Britain's version of Area 51 off the Suffolk coast at Orford Ness

It’s a potent combination for one of the United Kingdom’s greatest mysteries... the British version of Nevada’s Area 51 (Orford Ness), the nation’s longest-serving monarch (Queen Elizabeth II) and Project Albian (the extraterrestrial angle dating back to the early 1960s).

I first encountered the story after the British monarch’s death in September 2022, through alleged revelations from a “royal bodyguard” identified as Daniel Turner who I came across in a YouTube video.

The story came to light while I was looking for information about Orford Ness, the spit of land in Suffolk linked to the mainland at Aldeburgh and stretching along the coast to Orford and down to North Weir Point, that was administered by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) for 80 years from 1913-93 when it was transferred to the National Trust.

And, following up on rumours the transfer of the land from the defence ministry had not brought an end to the clandestine work being hidden there, rather just moved it underground, I discovered a far stranger story than I’d ever bargained for.

Aside from 80 years of MOD testing carried out there, Orford Ness was also, according to the “Turner” revelations, heavily entrenched in Project Albian... the British codename for an agreement reached with “extraterrestrials” after United States President Dwight D Eisenhower’s infamous secret meeting at Edwards Air force in February 1954.

Despite my best efforts I can no longer track down the YouTube video that alerted me to Project Albian but not everything about it has been erased... a report on an online platform entitled Daily News – with an administrative contact in Reykjavik, Iceland – still carries the basic details.

The report states Turner, allegedly a former MI6 agent and a bodyguard for the Queen, claims to have discovered documents shortly after her death that dated back to the 1960s that were kept hidden in her study at Buckingham Palace. These documents detail visits to Orford Ness, her connections with extraterrestrials and photographs of strange artefacts.

On several occasions Turner claims to have accompanied the Queen on late-night visits to Orford Ness, where the testimony suggests she met with senior government officials to discuss alien technology, star maps and extraterrestrial phenomena. During one trip Turner claims to have witnessed a UFO flying above Orford Ness which left the Queen visibly shaken.

Now a few references in the story lead me to seriously question its veracity, particularly the names of some of the protagonists mentioned, but continuing on the basis that there’s no smoke without fire I decided to continue my examination of the military research conducted there and the geography of the region and whether there could be any substance to the claims it was, and still is, the site of an underground complex used as part of Project Albian.

The word Albian itself seems a fitting choice for the name of a secret project centred off the coast of England under the North Sea... describing both an age of the geologic timescale, the uppermost subdivision of the lower Cretaceous period, and a stratigraphic stage of geological rock formation.

Going back to that period England was an area of land on the western edge of Europe, separated from what is now Denmark by a land mass – later known as Doggerland – that disappeared beneath the waves about 8,000 years ago.

A region that stretched from the east coast of Britain to Denmark, the Netherlands, and northern Germany, Doggerland was covered in lush forests and marshes that allegedly provided a home to Mesolithic people who hunted, fished and gathered berries to survive. Then, as sea levels began rising at the end of the last Ice Age, it started to sink. Its inhabitants were forced to flee to higher ground in modern Britain and mainland Europe with Doggerland almost completely submerged until a massive tsunami off the coast of Norway finally completed the landmass’ disappearance.

As a schoolboy I remember the shipping forecast interrupting John Peel, Annie Nightingale and Kenny Everett on the radio and not understanding the purpose it served at all or what the names referred to, but one that always stuck in the mind was Dogger, which I did associate with Dogger Bank, thought to be the last area to disappear beneath the waves.

The bank covers about 17,600 square kilometres and is about 260 by 100 kilometres in extent. The water depth ranges from 15 to 36 metres, which is about 20 metres shallower than the surrounding sea... its shallowest point being just 15 metres below sea level at its western end.

The relevance of this information? Well, it indicates that the North Sea is not particularly deep. A point clearly evidenced by the Channel Tunnel that runs for 51 kilometres from Dover to Calais and was opened for rail services in 1994. If civil engineers can construct a tunnel from Britain to France that reaches 75 metres below sea level, who knows what extraterrestrials may have created beneath Doggerland?

Could there be an alien base under the North Sea? Well, if you believe some of the online reports about underground complexes beneath the waves and inside mountains then the North Sea wouldn’t be the strangest location for a subterranean complex where extraterrestrials conduct experiments, develop advanced technology and interact with military forces from around our planet.

According to accounts there are about 130 underground bases in the United States alone, with 1,477 worldwide... and all connected by super-fast Maglev (magnetic levitation) trains travelling through tunnels bored through solid rock.

The site at Orford Ness was acquired by the MOD in 1913, with the southern half of King’s Marsh drained and levelled to form airfields ready to receive aircraft by 1915... marking the start of 70 years of intense military intervention. Another landmark was the completion of the Black Beacon in 1928, a building for the Royal Aircraft Establishment to house an experimental “rotating loop”, part funded by Trinity House, that ostensibly served as a homing beacon for aircraft.

A Bomb Ballistics building was built in 1933 to record the flight of bombs to improve their aerodynamics and provide data to refine aiming mechanisms. The equipment was steadily improved over the years, most notably from the 1950s for the development of the atomic bomb.

From 1953-66 six large test cells and several other buildings were constructed to carry out environmental tests on atomic bombs designed to mimic the rigours to which they might be subjected to before detonation, including variations in vibration, temperature and G forces. Although no nuclear material was said to be involved, tests were controlled remotely and the huge labs were designed to absorb and dissipate an explosion in the event of an accident.

Another landmark took place from 1935-37 when a team arrived to create the Ionospheric Research Station, which was a cover for the research and development of an aerial defence system later to become known as radar.

By 1968 work had started on a top-secret Anglo-American radar project codenamed Cobra Mist able to detect aircraft, missiles and satellites... but by 1973 a joint US-UK decision was made to terminate operations at Orford Ness. However, the RAF Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams used the site to deactivate large quantities of munitions until the last service personnel to be based on site allegedly left in 1987, opening the way for the MOD to transfer it to the National Trust in 1993.

Now owned by the trust, the Orford Ness National Nature Reserve is open to the public although access is strictly controlled to “protect the fragile habitats” and because of the “residual danger to the public from the site's former use” by the military. Access is available only by the National Trust ferry from Orford Quay... and then only on designated open days.

So by transferring it to National Trust ownership and restricting access to the site because of safety concerns the authorities maintain a huge amount of control over the site which has led to a vast amount of speculation about what might still be going on underground there.

And, in keeping with the extraterrestrial narrative, the North Sea itself and the East Anglian coast are not without a few stories about strange alien craft dating back to at least the 1970s, with the earliest incident recorded on the East Anglian UFO Group website occurring at the beginning of the decade. The latest reference is to a sighting of a silver grey metallic cigar shape travelling roughly north to south near Ipswich in October 2008, with another near RAF Mildenhall in August 2006 when more than a dozen orange spheres were witnessed above the tree line.

But the case that stands out above all the rest took place at Rendlesham Forest in December 1980 and is widely regarded as the “British Roswell”. The sightings spanned three days – 26-28 December – near RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge, about eight miles north-east of Ipswich, when a number of civilians and US military personnel, based there, saw lights descending into the nearby forest.

Three US servicemen – Sergeant Jim Penniston, his driver Ed Cabansag and security officer John Burroughs – were sent from RAF Bentwaters to investigate, driving down a logging track into the forest before proceeding on foot towards an object that resembled an “aircraft on fire”.

Penniston claims the bright glow eventually subsided to reveal a triangular black object with a glassy-metallic surface that glimmered with strange red and blue lights. He could see no landing gear, no exhaust, no windows but he noticed strange symbols he hoped would reveal an insignia identifying some top-secret US experimental craft. But on closer inspection, the symbols appeared more like hieroglyphs, cryptic designs he couldn’t understand.

In the 2014 book, Encounter In Rendlesham Forest, Penniston revealed: “The air was filled with electricity – like static. You could feel it on your skin as you approached the object. There was also a sense of slowness, like time itself was an effort.”

Burroughs agreed: “The nearer we got to that thing the more uneasy I felt... it was as if I was moving in slow motion. I felt really hot and as if the hair was standing up on the back of my head.”

A collaborative work by Nick Pope – a former MOD employee involved in UFO investigations – Burroughs and Penniston, the book also reveals that before the three US servicemen returned to report their findings at RAF Bentwaters the sergeant touched the mysterious glyphs on the craft’s surface.

Transfixed by a bright white light, Penniston emerged from a trance-like experience to find himself standing near the craft, which began to glow before moving off above the trees and vanishing out of sight. The encounter had seemed like just a few minutes to the servicemen but after their ordeal was over they thought their watches must have been incorrect as they showed a few hours had actually elapsed.

“During the night I was often wakening with thoughts, or rather images, of visions of ones and zeros running through my mind,” Penniston recounts in the book, adding that he continued to see them the following day until he wrote them down in his notebook, along with drawings of the strange glyphs. After finishing his notes the images of the ones and zeros vanished from his mind and he put the notebook away and forgot about them.

The UFO sighting quickly became a hot topic at the base and on 27 December strange lights were again reported by airmen, leading to a team led by Lt Colonel Charles Halt being sent from Bentwaters to sort out the matter once and for all.

Halt and his team were in the forest from soon after midnight early on 28 December through to just before dawn. During this time they took samples of soil and damaged tree bark, photographed landing marks identified by Burroughs, Penniston and Cabansag, measured a hole in the tree canopy at the point where they had seen the UFO leave 48 hours earlier and used Geiger counters to take radiation readings.

Halt intermittently recorded the team’s progress on a cassette tape that runs for 18 minutes and was released to British UFO investigators in July l984 by a senior US officer who’d held a copy of it for four years. On this dramatic audio account Halt and his men are clearly witnessing strange lights that they are unable to explain.

Many sceptics claim the lights witnessed by the airmen came from the Orford Ness lighthouse about 10 kilometres east of the forest but with many civilian witnesses, all familiar with the area, also reporting strange lights it seems unlikely this was the source.

The case has been a point of great debate ever since, but news reports from March 2015 telling of Burroughs securing a large settlement from the US government as a result of injuries suffered during the incident seems to vindicate the airmen’s testimony.

Of course that doesn’t clear up the mystery of whether there’s an extraterrestrial base under Orford Ness, but check out PART TWO of this investigation for more about the mysterious geography of the sunken land beneath the North Sea and the UFO sightings associated with it.