Britain Releases More UFO Sighting Files
LONDON (Oct. 20) - Two U.S. fighter planes were scrambled and ordered to shoot down an unidentified flying object over the English countryside during the Cold War, according to secret files made public on Monday.
One pilot said he was seconds away from firing 24 rockets at the object, which moved erratically and gave a radar reading like "a flying aircraft carrier."
The pilot, Milton Torres, now 77 and living in Miami, said it spent periods motionless in the sky before reaching estimated speeds of more than 7,600 mph.
After the alert, a shadowy figure told Torres he must never talk about the incident and he duly kept silent for more than 30 years.
The close encounter is one of many reported UFO sightings among 19 files that Britain's National Archives posted Monday to the Web. The new material covers UFO sightings between 1986 and 1992.
While the 1,500-page batch of documents debunks a host of UFO sightings, others like Torres' remain unexplained.
Alitalia pilot Achille Zaghetti was at the helm of a jet from Milan to London's Heathrow Airport on the evening of April 21, 1991 when a flying object streaked across his field of vision.
"At once I said, 'look out, look out,' to my co-pilot, who looked out and saw what I had seen," Zaghetti wrote in his report. "As soon as the object crossed us I asked to the ACC (area control center) operator if he saw something on his screen and he answered 'I see an unknown target 10 nautical miles behind you."
An investigation later ruled out a missile — but never ruled anything in, either.
On June 17, 1991, four passengers on a Hamburg, Germany-bound Dan Air 737 spotted "a wingless projectile pass below and to the left of the aircraft" as the flight climbed out of London's Gatwick Airport.
"It would seem to have passed fairly close by as the passengers were able to see it quite clearly," the Civil Aviation Authority wrote in its report.
More disturbing was a sighting a month later by crew aboard a Gatwick-bound Britannia Airways Boeing 737, who saw a "a small black lozenge-shaped object" zipping past about 100 yards to the left of the aircraft.
The airport confirmed seeing an object on its radar and clocked it traveling at 120 miles per hour. Air traffic controllers quickly warned the next aircraft to turn out of the object's flight path, although by then the object had disappeared from view.
Speculation centered on a weather balloon released in the area the same day, but an investigation could not determine what the UFO was.
Monday's release is the second batch of UFO files that Britain's military has put out this year. David Clarke, a UFO expert who has worked with the National Archives, said in the next few years, a total of 160 UFO-related files will be made available to the public.
Some things in the newly released files were either unhinged or unverifiable.
One correspondent tells the military he was shouted at by aliens while sleeping outdoors. Another writes in "with extraordinary news," saying the "legendary 'feathered serpents'" are waiting for permission to land on earth.
Torres' tale of being ordered to shoot down the UFO over eastern England, forwarded to the Ministry of Defense by a UFO enthusiast, was kept on file though the military turned up no evidence of it in its official records.
In a written account, Torres described how he scrambled his F-86 D Sabre jet in calm weather from the Royal Air Force base at Manston, Kent in May 1957.
"I was only a lieutenant and very much aware of the gravity of the situation. I felt very much like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest," he said.
"The order came to fire a salvo of rockets at the UFO. The authentication was valid and I selected 24 rockets.
"I had a lock-on that had the proportions of a flying aircraft carrier," he added. "The larger the airplane, the easier the lock-on. This blip almost locked itself."
At the last moment, the object disappeared from the radar screen and the high-speed chase was called off.
He returned to base and was debriefed the next day by an unnamed man who "looked like a well-dressed IBM salesman."
"He threatened me with a national security breach if I breathed a word about it to anyone," he said.
UFO expert David Clarke said the sighting may have been part of a secret U.S. project to create phantom aircraft on radar screens to test Soviet air defences.
"Perhaps what this pilot had seen was some kind of experiment in electronic warfare or maybe it was a UFO," he said. "Something very unusual happened."
Occasionally, officials got to the bottom of the sightings.
On a clear November afternoon in 1992, an office worker called the Ministry of Defense, saying a strange shimmering object was descending slowly over London's Regent's Park.
"As call progressed, it became clear that the object was a kite," an unidentified military staffer noted drily in his write-up.
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