Fighter Jets Ordered to Shoot Down UFO By Noah Shachtman EmailOctober 20, 2008 | 12:26:00 PMCategories: Bizarro
Mcchordf86reduce_2 At the height of the Cold War -- and hysteria about alien invasions -- two U.S. fighter planes were "scrambled and ordered to shoot down a UFO over the English countryside," Reuters reports. The incident is one of thousands of UFO-related files, declassified and released by the British government today.
In one document, F-86 pilot Milton Torres describes his encounter with a huge, erratically-moving object in May, 1957.
"The order came to fire a salvo of rockets at the UFO. The authentication was valid and I selected 24 rockets.
...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.
The U.K. National Archives' 1500-page document dump undoubtedly includes other UFO doozies. Drop us a line if you find some good ones, or tell us about 'em, in the comments.