On Saturday, October 21, 1978, at 6:19 p.m., 20-year-old
Frederick Valentich took off from Moorabbin Airport just south of
Melbourne, Australia, for what was supposed to be a routine
training and pleasure flight over Bass Strait to King
Island. A serious student aviator, Valentich had been
flying for two years and had accumulated over 150 hours of solo
flying time in his goal to one day become a commercial airline
pilot. Although rated for night flying by instrument, the
sun was still up, and with clear visibility and good weather,
there was no reason Valentich shouldn’t have easily completed
this trip, which he’d taken several times before. However,
just over halfway through the flight at 7:06 p.m., Valentich
contacted Melbourne Flight Service Unit and reported seeing an
unidentified craft above him, traveling at high speed and shining
four bright lights. Valentich would radio back a few
minutes later that it didn’t appear to be any known aircraft, and
now it had even more unusual characteristics: it was long, shiny
metallic, and a green light was emanating from it. Even
more unsettling, this craft he described was deliberately toying
with him as it orbited above while his plane’s engine was
sputtering. At 7:11 p.m., the last statement anyone would
hear from Valentich would be that the object was still hovering
and that it was not an aircraft. Valentich and his plane
had vanished at that moment, but whether it was an elaborate
hoax, a deliberate crash, or merely a misidentification combined
with a mechanical failure, no investigation has been able to
determine. What is not in doubt is that the case of
Frederick Valentich remains one of Australia’s biggest aviation
mysteries, if not in all of UFO lore.
Visit our website on this episode for a lot more
information.
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