Rendlesham Forest incident—can anyone access the declassified files anymore?

I've been trying to access the actual declassified files on Rendlesham Forest (the 1980 incident) and I'm hitting walls. The official government documentation is supposedly available now but searching government databases is like trying to find a specific grain of sand. Has anyone here actually managed to get the original files?

I'm looking for: (1) The actual witness testimonies from RAF personnel, (2) Official radiation measurements if they were taken, (3) Any documentation about what happened to the physical evidence (the "landing marks" etc.). Most of what's online is either the Wikipedia summary or paranoid blogs claiming the government still won't release anything.

Is there a freedom of information request process that actually works? Or are we pretending declassified doesn't actually mean "available to the public" in the way most people understand it?

The British National Archives declassified a lot of UFO files a few years ago - you can search them at nationalarchives.gov.uk. For Rendlesham specifically, there's the ministry of Defence files and there's supposedly files in the Kew archives. The tricky bit is that "declassified" doesn't mean "everything released." Some sections are still redacted for security reasons and some files were apparently never formally filed to begin with. The easiest approach is just searching the National Archives database directly rather than going through FOIA requests.

Is there a freedom of information request process that actually works?

Sort of? You can file FOIA requests with the Ministry of Defence directly but the timelines are brutal (usually 3-6 months) and they can claim certain information is still classified. That said, if you can identify a specific document or file number, your request has a better chance. The vague ones get denied or heavily redacted.

The National Archives has loads of Rendlesham documentation available now. Jim Penniston's witness statement is in there, some of the radiation data, and correspondence between defence officials. It's nowhere near as dramatic as conspiracy theorists want it to be, which is probably why you don't hear about it much. Most of the "cover-up" argument relies on ignoring the files that ARE available.

Personally I think the actual declassified stuff is more interesting than the conspiracy version. The genuine mystery is more about what the radar signatures were and why multiple witnesses independently reported very specific details. Whether that's an actual alien craft or something else entirely is almost less important than understanding what they actually observed.