RAF air defence radars spotted a 'UFO' over Lincolnshire skies - only to find it was a county church.

Airmen at RAF Neatishead in Norfolk mistook the unidentified blip in Lincolnshire airspace for an alien visitor, according to newly revealed reports from the Ministry of Defence and National Archives.

But the report was then forced to conclude the county had not had a close encounter, after the radar imagery was identified as St Botolph's church spire in Boston.

The report read: "The church spire is known in aviation circles as the 'Boston Stump' and appears occasionally on some radars in certain radar propagation conditions."

The document has been uncovered in more than 6,000 pages of material spanning from 1994 to 2000, holding hundreds of other-worldly experiences with UFOs and apparent aliens across Britain.

This is the fifth installment released under a three-year project between the Ministry of Defence and The National Archives and consists of 24 files of sightings, letters and Parliamentary Questions.

Lights spotted in The Wash around the same time as the Boston Stump mistake in October 1996 were harder to explain, being touted as "a distant celestial source".

Police officers and a ship's crew witnessed rotating multi-coloured lights in the sky near the east coast of England. The corroborated sightings were documented in a detailed RAF investigation.

The officers from Boston and Skegness saw the UFOs above the North Sea on October 5, 1996 and contacted the coastguards, who in turn alerted ships in the area. The lights were also observed by the crew of a ship in The Wash, the estuary on the north-west margin of East Anglia.

A further report also mentioned Lincolnshire. It showed a drawing of a "star" like craft which the eyewitness claimed appeared, tilted then revealed four white lights, on June 15, 1994, on the A46. It was said to be heading towards Newark.