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This FAB CENDOC file, released through The Black Vault, holds material from 1978. Part of it is an issue of International UFO Reporter, edited by J. Allen Hynek, with a long report on the October 21, 1978 disappearance of pilot Fred Valentich over Bass Strait. That report includes his radio transcript, the search, and the competing explanations. The file also has a Brazilian newspaper clipping and a Fourth Regional Air Command investigation of a July 1978 landing report by eleven-year-old Dalton Legnaioli in Penha, São Paulo.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
Search off for pilot in UFO scare
Second sighting in UFO mystery
# UFO MYSTERY
UFO PILOT NOT HIDING IN BUSH
# PROBE WIDENS ON MISSING PLANE
pilot 'level headed'
PILOT LOST AT SEA Metal clue in Gosford UFO expert probes Bass Strait mystery
VORLD CALLS ON MISSING sea hunt for plane
'UFO GRAB' PILOT Aussie pilot reports seeing UF
Hundreds of UFO reports
SEARCH FINDS NC
Was it the same UFO? TRACE OF PILOT
# FOREIGN FORUM
This is a representative sampling of UFO sightings obtained from around the world. While we cannot exert the same degree of control over these cases as domestic ones, it is at least of value to see that the same characteristics are reported for the phenomenon abroad as in the U S.
Saturday, October 21 brought the world the most publicized sighting of the year. the mysterious case of Australian pilot Fred Valentich. As a rule, IUR has difficulty obtaining information on a foreign case, but this one is an exception, for there is only so much that anyone can know about it. The solitary witness is "unavailable for comment" perhaps forever. The sources of IUR's information on this matter spring from 70 newspaper clippings from Australia and the U.S., direct calls to news departments in Melbourne, reports from Harry Griesburg, Paul Norman and Bill Chalker overseas and information submitted by Michael Duggin of the University of Sydney and Dr. Richard Haines in the U.S.
Frederick Paul Valentich, 20, had spent three years as a cadet and volunteer instructor with the RAAF Air Training Corps in West Melbourne. He had been flying for two years and held an unrestricted license since February, 1978. Fred needed to build up night flying hours for his commercial pilot's license and
needed to pick up crayfish for an Air Training Corps officers' function. Thus, on October 21, he laid aside his meteorology course studies and left Moorabbin Airport in Melbourne at 6:19 PM for a flight to King Island to get both. Flying in the same $43,000 blue and white Cessna 182L ("long-range" type) in which he had trained, he followed the conventional course toward King Island by hugging the shoreline to Cape Otway a route his father said he had flown three times before. He radioed to the Melbourne Flight Service that he had passed the southernmost point of the mainland at 7:00 PM and was flying across the Bass Strait toward the island (this was a "full reporting" flight). Estimated time of arrival at King Island: 7:28 PM. His parents expected to hear from him again at 10 PM. back with his fresh crayfish.
At 7:06 PM, however, Valentich became aware of a neighboring "aircraft" at his 4500-foot altitude, and radioed the Flight Service about his unexpected traffic. While a number
Fred Valentich Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 86 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.