United States Air Force staff sergeant on duty at RAF Woodbridge on the night of 26 December 1980, and one of the two airmen, with John Burroughs, who went into Rendlesham Forest at the start of the Rendlesham Forest Incident.
What he reported
A structured craft on the forest floor, close enough to walk around and, on his account, to touch, with symbols on its surface which he sketched in his notebook at the time. The notebook drawings are contemporaneous and are the strongest single artefact from the case. The binary-code claim, which he made public much later, is not contemporaneous and belongs to a different evidential class; the site keeps the two apart.
Why he is in the file
Rendlesham is the best-witnessed military case in Europe and one of the most heavily explained-away, with the Orford Ness lighthouse geometry as the standing counter-reading. Penniston and Burroughs are the two men whose testimony the case stands or falls on, and both have been consistent about the core of it for four decades while differing in emphasis.
Connections
Rendlesham Forest Incident · Rendlesham Forest · John Burroughs · Imminent · Nuclear Interference · Luis Elizondo