The Valentich Disappearance over Bass Strait

Frederick Valentich was 20 years old. He held a private pilot's licence with about 150 flying hours. He had applied twice to the Royal Australian Air Force and been rejected. He was also an ardent believer in UFOs, and had told his father, Guido, he worried about being attacked by one.

Saturday, 21 October 1978. At 18:19 he took off from Moorabbin Airport in Melbourne in a rented Cessna 182L. Registration VH-DSJ. Delta Sierra Juliet. The route ran southwest to Cape Otway, then across Bass Strait to King Island. The sun set at 18:43. Around 19:00 he reported over Cape Otway.

At 19:06 he asked Melbourne if there was any known traffic below five thousand feet. There was none. He described what seemed to be a large aircraft, with lights like landing lights. It passed over him at least a thousand feet above. "It seems to me that he's playing some sort of game," he said. "He's flying over me two, three times at a time, at speeds I could not identify."

Asked to describe it, he said, "As it's flying past it's a long shape." Then he was orbiting, and "the thing is just orbiting on top of me." It had "a green light and sort of metallic-like. It's all shiny on the outside." At 19:10:48 he reported, "It's just vanished." Moments later it returned from the southwest.

Then the engine. "The engine is, is rough idling," he said, "and the thing is coughing." He still intended to go to King Island. At 19:12 came his last clear words. "It's hovering and it's not an aircraft." Seventeen seconds of open microphone followed. Then silence.

The alert went out at 19:33. Ships, an RAAF P-3 Orion and eight civilian aircraft searched more than 1,000 square miles. On 25 October the search ended. Nothing had been found. In July 1983 an engine cowl flap from a Cessna 182 washed ashore on Flinders Island. It was consistent with VH-DSJ, but never uniquely identified.

Others were watching the sky that evening. Near Apollo Bay, four people out rabbit hunting later described a greenish light "like it was riding on top of the airplane." At Cape Otway, Roy Manifold took six sunset photographs. One shows a dark, blurred shape over the water. Around 30 sightings were catalogued across Victoria, Bass Strait and Tasmania between 20 and 23 October.

The Department of Transport's 315-page file reached a blunt conclusion: "The reason for the disappearance of the aircraft has not been determined." Richard Haines analysed the final 17 seconds of tape and found the noise "could have been produced by extremely rapid manual keying of the aircraft's microphone press-to-talk switch." Officials at the time wondered if Valentich had become disorientated, flying upside down and seeing reflected lights.

McGaha and Nickell later argued for a graveyard spiral at dusk. The four lights, they said, were Venus, Mars, Mercury and Antares. Brian Dunning noted how closely the radio exchange echoes Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Others raised a staged disappearance. The plane had fuel for roughly 500 more miles and was never plotted on radar. Ufologist Paul Norman was certain. "There is no doubt in my mind that the disappearance of Frederick Valentich and his Cessna was caused by a UFO."

Guido Valentich hoped until his death in 2000 that his son was alive. A memorial plaque was dedicated at the Cape Otway lighthouse in December 1998. Unsolved Mysteries and The Unexplained Files retold the story. It helped inspire the drama The Kettering Incident. The official answer never changed. Not determined.