Top fighter pilot breaks 45-year silence to reveal bombshell UFO encounter with '50ft triangular craft' at nuclear base

Top fighter pilot breaks 45-year silence to reveal bombshell UFO encounter with '50ft triangular craft' at nuclear base Subscribe to our US Editor's Picks newsletter HERE to get all the biggest exclusives By JOSH BOSWELL, US SENIOR NEWS REPORTER and CHRIS SHARP Published: 16:55 GMT, 14 November 2025 | Updated: 16:56 GMT, 14 November 2025 A former Top Gun pilot has come forward as a new witness linked to a 1980 UFO incident dubbed 'the British Roswell'. Decorated US fighter pilot Dan Isbell, 69, broke a 45-year silence to reveal his encounter with a 50ft triangular craft surrounded by multicolored 'plasma' light near a nuclear base he was stationed at in England on December 26, 1980. The incident is significant as it occurred on the same day that US Air Force personnel at another English nuclear base, RAF Woodbridge, in Suffolk, saw a similar craft descending into neighboring Rendlesham Forest – then got so close they could touch the metallic object. The Rendlesham UFO incident was captured on audio tape by a senior officer, written up in reports released three years later, and became the UK's most famous out-of-this-world encounter. Isbell's sighting adds to the theory by UFO researchers that the strange objects were targeting military bases housing nuclear weapons, a pattern which has been highlighted in reports by the Department of Defense's UFO-monitoring office. That night in 1980, Isbell was a 24-year-old first lieutenant working Christmas shifts as a pilot of nuclear-capable fighter jets at RAF Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire, while his superiors with families took time off. In an interview with the Daily Mail, he said that around 10pm on December 26, he was driving his imported red Corvette along a country road between the airbase and the US servicemen's accommodation when he saw something he couldn't explain. 'In my rear view mirror I saw some unusual multicolored lights traveling very rapidly, just over the trees to the side of the road,' he said. 'As it zipped past me, it just stopped instantaneously.' US fighter pilot Dan Isbell spoke publicly for the first time about his encounter with a massive UFO while he was stationed at RAF Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire in 1980 Isbell, pictured sitting in a flight-test-modified F-16A at the Hill Aerospace Museum in 2018, was a 24-year-old first lieutenant working a shift on the nuclear base when he witnessed the rare event Isbell said he pulled over and watched what appeared to be a silent, floating, 50ft craft. 'It was triangular, but it had sort of a curved nose. Around the bottom, there were multi-colored changing lights, almost like a plasma,' he said. 'We were very well trained before we were declared mission-qualified, on how to identify every type of aircraft and helicopter that belonged to NATO or the Soviet Union. It was quite clear this was not conventional.' Isbell said he started to make his way across a golf course on the side of the road towards the object, getting within 150ft. 'As I walked toward it, it began to slowly descend down,' he said. 'But then I began to realize that the stigma of a UFO sighting was death to a pilot's career. So I quickly reversed course. 'I hurried back to my car and went home. I didn't tell anyone for 45 years,' Isbell added. In the early hours of the same day, about 110 miles away on the east English coast in Suffolk, American officers at another USAF base holding nuclear weapons saw a similar object. The former fighter pilot shared an FBI Forensic Artist Drawing of his UFO encounters in 1980 At the time of the supposed UFO sighting, Isbell was working at night at the RAF Upper Heyford (pictured) a former Royal Air Force and US Air Force base in Oxfordshire, England Isbell is pictured during his time as 514th Flight Test Squadron Commander between June 1994 to June 1997 After seeing a strange light descend into Rendlesham Forest, two USAF security patrolmen were sent to investigate. According to a memo written by deputy base commander Lt. Col. Charles Halt, they saw an apparent nine-foot craft, 'metallic in appearance and triangular in shape', which 'illuminated the entire forest with a white light'. 'The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank(s) of blue lights underneath,' said Halt's memo, released under the Freedom of Information Act in 1983. 'The object was hovering or on legs. As the patrolmen approached the object, it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared. At this time the animals on a nearby farm went into a frenzy.' Two days later, while investigating marks on the trees and ground believed to be left by the craft, Halt himself witnessed strange lights and recorded his reaction on an audio tape, which was also released to researchers in 1984. Skeptical researchers, including Ian Ridpath, say the marks on trees were foresters' axe cuts, indentations in the ground were animal burrows, and the lights were from a nearby lighthouse. But one of the patrolmen sent out on December 26, Sgt. Jim Penniston, claims he saw the craft up close, and even sketched it in a notepad a few days later. In 2015 the other patrolman, Airman First Class John Burroughs, received medical disability benefits for alleged radiation poisoning linked to the event, with the help of Senator John McCain, after a yearslong battle with the Pentagon which had strangely classified his medical records. Isbell's encounter would've occurred on the same day that US Air Force personnel at another base 110 miles away at RAF Woodbridge on England's east coast reported seeing a similar craft descending into the nearby Rendlesham Forest – where a sculpture of the reported UFO now stands This photograph shows police examining the alleged landing site of another 'triangular craft' in Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk, England, the morning of the alleged sighting on December 26, 1980 Deep marks and indentations on the trees and ground at the Rendlesham Forest were believed to be left by the UFO, however, this was disputed by skeptical researchers, including Ian Ridpath, who say they were from foresters' axe cuts Former British police detective and UFO researcher Gary Heseltine, who wrote a book on the incident and helped Isbell come forward, says the pilot's sighting the same day as the Rendlesham incident at another UK nuclear base is significant. 'Dan Isbell is as credible a witness you could ever wish for,' Heseltine, who wrote the book Non-Human: The Rendlesham Forest UFO Incidents, told the Daily Mail. He described Isbell as 'someone with a stellar flight career' giving 'high caliber witness testimony'. 'His account offers a remarkable circumstantial link to Britain's most famous case, the Rendlesham Forest Incident that occurred in late December 1980.' Heseltine now runs a site for UK pilots to report UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena) incidents, ukpilotsreportinguap.co.uk. Isbell said it was the first, but not the last, time he had a UFO encounter. Later in the 1980s he became a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in southern California. One night in 1990, he drove out on his motorbike to a secluded area near the base to stargaze. 'Suddenly this large wedge-like shape started blanking out the stars above my head,' he said. 'There were no lights anywhere on it. It was absolutely solid black, but huge… Hundreds of feet across. In a January 1981 memo of the Rendlesham Forest incident, Deputy Base Commander Lt. Col. Charles Halt documented the December 26 sighting (reported as December 27 by Halt) describing the craft as 'metallic in appearance and triangular in shape' UFO researcher Gary Heseltine wrote a book on the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident, Non-Human, which included Isbell's account 'I felt a little electrostatic on my skin. 'I certainly wasn't going to tell anybody about that,' he added. 'I did not hang around long enough to see the back end of it.' Then two decades later in 2014, the now-retired pilot was in the hot tub in the back yard of his home in Silver Springs, Florida, when he said the night was lit up with a bright blue-green glow. 'It encompassed me and the hot tub,' Isbell told the Daily Mail. 'The beam came to a point above me, probably 2-300ft high.' He said the bright light prevented him from making out the object. But then the alleged encounter got even stranger. 'The beam went out, but immediately a large sphere of plasma enveloped whatever it was,' he said. The sphere doubled, then quadrupled in size, then vanished, he said. 'The acceleration was so fast, it just disappeared,' Isbell said. After retiring from the Air Force, Isbell became a consultant with a security clearance, working on lasers and directed energy weapons. He said he has decided to finally come forward with his UFO stories now, after leaving his classified role. 'I have nothing else to worry about. I have retired out of all that. They can take away my security clearance, it doesn't matter anymore,' he said. Share or comment on this article: Top fighter pilot breaks 45-year silence to reveal bombshell UFO encounter with '50ft triangular craft' at nuclear base Add comment