Article Posted on : - Oct 21, 2008

Every now and then there are claims of UFO sightings around the world. NASA photo

LONDON (BNS): The British National Archives has released 19 files from the Ministry of Defence revealing several instances of possible UFO sightings over the past several decades.

Among them is the orders given to an American fighter pilot to open fire on a UFO, as big as an aircraft carrier that was sighted over the North Sea on May 20, 1957.

The 19 files are the second set of UFO files to be made public by the British authorities- the first set was made public in May.

According to the files, American fighter pilot Milton Torres who had taken off from a British airbase during the peak of Cold War was ordered to fire on what was termed as a massive UFO, after it was picked up by his fighter radar. Torres was ordered to a full salvo of 24 rockets at the object, but the object picked up speed and disappeared before he could release the rockets.

On Monday Torres told the Sky News that it was "some kind of space alien craft. It was so fast, it was so incredible ... it was absolutely death defying." He said the blip on his radar was "burning a hole in the radar with its incredible intensity…It was similar to a blip I had received from B-52's and seemed to be a magnet of light."

The files are details of bizarre and strange sighting over the United Kingdom, in which suspected UFOs were sighted.

In another sighted case, from April 1991, an Alitalia aircraft coming into land at the Heathrow Airport may have had a close shave with an UFO. The pilot, Captain Achille Zaghetti, described it as being similar to a missile "light brown or fawn- about three meters in length but without any exhaust flame". He shouted as his co-pilot to "Look out! Look out!" The co-pilot too spotted the object, according to the records. At the same time, the local air traffic control radar too picked up a similar image, and the Ministry of Defence was asked to investigate.

After ruling out the possibility of the object being a missile, the MOD report concluded: "In the absence of any clear evidence which could be used to identify the object, it is our intention to treat this sighting like that of any other Unidentified Flying Object."

In 1991, two aircraft flying near Gatwick too reported sighting unidentified objects. One pilot termed it a "wingless projectile", and the other said it was a "small lozenge-shaped object."

There are also other bizarre claims: One Somerset resident claimed he saw a flying saucer land near Feltham bypass. Two aliens, dressed in black, got out of the UFO, and one inspected the engines of the object, while the second said in English to capture that man before he tells anybody else."

A resident of Brighton reported that a "squashed rugby ball" shaped UFO hovered over his house.

UFO expert David Clarke, who is working with the British National Archives on the documents, was quoted by the media as saying that the files released Monday were part of a three to four year programme intended to make a total of 160 UFO-related files available to the public.