U.S. Pilot Ordered to Shoot Down UFO Over England

[308Mike]

Linkarooni

U.S. Pilot Ordered to Shoot Down UFO Over England

Monday, October 20, 2008

A former Top Gun said Sunday he was ordered to shoot down a massive UFO over Norwich, England, 50 years ago.

RAF controllers told U.S. pilot Milton Torres to "lock on" and launch all 24 of his rockets over the city.

But as he came within seconds of firing at the alien intruder — "the size of an aircraft carrier" on his radar — it vanished at 10,000 mph.

More..............

[Dub_James]

Yeaaah, right...

Truth is he saw Elvis in the port-side window telling him not to shoot.

Can anyone speak to the "24 rockets" aspect?

[Rod]

Depending on the date, intercepters were armed with air to air rockets. Here is one example. The F-86 had 16 rockets so the 24 reference might have been a mistake. the F-89 was closer to that date but was armed with the Genie nuclear air to air missile. Interesting to see that lousy picture that Fox News used in the article.

[Highspeed]

Newspaper reports say he was flying a F86D Sabre Dog, so the 24 rockets is correct.
The thing is that his radar wouldn't have given him any information on the targets distance, speed, or size. Once locked on the radar display just gave steering cues along the lines of 'fly the dot into the circle' and the weapon computer released the rockets when it thought it had a solution.

I want to be charitable about a good old boy who was here helping to defend our freedom long before I was born, so I'll just say that he was under-informed about radar malfunctions and drew some ......wild conclusions.

Don't we have a member who worked on F-106 avionics ? I'd love to hear his opinion on this.

[Rich]

Since he was scrambled, and then ordered to shoot, more than one radar was picking up whatever was out there. This was towards the end of the UFO craze years where they were seen over cities, overflew military airfields, and did other inexplicable things.

In that era, airborne fire control radars were vacuum tube based, and a microphonic tube that malfunctioned in flight could be hard to find while sitting on the parking ramp. But since more than one radar was apparently involved, I would tend to discount a malfuntioning radar as the cause.

More likely is natural phenomena, like a temperature inversion layer, or a charged cloud layer that has nowhere to discharge to. Of course, little gray men from Dimension X, or Alpha Draco could really be to blame.

[mekender]

it was the fookin irish mob

[308Mike]

If it was a natural phenomenon, when it "left" the area, it probably wouldn't have left in a manner allowing them to get a speed of 10,000 MPH on it, which also means it left in a specific direction. It didn't just vanish, it took off from where ever it was.................

[Dub_James]

From what I've seen of most of these encounters, the speed is either estimated from radar or the pilot's best guess. Given most people (even pilots) have precious little experience with objects moving in that speed range, I'd be unlikely to put much credence in those kinds of claims.

[Dub_James]

I would also imagine that any sufficiently advanced culture wouldn't have to perform atmospheric fly-bys to observe our planets surface.

Hell, barely 50 years later and every home I ever lived in can be viewed on Google.

Close Encounters of all 4 kinds; YUR DOIN' IT WRONG!

[Vonz90]

If it was a natural phenomenon, when it "left" the area, it probably wouldn't have left in a manner allowing them to get a speed of 10,000 MPH on it, which also means it left in a specific direction. It didn't just vanish, it took off from where ever it was.................

Actually you can get tracks on atmospheric phenomena, it used to be very common on some of our old surface search radars especially at longer ranges. You would get a good track on something with a good course/speed, put a watch on it and then start doing cazy things and then vanish (often to be replaced by another one somewhere down a similar bearing where you picked up the first one). It depended on what the weather was doing, if it happened a lot we would just stop designating any tracks outside of a certain range so that we wouldn't waste time following ghost tracks.