A TERRIFYING Cold War near miss witnessed by an entire crew of a US Air Force spy plane has been laid bare in a UFO dossier.

The once top secret file was released by the Ministry of Defence last week, along with several other declassified documents.

They include the gripping account of an unexplained incident on 19 October 1982 when a USAF RC-135 plane snooping on Soviet military activity was buzzed by “a big object” over the Med.

British troops stationed at RAF Troodos – a base on Cyprus – listened in as the American crew called for help as a UFO cloaked in “a multitude of flashing lights, 20 at a time” zoned in.

During the 90 minute incident, two US Navy F-14 fighters were scrambled and an RAF Phantom was diverted from a flying exercise to tail the intruder spotted on the south of the island.

As the three jets approached the American crew watched the UFO turn away and head toward the African coast, but nothing was seen by the fighter pilots.

An investigation was opened into the bizarre sighting and sent to the US defence bods, documents show.

Radar film, tapes and transcripts of the distress call were also analysed by intelligence officers – but removed from the files.

An RAF worker puts forward a suggestion, writing: “We have a strong suspicion that the “UFO” was a mirage effect from lights on the coast of Israel or Lebanon”.

But the results of the joint US and UK investigation do not appear in the file.

Dr David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University’s department of journalism, said the incident was “a fascinating and puzzling encounter that was obviously taken very seriously by the US and UK military authorities”.

Dr Clarke was instrumental in the release of these files and has been poring over the freshly released documents since their release at the National Archives, revealing details of the incredible incident in his blog.

The Ministry of Defence previously claimed that several of the files had been stored in a building contaminated with asbestos and could never be made available to the public over health and safety fears.

But following the insistence of the general public and the help of the likes of Dr Clarke, some of the files were eventually released in 2009 and 2013 can be found online.

Of these, 18 were withheld – sparking conspiracy theories that the government was holding something back.

But last week the MoD quietly made all but three of these missing files available.

Dr Clarke said that the disclosure prompted as many questions as it answered.

He said: “like many of the more puzzling UFO incidents in the MoD files, mystery surrounds what happened to the evidence.

“Once again, we have a few tantalising pieces of paper but nothing else.

“Where is the recording and transcript of the tape and where are the images from the radar film, referred to in the file?

“I suspect they have been destroyed like many of the other records of these puzzling incidents.

“Not because they were trying to hide evidence of ET visitors but because they did not put any value on UFO records.

“If something was not of Soviet origin but could not be explained, then best ignore it and shred the evidence.

“Unfortunately by adopting this policy the MoD have created a stick for conspiracy theorists to beat them with.”

Other files divulge various UFO sightings and investigations across the UK between the 1970s to the early noughties, including a report called the “Turnberry Vor Incident”, “The Wash” sightings and the notorious Rendlesham Forest phenomenon – often referred to as Britain’s Roswell.

The files are filled with mysterious eyewitness accounts as well as questionable doodles sent in from the general public, including depictions of fidget-spinner style spacecraft and flying saucers drawn by schoolkids.

Source: The Sun News