Olympia Bulletin

LONDON (Reuters) – Two U.S. fighter planes were scrambled and ordered to shoot down an unidentified flying object (UFO) over the English countryside during the Cold War, according to secret files made public Monday.

One highlight from the batch released Monday involves the captain of an Italian airliner. He shouted “Look out!” to his co-pilot in April 1991 after claiming to see a beige “missile-shaped object” shoot past the cockpit.

In that instance, the defence ministry ruled out a missile and “all the usual explanations,” wrote David Clarke, a UFO expert and journalism instructor at Sheffield Hallam University, who worked with the National Archives to prepare the new materials for release.

“The end result was this was a genuine UFO and the file was simply closed,” he wrote. “There was nothing more they could do.”