reinvestigate the case.

When I was investigating ufos

for the ministry of defense in the early '90s,

I was still getting questions
about rendlesham forest.

It was the single case

on which the media and the public

were most likely to contact me.

So, I decided, on that basis,

that, firstly, I should pull the files

out of archives and see what we knew.

And secondly, once I'd done that,

do what the police
would call a cold case review.

What I was going to do

was retrospectively investigate the case

and see if we'd missed anything.

Pope's interest in the case endures to this day.

Decades after the original event,

his research has persuaded
a previously unknown witness

to come forward.

Nigel kerr was in front
of a radar screen that night.

This is the first time

he has given a television interview

about what he saw.

Because it was the Christmas period,

the new year period,
it was very, very quiet.

And round about midnight,

we received a call from
the bentwaters command post.

They'd seen bright lights,

roughly at an altitude
of between 500 and 1,000 feet,

they thought.

And they wanted to know
if we could see anything

on radar which might correlate with that.

Kerr was responsible

for controlling military aircraft movements

across the region.

Yet, his standard radar
was picking up nothing unusual.

However, he could also access

britain's most powerful radar equipment --

the nation's air defense radar network

at royal air force base neatishead.

We switched to neatishead radar.

Sure enough, we got radar
contact from a neatishead radar.

We let it go for a couple of sweeps.

It was still there.

On the third sweep, it disappeared.

On the fourth sweep, it returned,

and then, after that,
we didn't see it again.

The ministry of defense

recorded no abnormal activity
over that Christmas period.

This more recent account
does suggest an unknown object

flew over southeast england that night.

But could the radar be wrong?

The radar is not infallible.

There are items such as weather balloons.

Weather llbaoons can be seen
on radar quite easily.

Also, you can have a flock of birds.

A flock of birds would appear on radar,

perhaps one or two sweeps,
but then would disappear again.

But in this particular case,

we had a good, solid return at the location

that bentwaters inquired about.

It wasn't until about maybe a year later

when it was reportedly tionally in the press,

and it suddenly occurred to me, at that stage,

this is maybe what bentwaters
were actually talking

about that night.

Kerr's radar report adds weight

to the U.S. airmen's trexaordinary account.

But the ndrelesham incident was far from over.

Just two nights later,
the mysterious lights were back.

December 26, 1980.

U.S. airmen encounter myerstious lights

and what one describes as a landed craft

in rendlesham forest, england.

Rumors of the ufo sighting

spread through a high-security U.S. air base.

The authorities are skeptical,
but two nights later,

the mysterious lights appear once again.

And the eyewitness this time

is a high-ranking lieutenant colonel.

Colonel halt went out into the forest

to debunk this ufo nonsense

and actually ended up
hangvi his own encounter.

The incident burned such
an impact in my memory

that I don't think I'll ever be able to forget it.

There have been differing
accounts of what happened next.

Documents suggest that halt
is confused about the date,

but he is adamant he remembers the event

with crystal clarity.

We were having the
end-of-the-year Christmas party.

We just finished the maicon urse

when the on-duty police lieutenant came in

and insisted on seeing myself
and the base commander

and talking to us privately.

He was white as a sheet,
and he said, "it's back."

And we both looked at each other
and said, "what's back?"

He said, "the ufo."

Halt heads to the exact spot
where, just 48 hours earlier,

a ufo was supposedly sighted.

I'd taken my small
microcassette recorder along

that I normally carried with me around the base

and recorded certain instances of what happened,

so I did have it documented pretty well.

The tape recording that halt
made that night still survives.

Ufo investigator Gary heseltine

has come to rendlesham forest

to explore halt's account of the night.

When the object had landed,

it had actually punched its way
through the canopy of trees.

And it had comdoe wn, it had broken off

several branches.

They also found a blast area
in the middle of the triane,gl

which may account for the fact that,

when the object took off,

there may be some kind of propulsion used.

As the team explores the area,

a bright light appears moving through the trees.

We stood there in awe for several minutes

and watched it.

A igbrht red light was moving through the trees.

It appeared like an eye, like it was blinking.

We decided to approach it, and it receded.

It mov aedway from us.

Following the strange lights,
they emerge into an open field.

The unidentified phenomenon is in clear sight.

It's yellow.

Suddenly, two more lights appear in the sky.

We just stood there in awe.

Thoughts were running through my mind,

is this some type of hostile activity?

Is iant attempt to communicate?
Is it a warning?

And just as suddenly as it appeared,

it disappeared just like a light switch, click,

it was gone.

Halt wrote an official report of the night

to his base commander,

handing over his tape recorder as evidence.

Colonel halt's original memo

to the ministry of defense

was the formal notification
to the British government

that this incident had taken place.

Colonel halt is probably one

of the most senior military officers

to have seen and made an official report

of a ufo whilst on duty.

Halt's status as deputy commander

of the base and his conversion from skeptic

to believer seem to make a compelling case.

But not everyone there that night agrees.

Halt's commanding officer
was outside the base that night

but did not see any unusual lights

in the sky.

Others feel there may be a more
earthly source for the light --

a nearby lighthouse.

Halt made a running tape recording

of what he could see at the time.

If you play that tape and watch the lighthouse,

the description where they'd seen light,

there it is again, out of the coast.

It fit perfectly with the flashing beam

of the orfordness lighthouse.

Orford ness lies five miles southeast

of rendlesham forest,

but halt is adamant this is not what he saw.

I hear that "you guys
were looking at the lighthouse"

one more time, I'm gonna scream.

We saw the object over there.

The lighthouse was over there.
We could see the lighthouse.

He's describing objects to t nheorth,

multiple objects to the north,
objects to the south.

So, clearly, we're describing something

that is moving in the sky.

The orfordness lighthouse
is way off in th datistance.

I defy anybody to try to tell me

that a flying lighthouse exists.

Halt's report also describes other ufos

he saw in the sky at the same time.

Where did these multiple lights originate?

Nigel henbest has an intriguing suggestion.

As an astronomer, I'd say the lights

that seemed to hover and twinkle
like stars actually were stars.

The brilliant star,

Sirius, the brightest star in the sky,

was visible that night
and in exactly the direction

that the brightest of these lights

was reported as being.

They were described as twinkling
in different colors.

That's how Sirius looks.

Henbest believes Sirius may also account

for the movement of the ufo
described in halt's report.

The report also said

that this bright light gradually sank down,

and checking where Sirius was in the sky

at the time of night,

that's exactly what Sirius would have done.

So, this is actually,
to my mind as an astronomer,

a very accurate report of the star Sirius.

Around 20% of ufo sightings

are attributed to astronomical events.

Still, the stars

can't explain all the events
described in halt's memo.

And to this day, the case remains controversial.

Venice, August 17, 1936.

An extradiornary sighting

of three unidentified flying objects

sends the Italian air force

into a state of panic.

60 years later,

mysterious documents now reveal the event,

and the government cover-up that followed.

It was a personal order by Mussolini

not to speak about this.

A secret u rfoesearch group was founded,

headed by the Italian dictator.

If this is genuine,

one can see why Mussolini would be interested.

Roberto pinotti is a top Italian ufologist

and director of Italy's largest
ufo research center.

He spent almost half
a century studying ufo reports.

The documents within purported
to be a secret government report

of the ufo sighting.

These documents were very intriguing

because they are related to a definite report

dated the 22 of August of 1936.

About a sighting over mestre and venice.

The report contained detailed descriptions

and sketches of the ufo.

Pinotti and his colleague,

Alfredo lissoni, believe the report is genuine.

The huge craft hovered
over the venetian skyline.

The files record the witnesses'
detailed observations.

It had different portholes.

In fact, we see at least four portholes

along the face.

And the object leaves a sort
of smoke behind him.

Suddenly, the ufo opens up at one end,

releasing two smaller objects from within.

The report describes the two objects

near the cigar-shaped object,

but like metallic, circular-shaped objects.

With three unknown craft now in the sky,

the Italian military rapidly responds.

The Italian air force was alerted.

In fact, two fighters

were scrambled in order

to intercept this unknown object.

What could the objects have been?

Eptics suggest a misidentified airship.

In 1936, zeppelins are the most
common form of air transport

across the Atlantic.

Airships, like the zeppelin,

have a cigar-like shape and fuel engines

that would explain the object's trail of smoke.

But lissoni is not convinced.

According to these documents,

whatever was in the sky

that day had a lasting effect
on the fascist dictator.

He tries to silence all key witnesses.

Italy, 1936.

Why has the country's dictator

ordered the vecor-up of a ufo sighting?

Former ministry of defense official Nick pope

believes the political timing
of the sighting may hold a clue.

I think it's important to look
at these Mussolini ufo files

with a sort of contemporary context in mind.

It's a very different era.

This is the run-up to the second world war.

During the war, of course,

the feelings of dread and panic and paranoia.

One has to ask, does any of this play

a role in these ufo sightings, and indeed,

in the ufo phenomenon more generally?

Mussolini thought

that the so-called
unconventional flying vehicles,

because this is the correct term

the fascists used, were just a new kind

of weapon of another European country --

england, France, or Germany.

And as far as we know,

he suspected these objects
were built by the Germans.

Suspicion that Germany

was developing revolutionary
new technology was widespread.

Mussolini sets up a top-secret research group

to study these unconventional aircraft.

This group was cabinet rs/33.

"Rs" are the initials, the capital letter of

ricercatore speciale, special researchers.

Italy's leading scientists, engineers,

and astronomers are assembled to design

new flying technologies

based on witness descriptions
of the venetian ufo.

Mussolini had ordered them

to try to copy these new objects.

Normally airplanes are elongated

with the wings, flaps, and so on.

The technology they tried to develop,

on the contrary, was about rotating wings.

In other words, they tried
to develop round planes,

round objects.

If the case is genuine,

the Italian government's involvement

gives it a unique place in history

as the world's first-ever official ufo sighting.

Until now, ufology

is generally accepted to have started

in the late 1940s with events like roswell.

The Mussolini ufo files are very interesting

because, if this turns out to be genuine,

it effectively rewrites the whole history

of the modern ufo phenomenon.

The modern flying saucer
mystery really starts in 1947,

so if Mussolini was taking
an interest in all this back

in the '30s, really,

we need to revisit the entire history of this.

It's an trexaordinary story,

but is it actually true?

British author and ufo
investigator Mark pilkington

has come to venice to explore the evidence.

Behind me over here is mestre to the north.

And this is where, according
to pinotti's documents,

the ufo sighting took place.

And at that time, mestre
was a quiet, residential town.

Pilkington has been studying the documents

that supposedly record
what happened here in 1936.

So, I brought copies

of the original pinotti
documents here to venice

to try to get a feel for the case,

for the account that's described within them.

But the problem for me is,

I just can't get
past the documents themselves.

I'm just not convinced that they're authentic.

Even the most careful ufo researcher

can fall victim to a cleverly perpetrated hoax.

But pinotti and lissoni

have already considered this.

And so, we had forensic analysis.

This means that we had the paper analyzed,

the ink analyzed,

and in fact, the forensic analysis

proved that everything was real.

But for pilkington,

there are still unanswered questions.

The thing that makes me most
suspicious about the documents

is the timing and the manner of their arrival.

They were handed anonymously
to pinotti, so he has no means

by which to check out their source.

And perhaps most revealingly,

the timing of their arrival
in 1996 is the point at which,

globally, there was
more interest in the ufo subject

than there had been for perhaps 20 years.

So this is the time of "the x-files,"

the alleged autopsy of the aliens

from the roswell crash.

So somebody

could see that people all around the world

were fascinated by the ufo subject,

and indeed, other people were making a great deal

of money from it.

No reference to the sighting

or a secret ufo research group

has been found in any Italian
or international archive.

The entire case rests on the validity

of pinotti's anonymous files.

Pinotti himself is absolutely convinced

of their authenticity

and claims to have shown them
to a materials archivist

who has verified them as being
of the correct time period.

However, there are others
within the Italian ufo community

who are not so convinced.

Adding to pilkington's suspicions,

pinotti is reluctant to allow
any further analysis

of the documents.

Documents which have the potential

to rewrite history should be studied by a number

of independent analysts, not just by one person.

There is huge controversy about this.

If this is a hoax,

it is clearly a clever
and very well-constructed hoax.

My own view on this, I'm undecided.

The whole package, the idea

of a clandestine Mussolini era
Italian ufo research group

is wonderful exciting, evocative, and romantic,

and would make for a great science fictn iofilm.

Certainly one that I'd like to see.

However, in truth,

there's very little here to suggest

that these are anything other
than well-crafted forgeries.

Central Sweden, 15th of September, 1952.

At 11:30 P.M., a young office clerk

and his mother witnessed two ufos

hovering in the skies above their home.

The sighting triggers a full investigation

by the Swedish defense ministry

and became one of the most famous ufo cases

in the country's history.

Clas svahn is a journalist
and vice chairman of afu,

one of the world's largest ufo archives.

He has spent many years
analyzing the government files.

This picture taken by nils frost outside mora

in the south central swende

is probably the most scrutinized
Swedish ufo picture ever

and very interesting

about it is the military
couldn't identify it.

20-year-old nils frost

is returning home after
visiting his girlfriend nearby.

And when he camhoe me,

he was just going to go into his house

where his mother was sleeping.

But then he took look around

and saw that there was some strange light

in the north, northwest horizon somewhere.

And he really didn't understand what he saw.

Stunned by the two mysterious objects,

frost rushes inside to wake his parents,

dragging his mother out to see it.

Quick!

Look, it's there!

So they were standing there together,

looking at this very strange light

moving a little slowly in theea hvens.

And they also saw another light coming up

behind this first big light.

And he thought it was
around 15 centimeters wide.

That's a very big angle inhe t heavens

if he really means 15 centimeters,

an arm length distance.

It's illuminating the clouds in a way

so you can see it's
a very strong source of light.

This strange incident

might never have been taken
seriously by the government,

but nils frost had his camera
with him that night.

He took two pictures

of this very strange light.

You can see also another light
coming up there underneath.

And on the picture,

you can see the line of trees here.

And the object is just above the trees.

These mysterious images

have baffled researchers for decades.

Dr. Eva bernhardsdotter

is a researcher at the Swedish defense agency.

She knows how seriously the case
was taken by the military.

The Swedish armed forces
contacted a number of people

in order to investigate
the source of this phenomenon.

A very prominent scienti
sthad looked at these pictures,

and they said it's impossible
to identify the light source.

The larger object

that was being observed had to be very intense.

Much stronger than the light

that you would expect
from the moon, for example.

It gave light so intense

that it probably ruined the film.

They saw that the negative was so overexposed

in the middle of the picture,

it nearly burnt the negative.

But photography expert
Paul Ellis is not convinced

that the ufo's light source
damaged the negative.

I think it's really unlikely
that a light would be so bright

that it could actually damage a roll of film.

I've been to the arctic circle,

and you do get to see some very
strange lights in the sky.

Not just the northern lights,

but some other very unusual lights.

So, what was this powerful glowing light?

One theory investigated by
the military at the time

was the elusive phenomen
known as ball lightning.

Ball lightning is a very mysterious phenomena.

Many people have reported it over the ctuenries,

many scientists.

And it's described
as a ball of glowing light.

Red, yellow, perhaps blue or white in color,

an electrical glowing ball of light.

It's anywhere from just a few centimeters

in diameter to perhaps a meter.

Is this what nils frost saw?

The Swedish defense ministry approached physicist

and nobel laureate hannes alfvén
for an expert opinion.

Of course, alfvén told the military

that it was no kind of ball lightning

which was his expertise.

So they ruled out ball lightning which,

of course, I don't think it was either

because they were too long up the sky,

and they didn't really look
like ball lightning.

Professor alfvén concluded,

"the light phenomena
does not resemble anything

that we have seen or experienced before."

Then, the investigation
turns to the witness himse.Lf

could this have been an elaborate hoax?

Clas svahn interviewed nils frost in the 1980s

before he died.

When I did my interview
with nils frost in 1987,

he came across as a very nice
and very -- a little shy man

that didn't want to have
his name in the papers.

I never thought that nils frost
was trying to hoax anyone

because bringing out

his mother made hoaxing
very difficult, of course.

So what did frost photograph
on that cold September night?

What --
how is that possible?

One final theory suggests objects

that are not from this world.

The average person really

isn't used to seeing planets in the sky.

Now, if you're not
an astronomer yourself,

and maybe you're in a lonely
place on a mountain

or out in the woods or forest

or on a lake, way away from anywhere,

and you see a brilliant light in the sky

that you're not expecting,

because we're not used to seeing planets,

then I think you could be awed by it.

I think you'd also be rather frightened.

Following the sighting, people investigated

whether frost had observed
an alignment of the moon

and the planet Jupiter.

There's a good reason
why people in northern countries

like Sweden or Norway
might mistake planets for ufos

more often than in southern countries.

The planets appear to go around
a band in the sky.

The further north you are, the lower down

in the sky that band is.

So the planets will seem to hug the horizon.

And that's when people notice them.

Very few people look overhead

and see what's directly above them.

You do notice what's around the horizon,

and it's things around the horizon --

bright lights near the horizon --

that you can mistake for a ufo.

But in 1952, the experts are not convinced.

The Stockholm observatory hacos ncluded

that this cannot be the case
of any astronomical phenomenon.

But is the observatory mistaken?

Clas svahn digs a little deeper.

I've tried to look a little broader

and also looked before and after the date

that it was said to have been taken.

It turned out that just a week before,

you can see that the moon and planet Jupiter

were exactly at this spot in the heavens.

The new star map shows that eight days

before the sighting, the moon and Jupiter

would have been low
and large in the night sky.

If you compare the pictures

that nils frost took with the star map

from September 7, 1952,

you could see that it is probably the moon

and the Jupiter,

the planet Jupiter,
that we are talking about.

Sometimes the witnesses give the wrong date.

Sometimes even the wrong time.

So my suspicion here was

that the photographs were
actually taken a week earlier.

But nils frost stuck to his story.

The mystery of Sweden's most iconic

ufo photograph endures to this day.

If it was taken a week before,

it is the moon and the planet Jupiter.

If it was taken on September
15th, I have no idea.

Then it is something completely different.