NBC News<\/span>
\nPublished: October 29, 2008<\/p>\nHe was told to keep a government secret or lose his job as an air force fighter pilot.\n<\/p>\n
\nNow the secret is out, and a South Florida man is talking about the night he was ordered to shoot down a UFO.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe incident happened more than 40 years ago, when Kendall resident
\nMilton Torres said he had a close encounter that all started with a
\ncommand from superiors to \u201cscramble.\u201d.\n<\/p>\n
\nTorres, an air force fighter pilot, jumped into his F-86 Sabre jet.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWithin two minutes we were airborne, Torres said.\n<\/p>\n
\nHe flew from an airfield in Kent, England, and headed for a target over East Anglia.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThey also said this was an active fire mission\u2014that I would be firing 24 rockets,\u201d Torres said.\n<\/p>\n
\nWhen Torres looked down into his radar, he was approaching what look like an aircraft carrier in the sky.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt was a big blip,\u201d Torres said. \u201cI locked on; I had an overtake speed; everything was going fine.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nThen, with about 20 seconds to go, the blip started shrinking.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe next thing I know, it was gone, Torres said. \u201cHe just disappeared. He just took off.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nTorres estimated that the unknown aircraft had to be traveling at about mach 10, or about 5,000 mph.\n<\/p>\n
\nIn 1957, nothing went that fast, and nothing does now.\n<\/p>\n
\nBack at the base, his commanders had no answers.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThey told me, \u2018We don\u2019t know what happened. We know he went off the scope completely.\u2019\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nTorres said it was a cloudy day, but there is no way the U.S. military was stuck in the Twilight Zone that night.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cMy wingman\u2019s radar, my radar, and the ground radar together. Three different radars, no,\u201d Torres said.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe incident was recently declassified by the British Ministry of Defense and posted online.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe documents only tell Torres\u2019 version of the story, sent to the department in 1988.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe retired airman, who holds three degrees and taught engineering, never heard back.\n<\/p>\n
The day after the mission, he was debriefed by a U.S. civilian at
\nthe airfield who told him the mission was considered highly classified,
\nand if he ever mentioned it again, he would not be flying airplanes
\nanymore.\n<\/p>\n
\nTorres said he thinks the flying saucer his radar picked up was on a mission of it\u2019s own.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cHe wasn\u2019t there looking around; he was there for a reason,\u201d Torres said.\n<\/p>\n
\nTo this day, Torres said he absolutely believes it was a UFO.\n<\/p>\n
<\/span>ED. NOTE – CAVEAT LECTOR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}