RAF controllers told US pilot Milton Torres to “lock on” and launch all 24 of his rockets over the city.
Milton Torres as a young man, and today
But as he came within seconds of firing at the alien intruder — “the size of an aircraft carrier” on his radar — it vanished at 10,000mph.
The amazing close encounter is revealed in secret Ministry of Defence X-Files which are declassified today.
Milton said: “It was some kind of alien snooping over England. I guess we’ll never know what it was.”
The incident happened in 1957 when Milton was a 26-year-old US Air Force lieutenant based at RAF Manston in Kent.
At 11pm one night he was ordered to scramble in his F-86D Sabre fighter to attack a “bogey” hovering above Norfolk.
Speaking about it publicly for the first time, he said: “I was told I would be firing a complete salvo, all 24 rockets. I was pumped up — this was the sort of thing that happened before a war.”
He got the UFO on his radar and closed for the attack at the Sabre’s top speed of almost 700mph — then it disappeared off his screen in a flash.
Milton, now 77, said: “I was smoking, as fast as I could go. This thing had a different propulsion system. It was not an airplane.”
The flyer said he was visited afterwards by a sinister security official and warned not to tell anyone — so he kept silent until now.
The close encounter is in 19 files made available online yesterday by the National Archives. "