 In 1980, Penniston was assigned to the 81st Tactical Fighter Wing and the 81st Security Patrol Squadron at Bentwaters Air Base. His duties were, as he puts it, to "insure that the facilities and resources assigned to the base were protected from terrorist activity and any other type of encroachment that could jeopardize the safety or the operational status of equipment" in place there at the time. On the night of the alleged UFO incident, Penniston carried a notebook and camera. In his interview with OMNI contributing editor A.J.S. Rayl, Penniston offered a detailed accounting of his experiences, based on his notes from that night as well as his memory. Here, in his own words, is his story: "There is some confusion about the date. There are two duty rosters, both of which are dated December 26th, but it was either that night, the 26th, or the 27th. I reported for work as usual, and at about 6 pm, I prepared for guard mount. The men reported in to Bentwaters around 7 pm. "From Bentwaters, we transported over to RAF Woodbridge [Bentwaters' British counterpart base] in a metro on the back road. It was just business as usual. Since it was just after the Christmas holiday, we expected it to be a slow, quiet night. "About 12:02 am -- I remember that distinctly -- I was dispatched to the East Gate, which was sometimes referred to as the back gate at Woodbridge. There, I was told to contact Police 2, which was Airman First Class John Burroughs and Staff Sgt. Bud Steffans, and that I would be briefed when I got there. "Upon arriving at the East Gate, Staff Sgt. Steffans told me that there was a problem out in the woods. I gazed about 300 meters into the distance and saw what appeared to be a fire. My first impression was that we had an aircraft down. I saw orange, red, and bluish types of glowing light, pretty standard with aircraft crashes. I asked Staff Sgt. Steffans if he had heard it go down. He told me there had been no sound, that it didn't crash, that it had landed. I discounted that and, after assessing in my own mind what to do, decided we should call it in to our superiors at Bentwaters Center for Security Control (CSC). "I went to the gate shack, phoned in, and spoke with Master Sergeant J.D. Chandler, who was the on-duty flight chief for both bases. He asked me to stand by while he contacted the Control Tower at Bentwaters and also at Woodbridge. While I was talking with Chandler, the security controller was making contact with Bentwaters Control Tower, and they, in turn, were in contact with Heathrow Airport's Control Tower in London and RAF Brawdsey Eastern Radar in East Anglia. I was told they reported a bogie about three miles out from Bentwaters but had lost contact with it 15 minutes previously. The confirmation that triangulated the radar sighting was RAF Brawdsey. It had been over Woodbridge, they told me, when it dropped from radar imaging. "I was still pretty sure it was an aircraft downing at that point and asked Master Sgt. Chandler for permission to investigate. Master Sgt. Chandler contacted the shift commander's office, and within a minute or so I got the go-ahead to proceed off base with two other security policemen. We were told to leave our weapons behind, so as to not violate the Status Forces Agreement with the British. I and Airman First Class John Burroughs and Ed Cabansag, also an Airman First Class, got into our Jeep and proceeded out the East Gate, then down a logging road adjacent to the perimeter. It got too rocky, so we had to dismount the vehicle. "Our radios -- the standard Motorola type -- were experiencing a dampening effect common with atmospheric conditions. Basically they were breaking up and I was not able to send or recover full transmissions. At that point, I decided to station Airman Cabansag there as a radio link, so he stayed by the Jeep to serve as a communications relay. Airman Burroughs and I then headed on foot toward the tree line, approximately 50 meters away, beyond which was a clearing -- which is where the activity, the lights were coming from." |
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| My first impression was that we had an aircraft down. I saw orange, red, and bluish types of glowing light. |
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