By EDWARD BROWNE
PRINCE PHILIP is so interested in UFO sightings and alien theories that he has collected books on the subject for decades, according to reports.
It has been revealed the Duke spent last summer reading The Halt Perspective – a 2016 book by retired US Air Force Colonel Charles Halt and ex-West Midlands detective John Hanson. It details British UFO sightings including the Rendlesham Forest incident.
The Sun claims Prince Philip's private secretary Brigadier Archie Miller-Bakewell wrote a letter to Mr Hanson, in which he stated the book would be “read with close interest over the summer”.
The secretary also referenced another book called ‘Haunted Skies: The Encyclopaedia of British UFOs’ also by Mr Hanson.
Brigadier Miller-Bakewell reportedly said that book would “make a most welcome addition to his library”.
The ‘Rendlesham Forest incident’ to which The Halt Perspective makes reference is considered to be one of the most famous UFO sightings in Britain.
A documentary on it, titled Codename Rendlesham, investigates reports by US airmen who claimed to have seen a UFO in the Suffolk forest in December of 1980.
The story goes that multiple US Air Force personnel, based at RAF Woodbridge at the time, decided to investigate “lights” they spotted in the trees nearby.
According to reports, officers claims to have spotted a triangular spacecraft there.
A website dedicated to the incident states Col. Halt’s team also took radiation readings at the site of the supposed UFO landing.
Ian Ridpath, an astronomer, claims to have had telephone discussions with the UK’s National Radiological Protection Board.
He said that the figures cited by Col. Halt in a memo of 0.05 to 0.1 milliroentgens were “simply background levels of radiation”.
Colonel Halt even told the BBC in 2015 that he had obtained new statements from radar operators at RAF Bentwaters that corroborate his claims.
Colonel Halt, then 75, said radar staff spotted an object pass through their 60-mile radar scope within “two or three seconds”, suggesting it was travelling at “thousands of miles an hour”.
He said it then headed to the forest where he and his colleagues were.
The Government, however, suggested at the time that reported light sightings were simply due to witnesses seeing light shining from the nearby Orfordness lighthouse.
The Ministry of Defence told the BBC it no longer dealt with reports of UFOs.
In other news, Prince Philip and the Queen marked their 73rd wedding anniversary last week.
To celebrate the occasion, the two royals released a photograph of the two of them opening up a card sent to them by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s children.
The Queen married Prince Philip on November 20 1947. The Queen, now 94, was 21 at the time.
