Just finished "The Rendlesham Forest Incident" by Peter Robbins - mixed feelings

Picked this up from Waterstones for £14.99 last week and finally finished it yesterday. I've got to say, it's exhaustively researched and reads really well for a 300-page deep-dive, but I came away feeling like we're still no closer to knowing what actually happened that December in 1980.

Robbins does a brilliant job laying out the timeline and interviewing the actual RAF personnel involved, which is the book's real strength. You feel like you're there at RAF Bentwaters. But - and this is a fairly big but - he seems to dance around the actual conclusion. Is he saying it was definitely a UFO? Military misidentification? Collective hysteria? By the end I honestly couldn't tell.

The photographs are grainy as you'd expect, and there's a whole chapter on 'potential explanations' that feels a bit like he's covering his bases legally. If you're already familiar with the case through documentaries, this doesn't really add much new. If you're coming to it fresh, it's solid, but maybe start with the BBC podcast instead - it's free and covers similar ground in 90 minutes.

I thought the same thing! Robbins is clearly more convinced than he lets on, but he's written it in a very measured way. I reckon that's intentional - he's trying to appeal to the scientific community without losing credibility. It's frustrating as a reader though because you want him to just say what he believes happened.

The new James Hutton documentary on this dropped last month on Channel 4's streaming service (£4.99 rental) and honestly it's better than the book. There's actual new testimony from someone who was stationed nearby. But yeah, you're right that nobody really has the answer. Makes you wonder if we ever will.

Have you listened to the Stuff You Should Know episode on Rendlesham? It's brilliant and probably covers the same material for free on any podcast app. I find I get more out of audiobooks/podcasts than reading for these kinds of investigations - the narrator's tone adds something to it.