American fighter pilot Milton Torres was ordered to shoot down a suspected UFO in 1957 over East Anglia U.S. fighter pilot: 'I was ordered to fire 24 rockets at UFO flying over East Anglia'
20th October 2008
Former US Air Force fighter pilot Milton Torres is convinced he had an encounter with an alien spaceship in the skies over England in the 1950s.
He was warned to keep quiet about the incident, but eventually talked about it 31 years later, the newly-released Ministry of Defence files show.
On the night of May 20 1957, Dr Torres, then aged 25, was on standby at RAF Manston in Kent when he received an urgent order to scramble.
He was told to intercept a UFO with "very unusual flight patterns" over East Anglia that ground radar operators had been tracking for some time.
It was so cloudy he could not see anything, but the object showed up clearly on his radar as similar in size to a B-52 bomber.
He was then ordered to fire a full salvo of 24 rockets at the object - something that came as a sobering shock to him....."