Somewhere in the Skies - I Was Ordered to Shoot Down a UFO

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

On episode 280 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, we explore the Milton Torres UFO incident. In 2007, the UK's Ministry of Defense released thousands of UFO files to the public. Among them were reports of simple lights in the sky. But some stood out as being truly incredible. One of those was the story of Milton Torres, a decorated United States Air Force pilot, who, while stationed in England in 1957, was ordered to shoot down a UFO. What exactly was caught on radar, tracked by the pilot, and locked on to fire at? You'll hear directly from Milton Torres about that harrowing day. Audio Clips provided by: The National Archives UK, Edit International, Ron Laytner, Chris Lehto,  and UFOTV. Ryan is now on Cameo! Book your video today at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan’s book in paperback, ebook, or audiobook: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Read Ryan’s Articles by CLICKING HERE Watch Mysteries Decoded for free at: https://bit.ly/3rJpbd7 Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Copyright © 2022 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, Ryan here. The Summer in the Sky's podcast is a labor of love every week. And with that, comes many different costs to keep the show running. That's where our Patreon campaign comes in. You give what you think the show is worth. There's different rewards available all the time, including shoutouts on the show, early editions of main episodes, bonus episodes and content, and very soon monthly patron hangouts, where we sit back and chat all things UFOs. So I hope you'll consider becoming a Patreon subscriber today. To learn more and to join, visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Thank you for your support and keep looking up. From the early 1950s until 2009, a department in the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defense documented and investigated reports of UFOs. In 2007, many of those formerly classified reports had been made available to the public for the very first. first time. Here, Nick Pope, former staff member for the UFO desk at the MOD, explains why this release of files occurred. December 2007, the Ministry of Defense made a policy decision

to release its entire archive of UFO files. 12,000 citing reports going back to the 50s, policy files, files on how to handle this subject when it's raised in Parliament or by the media, public correspondence files, all sorts of files. Why was this decision taken? Three main reasons. Reason number one, the French government had recently disclosed their archive of UFO files. CNES, the French National Space Research Institute, has custody of the UFO issue in France, but they had made a decision to release their files.

So many people tried to log on to the website that it crashed. An indication, though, of the phenomenal public and media interest in this subject. But the French government disclosed, and that set of precedent, which made it more difficult for us in the UK. to hold out on this. The second reason is that the Ministry of Defence felt and the government felt in a wider sense that this would be an interesting issue

on which to demonstrate the government's commitment to open government and freedom of information. The third reason is, I think, the most interesting one. The Ministry of Defense receives more FOI requests on UFOs than any other single subject. There is immense interest in this subject in the UK, immense pressure on the government, and of course the workload involved in responding

to these Freedom of Information Act requests on a case-by-case basis was intolerable. And the flip side, the downside of that is that the people doing now, the job that I was doing in the early 90s are spending so much time on responding to these FOI requests that they're having very little time to do anything which could be remotely categorized as meaningful

in terms of investigation or research into the phenomenon. I think that's a serious issue. So, for all those reasons, in December 2007, the MOD made that policy decision. We are going to release the whole lot. The UK's fascination with the UFOs spiked around 1950, prompting the MODD to form the Flying Saucer Working Party to address the phenomenon according to the UK National Archives. UFOs in the early 1950s even captured the attention of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who sent a memo to his heir minister in 1952, asking, quote, what does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to?

What can it mean? What is the truth? End quote. The Flying Saucer Working Party concluded that UFOs were either hoaxes, delusions, or ordinary objects that were misidentified. Recommending, quote, that no further investigation of reported mysterious aerial phenomena be undertaken. Since then, it has been rumored that U.S. UFO investigations continued in some capacity within the MOD. But many who witnessed UFOs that were reported to the MOD certainly didn't believe that what they saw was a hoax,

a delusion, or a misidentification. One of those witnesses was Milton Torres. Torres was the United States Air Force pilot. Stationed overseas in 1957 during the Cold War, Torres not only witnessed a UFO over the English countryside, but was ordered to fire upon it. After over 50 years of remaining silent on what happened that day, he finally came forward with his story after these MOD files vindicated his account. This is the story of Milton Torres and his official orders to shoot down a UFO. The MOD released the story that I've kept since 1957.

A relief. I can talk about it. This is somewhere in the skies with Ryan's bread. Milton Torres joined the U.S. Air Force in 1951 and was commissioned as a lieutenant in 1954, serving in Britain as a fighter pilot. In 1961, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree. in engineering and became a range control officer at Cape Canaveral for the Gemini and Apollo space programs.

Later, he flew 276 combat missions in the Vietnam War and earned 13 air medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. He attained the rank of Major before retiring from military service in 1971. He'd seen many things in the skies during his decorated career, but it was in 1957 that something in the skies would change his life forever. It was May 20, 1957. Torres was stationed at RAF Manston in Air Force Base in East Anglia, England. This is his story, in his own words, as he recalls what happened, that extraordinary day.

When I first came to Manston, the first thing we had to do was to, quote, transition to the new airplane. Well, I was already transitioned. I was trained at Peron Air Force Base in Texas, which did nothing trained F-86D pilots. Okay, when I got there, we had everybody in the squadron had to get up to speed at the same level. We went fired rocketry at Tripoli. We did all kinds of things. once we finally knew what we were doing, so they said they said, they put us on alert, that we had to take a share of the alert.

This is for the RAF and the USAF, depending on whoever, which airplanes were on duty. We would be on alert waiting to be scrabble. Now, the scrabbles usually were nothing more than some airliner that was lost or somebody up there that was in trouble and they wanted us to come up and lead them in. that's usually what happened. When I got this scramble, this is a different story. We were at the end of the runway in our alert shack, waiting for a scramble order, and I got it. It was somewhere near midnight.

I remember the exact time, but it was very close to midnight. I scrambled, we got into the airplane and took off. The minute I took off, I checked into the GCI site, which was given to me when I took off. And the GCI advised me pick up a heli of 1-200 and go get it. which I was already at gate, which means going to have to burner all the way. The soup was so thick. You couldn't see any lights. You couldn't see anything.

It was a set of clouds that went from the ground up to 32,000 feet, and I couldn't see a thing. It was one of these pea soup fogs that they had in England at the time. And during these piecew fogs, this was when they were burning coal, mostly in England, and therefore the fogs were really tough. So anyway, the minute I got airborne, actually before I got airborne, they indicated this would be a hot fire measure.

Hot fire, I turned in and says, you will be ordered to fire 24 rockets. Well, that's a very heavy order. The kind of order that you demand an authentication. So I picked up my little matrix and went through the authentication procedure and I've looked down and they gave me two letters they said, yes, this is an offer problem.

That means I have to fire. First, my first concern was, Jesus, this is the first shot of World War III. I didn't want to hear that, you know, but nevertheless, that's what I ran through my mind. I just went through the motions. I was ordered to fire on this machine and I was going to fire on it

and I was going to solve the rockets, 24 of them that was my orders, 24 rockets that's the whole load of shot so as far as I was concerned that was my orders and that's all I was going to do and being a good fighter pilot I thought anyway I'm going to obey my orders

to salute and say yes sir and proceed ahead I had no idea what it was so we continued on the mission I selected the rocket the I was ready to go. They advised me to turn on a heading. We actually made what they call an intern vector.

That means my wingman was about five miles behind me. We would turn on the same vector and we would come into this whatever there was, a bomber or whatever. They advised me, look on your port side. at about 15 miles that's where it's at. Sure enough, there was. As big as I said before,

as big as an aircraft carrier as far as the blip was concerned, it was an easy lock-on, very easy. My radar was telling me that I was giving, I got about 200 dot overtake on him over what he was going, and I was going at mark 0.92, and

being, who mock one would be around 750. We couldn't go to the FAS. At any rate, I had a solid lock, and now came in the target, it gives you a circle on the radar, and in that circle, they have another little circle,

and it has the jizzle band. The jizzle band is the band you see on the radar when it goes round and around, except in our case it was held still, because I was locked on. anyway as I was going in I looked up there my overtake was holding it about

250 300 not somewhere in that neighborhood closure rate and then all of a sudden I got to I started to shrink this means I'm going to tell him

I said Judy you know which means to them that I've got to complete intercept on my own I'm ready to fire I pull the trigger and nothing happened, but it was coming in,

and just about two or three seconds to go, it's supposed to go into a flat line where I just put the dot on the line, and the radar takes over all computations and fires the missiles if I have it depressed. Well, that didn't happen. The next thing I know I look up, I see the jizzled bend was in center,

and this blip was going straight north, straight away from me and away from me and it was going I estimate Mach 10 because it was so fast and the RIF told me this time

that we've lost our our target off our radar completely and we have a 250 miles scope and he's gone and I said well he's gone with me too he's out he's out of range I'm returning and going home

so I did and they've activated a home plate. At any rate, that's when they told me that, call me on the landline, and I got the rest of the information on the landline. Then they told me that the British were sending somebody down from London to debrish me, and that's all that happened that day. You're great at protecting your data,

but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish. Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident

restoration is guaranteed. Pour your money back. Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side? Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com slash Spotify. Terms apply. Torres landed and was told to wait to hear from his superiors. He was then ushered into a room

in the squadron operations area. where a well-dressed American civilian in a dark blue trench coat was waiting for him. And this guy, the spook, comes in, and I had no idea who he was or what. Anyway, he flashed a card that wasn't in National Reserve, but it was a official government bag. He was a spook, that's all I knew. So I told him the whole story, and he told me, no uncertain term, don't tell anybody that's been declared top secret. And if you open your mouth to anybody, that includes your commander, or, wing men or anybody else, you open up your mouth to anybody and says, we'll get you off of flying status.

That was enough for me to be quiet for the rest of the time. And for over 52 years, Torres kept silent. But the event never left his mind. It ate away at him for many years, knowing that he had to keep his oath of silence. And then, the MOD files were released. And within the pages was a link. the written statement by Torres about what he had experienced.

At the 2009 X-Conference, alongside Nick Pope, Torres had this to say about what he believed it was that he witnessed that night in the skies above East Anglia. I have convinced myself that this was an alien spacecraft

because he did things that my airplane couldn't do or no other airplane could do. And he had speeds that were in. infinite compared to what I could handle. And I think he had a proposal that was

controlled anti-gravity or something because he just took off. I don't know how the hell he did it without being plastered up against the ceiling. Because if there were G-forces going on there that I couldn't even imagine. So I have been convinced since then

that was an alien and nobody's going to talk me out of that one. I did it myself. While these assertions were Tauruses and his alone, what did other fighter pilots think of his statement? Former USAF fighter pilot, Chris Lido, read the statement, and here it gives his thoughts. I think it's quite compelling, man. All his word, everything he uses, the actual account, the way he wrote it, his preciseness with certain things, certain details, how he talks. You know, really seems like this is a

legit and compelling case. So you have something very large, very, very, very large. that was picked up by ground radars. So the R.A.F. Ground control intercept could actually see it, right? And was able to direct his aircraft onto it. So you had it was seen by the ground radars and it was picked up by his fighter radar. Okay. So if you're talking about jamming, how do you jam multiple different radars at different angles and different frequencies?

Very, very difficult and not like that, okay? That is possible in certain minute instances, but, you know, was electronic attack expert for four years at the aggressors, and I can tell you it's very difficult in 1957. I don't see how that would happen. And it accelerated away. I mean, amazing. This guy obviously thinks he was fighting something real out there. It sounds like he was, so I don't know.

While Chris Lido finds the case fascinating and accurate in terms of how Torres recalled the event and how it played out between the ground crew and in the cockpit, this doesn't mean that this aircraft carrier-sized UFO was definitely alien? Could there be a more earthly explanation? Noted UFO historian and researcher David Clark gives his thoughts on what the UFO could have possibly been. Was it really a UFO? Was it some kind of Soviet aircraft that had been seen? If so, who gave the orders to fire on it and why? The only other possible explanation is that maybe the pilot was involved in some kind of experiment involving electronic warfare because we now know because the CIA have admitted this that they did have a program in the 1960s called Palladium which involved the creation of phantom aircraft on radar and this was done basically to fool the Russians

and so that they could test the capabilities of Russian radar systems and so maybe as a remote possibility that perhaps what this pilot had seen was some kind of experiment in electronic warfare, or maybe it was a UFO. No matter what it was or wasn't that Milton Torres witnessed, he was convinced it was from another world. And while we may never truly know what it was, the release of the MOD UFO files, which included his written testimony, was vindication enough for him to finally tell his story. A story of a pilot and a man truly changed by this mystery, somewhere in the skies. The MOD released the story that I've kept in 1777. What a relief. I can talk about it.

Audio clips for this episode are credited to Edit International, Ron Leitner, Chris Lido, and FOTV. Please take just a few moments to rate and review Somewhere in the Skies on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find the show. It helps us gain visibility and find new listeners. Follow us on Twitter at SummerSkies and on Instagram at Summer Skies Pod. Links to our YouTube channel, official store, and website can all be found in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening.

And remember, keep your full. Feet on the ground, but never stop searching. Somewhere in the Skies. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network.