On the night of August 13-14, 1956, an event occurred over eastern England that UFO researchers have called “one of the strongest radar evidence cases.” Radar at the U.S. Air Force’s Lakenheath base in England, along with multiple radar stations of the Royal Air Force (RAF), jointly tracked a group of high-speed unidentified flying objects.

📍 Location	📅 Date	🔍 Category
Lakenheath-Bentwaters, Suffolk, England	1956-08-13 to 1956-08-14	Radar-Visual

The event was first detected by radar operators at RAF Bentwaters. They saw an object on their radar screens flying at high speed from the east into a restricted zone, then suddenly stopping and hovering in mid-air. After that, the target on the screen split into several smaller points of light, performing zigzag maneuvers and sharp turns at unimaginable speeds.

RAF Bentwaters immediately notified the nearby U.S. Air Force Lakenheath base. Radar operators from the U.S. 81st Fighter-Interceptor Squadron also confirmed “anomalous targets” on their screens. They scrambled an F-86D Sabre jet fighter equipped with radar to intercept.

As the U.S. fighter approached the target, the F-86D’s onboard radar locked onto an object—the pilot also reported seeing “an intense white light” ahead. But when he tried to get closer, the target accelerated away at an incredible speed, with radar showing an acceleration rate exceeding 1,500 miles per hour. The F-86D could not keep up.

Frederick “Fred” Windley, a radar operator at RAF Neatishead radar station, was a key witness to the entire event. He said: “We saw at least 12 targets moving in a formation. Their speed and movement patterns were completely unlike any aircraft—I had been a radar operator since 1950 and had never seen anything like it.”

The written records of this event were declassified in the 1980s under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. A later internal U.S. Air Force memo classified the event as “unresolved,” stating that “although atmospheric phenomena or equipment malfunction cannot be ruled out, the evidence strongly suggests the presence of one or more physical objects whose flight performance far exceeded the aircraft technology of the time.”

📚 Sources

• U.S. Air Force, “Lakenheath Air Force Base Radar Incident Report” (1956)
• RAF Neatishead Operations Log, August 13-14, 1956
• Hall, R. “Rendezvous with a UFO: The Lakenheath Incident” (1978), MUFON
• Good, T. “Above Top Secret” (1988), William Morrow