North Sea sightings fuel notion of an underground alien base

The first part of this investigation into The Doorway To A Doggerland Mystery beneath Orford Ness on the Suffolk coast concluded with details about the United Kingdom’s most noteworthy UFO incident which took place from 26-28 December 1980 in Rendlesham Forest near RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge, about eight miles north-east of Ipswich, when a number of civilians and United States military personnel based there saw strange lights descending beneath the tree line.

The case has been a point of huge debate ever since but news reports from March 2015 telling of a large financial settlement made by the US government with former security officer John Burroughs, one of three US servicemen who witnessed a triangular black object that glimmered with strange red and blue lights, adds great credence to the incident.

After another of the servicemen, Sergeant Jim Penniston, touched the strange hieroglyphic symbols that appeared on the craft he came round from a trance-like experience to find himself standing near the UFO, 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. Both Penniston and Burroughs described feeling strange sensations around the craft, with the latter receiving his settlement from the military as a result of injuries suffered due to radiation at the time of the incident.

With sightings of unexplained lights around the forest, witnessed by many more people, continuing until the early hours of 28 December the Rendlesham Forest incident etched itself in history as probably the most famous episode to have occurred in the proximity of Orford Ness, but there are more listed on the East Anglian UFO Group’s website, with another major event north of Dogger Bank in 1970 also making headlines.

In September that year Britain’s “most plausible alien abduction” case happened near Filey beach off the East Yorkshire coast, north of Dogger Bank. According to a BBC report from September 2002, fighter jet pilot Captain William Schaffner disappeared while in pursuit of an unidentified spacecraft he’d scrambled from RAF Binbrook to intercept.

Schaffner flew out into the skies over Grimsby, across the Humber and over the North Sea in pursuit of an object spotted on radar. Shortly after 10.30pm his plane ditched into the North Sea off Flamborough Head. His Lightning aircraft was recovered three months later from the seabed virtually undamaged, with the cockpit canopy closed and no sign of Schaffner’s body.

North Yorkshire-resident Russell Kellett, who has been investigating Schaffner’s disappearance for the past 20 years, told the Metro in August 2023 how his research into the pilot’s disappearance had led him to believe there is an underwater alien base off the Yorkshire coast.

Schaffner, a member of the US Air Force serving in an RAF exchange programme at the time, had been involved in a cat-and-mouse chase with the UFO before crashing into the sea but Russell believes he was “abducted by aliens” and the “underwater base had something to do with it”.

He claims he has filmed footage of “flying triangles” off Filey beach showing “two craft in the sea side by side”. In a Daily Star report from the same month he concluded: “There’s no logical explanation. I have come to the conclusion that there must be an underwater alien base off the coast of Filey beach.”

Hardly categorical evidence of an underground North Sea base but an article on the Birmingham Live website dated 21 December last year adds to the circumstantial evidence, with passengers travelling onboard a British Airways flight from London to Copenhagen filming what appeared to be a UFO out of their windows as they crossed the sea.

Multiple passengers described witnessing the object on 19 December after the aircraft had departed London's Heathrow Airport. The UFO was spotted “midway over the North Sea” and was visible for between five and 10 minutes before vanishing.

Less than a month earlier the US Air Force (USAF) reported “small unmanned aerial systems” had been spotted flying over RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall, in Suffolk, and RAF Feltwell, in Norfolk... all airfields that support USAF operations in Europe.

But it’s not only around the east coast of Britain that strange sightings occur, with the skies south and east of Doggerland over the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and farther afield experiencing unidentified aerial phenomena as well. Sightings in the Netherlands can be traced back to August 1954 when witnesses saw two glowing oval objects darting across the sky over the Hague. In Belgium perhaps the most famous case is the “UFO wave” reported between November 1989 and March 1990 when thousands of people reported sightings all over the country.

And Denmark is currently experiencing a wave of its own... small aerial phenomena sighted above airports and military bases all over the country since the start of the year, with air-traffic delays and politicians called in for crisis meetings and Nato being requested to act.

In the early hours of 3 January reports flooded in of unidentified flying objects over Koge, a port city south-west of Copenhagen. More than 20 large aerial objects were sighted in the night sky, with witnesses reporting surreal scenes as the objects hovered above the city and the adjacent Koge Bay before vanishing into the cloudless night sky that had provided perfect visibility for observers.

Objects have been sighted over airports and military bases all over Denmark since. Air traffic has been delayed and politicians have gathered for crisis talks. The degree of concern is highlighted in a BBC article from last month, which reports Aalborg and Billund airports being forced to close and “drones” spotted over Esbjerg, Sonderborg and Skrydstrup.

Aalborg serves as a military base and Skrydstrup is home to some of the air force's F35 and F16 fighter planes but aerial phenomena were also witnessed above the Jutland Dragoon regiment based at Holstebro. Reports have also come in of police investigating drone activities around Denmark's oil and gas platforms in the North Sea and near the central port of Korsor.

With similar incidents taking place elsewhere on the continent, in countries neighbouring Ukraine, fingers are pointing at Russia but it denies any responsibility. Nato, under pressure from the United States, UK and Israel is heavily plugging the “World War III” narrative, which could well mean it’s that fuelling worldwide drone activity, but the proliferation of activity around the North Sea means an extraterrestrial base beneath Doggerland can’t be ruled out.

Recent studies indicate that the geology of the North Sea displays many strange characteristics, with “giant buried mounds” and “sinkites” turning basic rules on their head with heavy younger sands sinking downward, while older lighter layers have risen to form hidden hills under the seafloor.

Geologists generally adhere to the law that older layers sit below younger ones but in the North Sea a stratigraphic inversion exists with “sinkites” (the sand bodies that have sunk) below “floatites” (blocks of ooze that have floated up). This is a phenomena peculiar to the North Sea... could it perhaps be the result of underground activity and the creation of an extraterrestrial base?

And that’s not the only noteworthy Doggerland anomaly, with scientists from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh identifying what they believe to be evidence of an asteroid impact on the south-western edge of Dogger Bank. The “crater”, situated in the “Silverpit Basin”, was identified through seismic studies in 2002 and is believed to be between three and eight kilometres wide and buried beneath 400-500 metres of sediment. The impact is believed to have occurred about 43 million years ago.

As science has advanced a lot more has been discovered about the geology of the North Sea but for the last 500 years a London-based “charitable” group set up by royal charter in 1514 has monitored maritime activity around the British coast, including the North Sea. Trinity House today serves as the General Lighthouse Authority (GLA) for England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar and provides more than 600 aids to navigation from lighthouses and buoys to satellite-based systems. If anyone knows what’s going on around the nation’s coast you’d have to think this would be the place to find out about it.

GLA provides highly visible aids to navigation from isolated offshore towers exposed to the open sea, such as the lighthouse on Longstone island in the North Sea near Berwick, to shore-based stations such as Cromer on the Norfolk coast and Lowestoft and Southwold lighthouses on the Suffolk coast. And with a network of buoys and satellite-based systems monitoring activity around the coast you’d have to think there’s not much that goes on without Trinity House knowing about it.

From the first part of this investigation you’ll have learned how Trinity House helped fund the Royal Aircraft Establishment’s Black Beacon that served as a homing signal on Orford Ness for aircraft from 1928. And when you’ve been around since 1514 there’s not much that has gone on around the coast that Trinity House has not been involved in.

In fact you’d have to conclude that it’s fairly unlikely that the Master of the Corporation – currently King Charles’ little sister Anne, the Princess Royal – is not kept informed about the comings and goings of any suspicious craft around the North Sea, maybe she too could have a secret dossier stashed away in her wing at St James' Palace in London or her country escape at Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire, just like her mum was alleged to have had in her study at Buckingham Palace.