Fertiliser fire blamed for ‘British Roswell’ UFO incident

But now the mystery of the UK’s most famous UFO incident – known as the ‘British Roswell’ - has been solved after a man came forward claiming the ‘UFO’ was in fact a truck load of burning fertiliser.

Truck driver Peter Turtill, 66 from Ipswich, is reported in the Daily Telegraph as the man behind Britian’s biggest UFO mystery after he set fire to a lorry containing stolen fertiliser.

He said he was on his way back home after collecting a lorry lent to a friend when it broke down near the US airbase at Rendlesham in December 1980.

He told the Telegraph: “To my horror it was loaded with stolen fertiliser so we towed it off the road into the forest and set light to it to destroy the evidence of the crime.

“The truck had an aluminium body and the fertiliser and metal made some very unusual coloured flames which flared among the trees.

“Some of the airmen from the base thought it was a multi-coloured cross from out of space, and with the truck tyres popping they were getting a bit edgy.

“They had guns and we didn’t want to get in their way so we towed the burning vehicle onto the road.”

The lights were reported by servicemen at the base and following police investigations, it was filed as a UFO sighting.

The incident was taken so seriously that former head of the armed forces Lord Hill-Norton wrote to the then defence Secretary Michael Heseltine, saying the incident was ‘puzzling’, warning it could be a potential banana skin.

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