On September 8 1970, the radar at RAF Binbrook, near Market Rasen in Lincolnshire, had picked up an unexplained blip in British airspace. A number of aircrafts from different bases were scrambled. Captain William Schaffner, an American exchange officer based at Binbrook, took his Lightning plane out over the North Sea beyond Grimsby, chasing something that, according to the radar screen at least, was varying its speed between 600 and an incredible 17,000mph. Schaffner described a dazzlingly blue light and reported that as he closed in, he could make out that the object was cone-shaped and had a spherical section which appeared to be made of glass.
At one point the craft (one of them - there may have been two) hurtled towards him and he had to bank sharply to avoid a collision. On the radar screen something extraordinary happened. The blips representing the Lightning and the UFO actually merged, then stopped altogether. A second later, the UFO blib was careering away at a speed estimated to be in excess of 20,000mph.
Radio contact was re-established with Schaffner, but he sounded dazed and disorientated and his compass wasn't working. He was ordered to ditch in the sea. The Lightning sank in minutes. For some reason, Schaffner had been unable to eject from the cockpit and get into his survival dinghy. But the cockpit was empty and his body was never recovered.
