British special forces have discovered an unidentified ship shot down in the north of England

 British special forces have recovered an "unnatural" craft shot down in northern England in the late 1980s, according to a former British airborne soldier and military intelligence officer.

Franc Milburn, a veteran of the British Army's elite Parachute Regiment, said he spoke to a member of the MI6-run unit that carried out the alleged operation. Milburn also claims to have spoken to a Royal Air Force (RAF) crew who pursued and fired upon a pair of "discoidal UFOs" traveling at hypersonic speeds higher than their fighters. However, he did not want to reveal the identity of his former elite colleague, citing security reasons and his desire to remain anonymous - from now on he will be referred to by the pseudonym "John".

Speaking exclusively to the DailyMail, the veteran revealed surprising details of a story told by his former Special Forces friend after they both left the military, saying he wanted to support recent claims by US informants about a secret crashed UFO recovery program.

According to his account, in the 1980s, John worked for a secret unit now known as E Squadron, which specialized in covert, classified and paramilitary operations. E Squadron - formerly known as "The Increment" - recruited the most experienced and trusted operators of British Special Forces units: the Special Air Service (SAS), the Special Boat Service (SBS) and the Regiment of Special Reconnaissance (SRR).

The U.S. equivalent of this squadron is the CIA's Special Operations Group and Joint Forces Special Operations Command, consisting of "Tier 1" units, including Delta Force and SEAL Team 6. Milburn detailed that John participated in the 1982 Falklands War and in many high-risk missions around the world, but one of the most disturbing took place in his own country in the late 1980s.

"He told me they were deployed in a unit of roughly 20-30 Special Forces operators," he said. "The RAF informed them that a ship, which was not Russian, British or American, had been shot down. He said they were tasked with securing and retrieving this ship in the north of England. They were airlifted by helicopter."

"He didn't describe the ship, he just said that it was obvious it wasn't human, and that it was obvious its crew had fled the scene on foot, which led to the task of tracking these creatures to try to stop them," he continued.

Part of the unit stayed with the ship, while the rest tried to track down the escaping creatures. Scientists and technicians then arrived on the scene and John's team was taken away by helicopter, never to hear anything about the crashed ship again.

Although Milburn declined to provide further details and provided no evidence for the incredible story, the former airborne soldier said he trusted his former elite colleague's word after speaking with other SAS veterans.

Milburn worked in British Military Intelligence until the late 1990s and then as a contractor in Iraq with U.S. Special Forces and the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security. He is currently an analyst at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, a university think tank with close ties to Israeli military intelligence.