Disappearance of Frederick Valentich

Disappearance of Frederick Valentich

Type	Case
Also known as	Valentich disappearance, Bass Strait UFO
Date	Evening of Saturday 21 October 1978
Place	Over Bass Strait, near Cape Otway, Victoria, Australia
Pilot	Frederick Valentich (9 June 1958 – disappeared 21 October 1978)
Aircraft	Cessna 182L, registration VH-DSJ
Official finding	Cause not determined; "presumed fatal" (1982)

The disappearance of Frederick Valentich is the loss of a 20-year-old Australian pilot and his Cessna 182L light aircraft over Bass Strait on the evening of 21 October 1978, during a 125-nautical-mile flight from Moorabbin, near Melbourne, to King Island. In his last six minutes of radio contact Valentich told Melbourne air traffic control that a large unknown craft with bright lights was flying around and hovering over him, that his engine was running roughly, and finally that "it's not an aircraft", before the transmission ended in unexplained noise. No trace of him or the plane was found in the search that followed.^[1][3]

The case caused a worldwide sensation and is still cited by ufologists as an abduction or attack by a UFO. Officials suggested that the inexperienced pilot became disoriented and crashed; skeptics have identified the lights he described with planets and a bright star and argued he fell into a fatal "graveyard spiral". Other theories range from a staged disappearance to suicide. Five years later, part of a Cessna 182 engine cowling washed up on Flinders Island.^[1][3]

The pilot

Frederick Valentich was born on 9 June 1958. He was determined to make a career in aviation and belonged to the Royal Australian Air Force Air Training Corps, but had twice been rejected by the RAAF itself for lack of educational qualifications. He obtained a private pilot's licence in September 1977 and was studying part time for a commercial licence, but had twice failed all five exam subjects and, the month before he disappeared, failed three more. He had about 150 hours of flying time and a class-four instrument rating, which allowed him to fly at night but only in visual meteorological conditions.^[1][3]

He had been involved in several flying incidents: he was warned for straying into controlled airspace in Sydney and was facing possible prosecution for twice deliberately flying into cloud. According to his father, Guido, he was an ardent believer in UFOs who collected articles and watched films on the subject, said he had seen one himself earlier that year, and worried about what would happen if they attacked. His girlfriend, Rhonda Rushton, said that six days before his disappearance he talked with her about the possibility of a UFO taking him away.^[1][3][4]

The flight

Valentich's reason for the flight is unknown. He told flight officials he was going to King Island to pick up friends, and told others he was going to collect crayfish; later investigation found both reasons untrue. Against standard procedure, he did not tell King Island Airport that he intended to land there. He left Moorabbin airport in the rented Cessna, registered VH-DSJ, at 6:19 p.m., shortly before sunset at 6:43 p.m., heading south-east across Bass Strait in clear skies.^[1][3]

The radio conversation

At 7:06 p.m., flying at 4,500 feet near Cape Otway, Valentich asked Melbourne Flight Service whether there was any known traffic below 5,000 feet. The controller, Steve Robey, told him there was none. Valentich said there seemed to be a large aircraft, which he could not identify, with four bright lights that looked like landing lights, and that it had just passed about 1,000 feet over him. He asked whether there were any Air Force aircraft nearby; there were none known.^[1][3]

He reported that the craft was approaching from due east and that its pilot seemed to be "playing some sort of game", flying over him two or three times at speeds he could not judge. Asked to confirm he could not identify it, he said: "It's not an aircraft." As it flew past, he said, it was a long shape. Asked how large it was, he said it seemed stationary; he was now orbiting, and the thing was orbiting on top of him too. It had a green light and looked metallic, shiny on the outside. Then he said it had vanished, and asked what kind of aircraft he had seen — was it military?^[1][3]

Moments later he reported it approaching again from the south-west, and said his engine was rough idling and coughing. Asked his intentions, he said he would continue to King Island. His last words were that the strange aircraft was hovering on top of him again — "it is hovering, and it's not an aircraft". There followed 17 seconds of open microphone with an unidentified staccato or "metallic, scraping" noise, and contact was lost at about 7:12 p.m. Some published versions of the transcript differ from the official one; the researcher Richard Haines, using filters, believed one word heard as "stationary" was in fact "chasing me".^[1][3]

The search

A sea and air search began at once, involving ocean-going ships, an RAAF Lockheed P-3 Orion and eight civilian aircraft, and covered more than 1,000 square miles. It ended on 25 October without result. An oil slick found on 22 October about 18 miles north of King Island was not shown to be connected with the plane, and a month later the pilot of another Cessna thought he saw the outline of a submerged aircraft but could not confirm it on a second pass.^[1][3]

The official investigation

The Australian Department of Transport's investigation, whose findings were issued by the Bureau of Air Safety Investigation in May 1982, could not determine the reason for the disappearance and classed it as "presumed fatal". Five years after the plane went missing, an engine cowl flap washed up on Flinders Island. In July 1983 the bureau asked the Royal Australian Navy Research Laboratory how likely it was that the part could have drifted there from where the plane disappeared, noting that it came from a Cessna 182 within a range of serial numbers that included Valentich's aircraft. The Australian researcher Keith Basterfield later rediscovered the "lost" official case file.^[1][2][3]

Reports of UFOs seen that night came in only after the disappearance had been publicised. Ken Williams, a Department of Transport spokesman, remarked that it was "funny" how many people were ringing up with UFO reports well after Valentich vanished.^[1][3]

Proposed explanations

Disorientation and a "graveyard spiral"

Some Department of Transport officials suggested that Valentich became disoriented and saw his own lights reflected in the water, or lights on a nearby island, while flying upside down.^[1]

In 2013 the astronomer and retired U.S. Air Force pilot James McGaha and the investigator Joe Nickell reviewed the transcript and other data. A computer reconstruction of the sky for that time and place showed four bright lights in his field of view: the planet Venus at its brightest, Mars, Mercury and the bright star Antares, which formed a vertically elongated diamond — fitting his "four bright lights" and "long shape". They argued that the "metallic" surface was his mind filling in the shape between the points, and that the green light could have been his own right-wingtip navigation light or its reflection. The lights stayed still; it was the plane that moved around them, as his remark about orbiting suggests.^[1][3]

Distracted and excited, the authors argue, Valentich may have been fooled by the illusion of a tilted horizon — common at dusk, when one part of the horizon is still bright — and, in trying to level his wings, put the aircraft into a slowly tightening downward "graveyard spiral". The rising G-forces would reduce fuel flow, explaining the rough-running engine, as would the plane inverting, since the Cessna's fuel system was gravity-fed. They concluded the disappearance was simply a fatal crash, made more likely by his fascination with UFOs, and suggested he may have been out looking for one. A ground witness who, years later, said he had seen a green light above the plane described it as like a navigation light, consistent with the right wing being raised in a steep bank.^[1][3]

Close Encounters

The skeptic Brian Dunning noted that Valentich's radio exchange resembled a scene in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, released less than a year earlier and popular with pilots, young people and UFO fans, and speculated that Valentich might have been imitating it for fun — even flying in circles to give the radar operators something to see — before becoming disoriented and crashing into the sea.^[1]

A staged disappearance or suicide

Some have suggested Valentich staged his disappearance. Even allowing for 30 to 45 minutes to reach Cape Otway, the Cessna had enough fuel to fly another 800 km; the aircraft was never plotted on radar despite ideal conditions, raising doubts about whether it was near Cape Otway at all; and Melbourne police received reports of a light aircraft making a mysterious landing not far from Cape Otway at about the time he vanished. Others have found the evidence does not support the idea. Suicide has also been suggested, but according to the ufologist Keith Basterfield, interviews with doctors and colleagues who knew Valentich virtually ruled it out. Other theories have included a shoot-down by drug runners and an electrical discharge from a cloud igniting fuel fumes.^[1][3]

Ufologists' views

Ufologists have claimed that a UFO destroyed the plane or abducted Valentich, pointing to reports of an erratically moving green light in the sky that night and of a plane in a steep dive, which they link to the green light he described. The Mount Stromlo Observatory, however, noted that a meteor stream was active that night, with ten to fifteen sightings an hour.^[1]

The U.S. group Ground Saucer Watch, based in Phoenix, Arizona, claimed that photographs taken that day by a plumber, Roy Manifold, near the Cape Otway lighthouse showed a fast-moving object emerging from the water, surrounded by a cloud-like vapour — though, according to the UFO writer Jerome Clark, the pictures were not clear enough to identify it. Jordan Liles of Snopes suggested the object was most likely an out-of-focus fly or a passing bird.^[1]

Legacy

Forty years on, in an ABC radio documentary, Last Light, presented by the philosopher Patrick Stokes, people caught up in the event — among them Rhonda Rushton, the air traffic controller Steve Robey and UFO investigators — were still wrestling with what happened that night. The case is often compared with the 1953 disappearance of the U.S. Air Force pilot Felix Moncla, and has fed the legend of a "Bass Strait Triangle".^[1][4]

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Disappearance of Frederick Valentich”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.