Posted on 10/20/2008 3:44:51 AM PDT by Stoat
Locked on ... Sabre jet had UFO in sights
RAF controllers told US pilot Milton Torres to “lock on” and launch all 24 of his rockets over the city.
Tale ... 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.
Wrong. He was flying the F-86D version. It had no guns, only a belly pack with 24 folding-fin air to air unguided rockets.
The tin foil in me would say “why release the archive info now”, at the cusp of a financial system realignment and a possible socialist change in the US?
Are they getting ready for a revelation?
The Borg sphere as it crashed through ripples of chronitron
distortion on its way to its resting place in the Arctic....
Interesting but several years before this incident my father a fighter pilot serving in Korea had an encounter with “UFO” over Korea, unknown type craft, same incredible speed (nothing known in technology at the time) when it disappeared....
he was smart enough to never tell anyone about his encounter except my mother.
Ummm. Can someone confirm that an F-86 can actually carry 24 rockets much less “lock-on” and fire all of the simultaneously?
They might have been testing new radar configuration and camouflage and didn’t need a whole squadron of sabres up there just a control jet with weapons radar on (with a pilot with attitude) at the stick!
Sabres had radar and guided missiles? Who knew?
The files were actually released several months ago. Now they are online.
Scramble launch with a single interceptor for a single target sounds very reasonable. And, by the way, American controllers were serving alongside the Brit controllers back then (even today we have exchange officers). If the situation appeared threatening at time of launch then I am sure more jets would have been launched at this stationary target.
I hate being wrong... but you are right.
I was thinking strictly about the Korea config’d models.
The F-86D was indeed an anti-Soviet bomber interceptor.
Fascinating. Using unguided rockets to kill bombers at 500yds with a computer-aided deflection shot.
http://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/p86_6.html
My understanding was the cockpit canopy was open in case of ejection at slow speed and low altitude.
Egress systems back then were not quick and if you attempted ejection at takeoff speeds, the canopy may not cleanly separate and/or may not separate fast enough, to prevent the pilot from going through the glass and possibly losing his kneecaps. That is what I seem to recall in Life Support school a few years back.
see the link in post 30. I got edumucated as well. I never knew of these birds.
I never could understand this alleged fear about admitting to seeing something strange or odd. Heck, we are all fascinated by it.
A few years back when flying in an OH-58, the pilot and I saw “something.” We couldn't actually figure out what it was but we wasted no time in telling everyone about it when we landed. (Incident written up in Paul H. Smith's book, “Reading the Enemy's Mind.”)
Many of my fighter pilot peers have seen some strange things and we all talk about it in the bar. Not one holds back for fear of. . . what. . .I dunno. . .
He landing ... notice the speed brakes and leading edge slots deployed
He landing ... notice the speed brakes and leading edge slots deployed
Fine, I’m not gonna buy the little green men angle. I mean, really, not saying there isn’t intelligent life out there, but does everything flying we can’t easily explain have to bring the following knee-jerk reaction?
unexplained phenomenon- AHA, must be UFOs manned by Aliens!
I gotta say, if they’d been visiting us for 50 years or so...one would think they’d have left some more evidence then they supposedly have by now. I mean, when the Soviets were landing recon teams along the Alaskan and Swedish coastlines during the Cold War, even they left little signs they were there occasionally.
Cockpit open on landing is a carry over from WW2 days. Pilots would open the canopy to get a better look at the ground or carrier deck as the landed. It was discontinued as command and controls got better and planes got faster on landings.
The F-86D had no guns.
Its armament consisted of 24 70-millimeter (2.75-inch) unguided “folding-fin air rockets (FFAR)”, stored in a belly tray that could be lowered in half a second. The rockets could be fired in salvos of 6, 12, or 24 at intruding bomber formations.
Each rocket had a range of over 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) and a warhead weighing 3.4 kilograms (7.5 pounds).
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