1985 11 - iur - robert coddington tape analysis

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INTERNATIONALUFoREPORTER NO VEMBER/DEOEMBER 198S

Close encounter of the second kindin Portugal


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An analysis ofthe Rendlesham Forest incident tapeby Robert H. Coddington

Rober t H. Codd ington s penthis profession al ca ree r as aradio engineer, pe r fo rming ta peana lysis ro ut ine ly as a part ofhis work. Now r et ir ed, he li vesin Richmond, Virginia.

Editor's note: TheRendlesltam Forest UFOincident, which occurred inDecember 1980. cont ,ues to bea source o f pu:zlemenl andcontroycrsy. with 110 resolution instglu. I UR has previouslypublished an arlicle. by JennyRandles. Of l the case; see ourNo1'ember December 1984 issue.' ' ' 011r Ma.v/ June issue IURpublished a review o f SkyCrash. a book-lengthexamination o f the Rendlesltamaffair. We continue our co ,erageo f this important case with thefollowing preliminary analysiso f all audio tape recordingallegedly made at Rendle.\hamForest i11 the early morn,g, onlyu )horr time after the primaryevent. CUFOS acquired a copyo f tire tape recording through theassistance o f Barry Greenwood.

T he tape recording I haveanal.yzcd was not done at th etime of the initial Rendlcshamincident That event involvedth e alleged landing of a UFOin Rcndlesham Forest nearRAF Bentwarers a ndWoodbridge, majo r AngloAmerica n mi litary bases on th eeast coast of England. A teamof officers and enlisted men,composed mainly ofAmericans, was dispatched toth e landing site while the UF Owas still on the ground. Somereports a liege that en ti tics

were seen near the UFO,which was disc-shaped andresting on three legs. The mostexotic claims have it thatcontact was establishedbetween the base commanderand the UFO occupants.

Several hours later, du r ingthe early-morning hours o f thenext day, a team ofinvestigators u11dcr thecommand of (then) Lt. Col.Cha rles Halt of the USAF wassent to investigate the landingsite. The tape recording I amdiscussing he re purports to bea record of events thatoccu r red during t heir work,including the sigh t in g ofanother UF O.

The tape has emergedunder somcwhn suspiciouscircumstances; gi.vcn theattempts at obfuscationengaged in by both the U.S.an d British governments andmilitary, t he ex istcnce an dcontent of suc h a taperecording are con troversial.Thus I began my investigationlookjng for evidence that therecording had been altered orprocessed in any way thatwould cast doubt on itscon enrs or au hen t ic i ty .

I t shou ld be em phasizedthat the tape on which thisanalysis is based is not theodgina l tape (or tapes) inconten tion, but is a copy a fewgenerations removed from theoriginal an d t herefore subjectto possible de lellions oradditions of material . l thusmay be missing important clues

that can be detected on ly inth e original, or T ma y bemisled by apparent clues thatwere, in fact, added in thecopying.

The exact date on whichth is recording was made is stilluncertain ; the date is eitherDece mber 28 or Decembe r 30,1980. According to th e dialog.th e timespa n covered is fromI 25 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. Thedialog mentions the usc ofGeiger counter measurementsfo r possible residuaradioactiviry and "starscope"observation of physica l tracesleft by the UFO. The tape is arunning accou nt, presumablynarrated by Lt. Col. Halt , ofthe investigatory proceduresan d the findings.

M uch ca n be observed nndinferred by si mply lis tening tothe rape's content withoutfiltering . There :lre threesegments of reco rded dialogvaryi ng in length an dseparated by (mostly) silentintervals. Their approximatetimings are:

Dialog sefT!len 17 mjnutee 35 aecondll

F!l'lll a i l " n ~ "25 seconds

Oia.log segment 22 minutes 23 second

Second 1ilence24 seconds

Dialog tegment 37 minutes 49 second

INTERNATIONAL UFO REPORTER NO'IEMBERfDECBMBER JIBS I


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Tb us there is a to ta I of justunder 18 minutes of actionpresent on the tape. Segment 2is immediately preceded by atwo-beep identifying tone andScgmen L 3 is preceded by a 3-becp tone. I t seems obviousthat these identifying toneswere inserted during th ecopying process, suggestingthat th e accompanying audiosegments may be only isolatedport ions of more ex tcnsiveoriginal recordings. We simplycan't determine whe the r theunedited origina l materialwould support th e nllcgedcircumstances or refute them.

Among the characteristicsto which I lis tened attentivelyis the acoustic ambience. Whatsou nds ci thcr con firm or bel icthe alleged circumstances?What so unds arc missing thtllshou ld be p resent? In li s teningto th e Rendlesham tape, Iexami ne d three differentclements of the recordingprocess. They are:

The acousttc emironment.Because some individuals thinkthe tape was simulated. l wa sinterested in a scertaining if itmight reveal acoustics of astudio or other enclosed space.Ordinarily, a production doneindoors will manifest soundcolorations typical or s urfacereflections and r oo mreverberation. Excep t for thecough anomaly and one othermomentary acoustic aberrationdiscussed below, I detected norecognizable "indoor"characteristic of the acoustic

environment audible on th etape.

Voice pickup is relativelyfar-ranging, and themicrophone's position alsomade it susceptib le duringSegments I and 2 to th e soundof a two-way radio receiver.evidently a walkie-talkiecarried by a security officer.At times this radio obscuredthe voices of the participants;apparently they didn't realizethat it should have hccn se tlower in volume. To me thislends credibi li ty to the allegedcircumstances, si nc e asimu lation wot


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midst of what purports to bean exploration in th e woods, inwhich there is no acoustic hintof an indoor locale. But thereit is, not even a coughorigina tin g w ith on e of thenearby principals, bu t a coughorig inating in the distance andarrivjng at the microphone ina manne r clearly indicative ofan indoor ambience, which Iguess wou ld require a buildingth e volume of a quonset h ut orlarger.

This si ngularity. along witha more obscure mumble about40 seconds before th e cough,raises a question: is th e entiretape a simulat ion , after al l? Inmy opinion. th e fact that theseanomalies have survived isproof against this idea, becausen carefully and editedsimulation would certainlyha vc had such blata nt cluesedited ou t of the final productbefore it was released. On th eother hand, it is difficult toconceive of a mechanism thatwould have p roduced thesesingularities, unless we supposethat they cou ld have beeninadvertently added later,during one of rhe tapesseveral rc-recordings. Theoriginal tape may have beencopied acoust ically--from th espeaker of on e mac h ine to th emicrophone of another. If theacoustic copyin g took place ina building an d someone offmike happens to cough duringth e process, th e cough and theoriginal, uninterrupted forestactivity sounds would berecorded simultaneously on thecopy, and would appear on al l

subsequent co pi es. At this stageof my analysis. 1 cons ider thisto be th e best possiblecxplanarion of ahe a nomal ies.The leclmical charncteriszics.

The multi-generational namreof the copy proidcd me wa sevident at the outset. F ro m thestar t of the tape to the stan ofthe acrual dialog, there aresuccessive discrete incrementsof 2-3 decibels in c rease inaudible hi ss, each incrementdenoting at least onegeneration of copying. Thetape hiss in the ra nge of 2,000to 8,000 Hz indicates that mycopy of th e tape couldrepresent seven or eightgenerations.

The Rcodlesham tapecontains little acousticinformation above or belowth e range of 250 to 2500 Hz,which is about the range of atelephone circuat. That is anadequate speet r\lm fo rintelligibility, t>ut considerablynar ro wer than even modest,dictation-model cassetterecorders can provide. Possiblecauses fo r th e restr icted rangecould be th e usc of either anold reel-to-reel recorder or adictation-type pocket recorderthat uses minicassette ormicrocassette te c hn ology. Evenwith these, though, experienceleads me to discount e ither asthe explanation for th e pooraudio quality.

The tape recordi ng acruallyreminds me of ahc resultssometi mes obtained by using a"quick a nd dirty" processing

pr ocedure ro which rvcalluded before: acousticcopying. l f yo u undertook tocopy a tape by playing it on as mall portable machine an d ttsma rgi nal speaker and pickedup the sou nd with themi crophone of anotherreco rd er. it's virtually certainth at the or iginal soun d qualil )would suffer dras tically. So,having suggested that certainano111alil!S in th e Rcn d lcshamtape could have come aboutthrough acoustic copying. Inow suggest that the sameprocess seems th e most likcl}among th ose I ca n postulate toaccount for it s poor audioquali ty.

Another technicalcharac teristic calling fo rcomment is the nature of theSTART/ STOP noises on therecording. Most po rta blccasse tte recorders of myexperience crea te a pronouncedtransient noise best describedas a bass-heavy "whump" whenth e PLAY an d / or RECORDbuttons are pressed. Becausethey arc so quiet, h's difficultto co unt th e stop/ restartoperations on th e tape withany confidence, but Segment 3is rife wi th them; T believethere ar c more than 30. Themanner in which thesetransients appear is suggcslivcof afte r-the-fact editing, inwhich power-down and powerup noises would ha ve beennearly obli terated by thesh ortcom in gs of acousticcopying.

lNTERNATlONAL UFO REPORTER NOVEMBER/DECEMBER. 1165 11


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The most interest ing cluerevealed by analysis of thetape content above 2,500 Hz isa sharply different characterof the noise spectrum ofSegment 3 in comparison withthat of the preceding segments.Without sophisticatedequipment this differencedoesn't lend itself to quantitiveanalysis, bu t one cha racterist icis that the hiss level onSegment 3 sounds louder thanthat on the other two segments,a I hough a meter givessomewhar indeterminatereadings. The majordifference, though, is in the

spectral distribution of thenoise, which has a whistlelikeprominence like winter windin the caves. Hard to describe,it's familiar to every audiospecia list as "ringing ." Clearly,there is someth ing differenthidden in th.e history ofSegment 3.

W hen considering possiblecauses fo r this inconsistencybetween segments, I speculatedthat recording the content ofthe original Segment 3 cassetteon to a reel-to-reel recorder ofmodest performance, uponwhich editi111g subsequently

1t INTERNATIONAL UFO REPORTER NO'IEMBER/DEOEMBEJl UBS

could be performed with arazor blade and splicing tape,followed by re-recording thisedited version as Segment 3,could easily account fo r theaudible step of extraprocessing this segmentexhibits. 1t also co uld explainthe louder machine whine andperhaps some, if not all, of thenumerous but inconspicuousstarts an d stops during the fewrecorded minutes in to whichmore than two early-morninghours are compressed. Whilethis may not have been theexact scena rio, I stronglysuspect that some so rt of


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processing invol vi ng at leastone extra step of re-recordingwas appl ied exclusively toSegment 3.

It' s important to note th atadded editing is not primafacie evidence of fraud. 1speak from experience when Inote that reco rdings arcsusceptible to considerableimprovement through editingor excerpting, whhoutnecessarily ch a nging orobscuring th e essentia l contentof the original. There often ismuch that is digressing,inconsequent ia l, or boring inimpromptu recordings tha t canreasonably be excised. On theother hand, the apparent factthat someone opted foradditional processing of onlyth e third segment of this tapegives one room to speculate asto ju s t how it differed fromthe earlier ones. Was there, infact, something about it to beconcealed?

At this stage of myanalysis I can offer sometentative conclusions. Theweight of the evidence leadsme to discount the hypothesisthat portions of the recordingwere made in a so und stage.Rather, the acoustic anomaliesthat do exist in the firstSegment and the limited audiofrequency range make it fairlycerta in that acoustic copyi ngwas used a t least once.

Contingent on the valid it yof th e statement, Segments 1a nd 2 appear to be aut henticrecordings of actual ac t ivitiesundertaken in Rendlesha mForest as described on the tapean d othe r witness accou nts.Note that validity of th esesegments does not veri f y actualsighting of a landed or crashedalien craft or of th e presenceof , a nd interaction with, alienbeings. Discussion on th e tapemakes no allusion to suchevents; in fact, Halt is carefulto avoid an y reference to thetruth of such accounts at thetime of taping. Fo r instance,he says,"... initial -- I shouldsay, 'suspected' im pact point."And other references include''... withi n 10 feet of thesuspected landing si te," an d"... looks like a blasted area."

Conversely, I hold greaterreservations concerning thevalidity of Segment 3. Whilethe almost certain fact that itunderwent additionalprocessing (o r a technicallydifferent origin) is notnecessarily incriminating, wehave no inkling of the reasonit was done. Of course thisleaves room to doubt thevalidity of th e events itpresumes to describe. 1f themachinery wh ine in a llsegments happens to be fromth e light-all generators, the n itseems clear that Halt andcompan y were not actuallytraversing fa rm yards a ndfieldsas they report in Segment 3.

The di a log content orSegment 3 a lso se ts it quiteapart from the rest of theevening's events, alluding torather prolonged observa Lionsof various nocturnal-lightphenomena that continued fornearly two hours. I t seemsunlike th e U.S. military tocountenance public relea se ofany confi rmation or "UFOchasing" by service personnel,which is on e reason that th eRendlesham tape has createdso much controversy in thef irs t place. Segment 3 certainl ydoes nothing to dispel that.What it docs. though , is tose nsationalize what otherwiseis a believable tape, therebymoving it into that category socommon to alleged UF Odocu mentation: inconcl usi vewithout further corroboratoryevidence.

Coming soon in IUR ..South .AJneriean UFO crash:the t ru e story, by Willy SmithThe use and abuse ofhypnosis in UFO resurch,by Hobart G. Ba.ker

Earthlights and UFOs; or , ThePersinger fallacy, by ChrisRutkowskiDoes Ufology have a Intme?,by David M. Jacobs

INTERNATIONAL UFO REPORTER NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1985 U

1985 11 - iur - robert coddington tape analysis

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