General Question

ScottyMcGeester's avatar

Anyone know more about the Valentich disappearance?

Asked by ScottyMcGeester (1897points) April 16th, 2013

You can easily search it on the Wiki. Long story short, a guy in a small one-manned airplane was close to shore in Australia when he noticed a strange green light following him. There’s a recording of him with the airport control or whatever and it’s really unnerving as his connection fades and it ends with the screeching of metal.

Nobody ever found a plane or any kind of remnant despite him being close to shore.

That’s really about the gist of it. It’s a UFO-esque story that probably has intrigued me the most, probably because nobody knows what the hell happened nor can say where he is. It was back in the seventies I think.

One thing I’m confused about is that there was supposedly a picture taken by a bystander along the shore of a green light in the sky. I’m not sure if that was fake or before or after the incident or whatever.

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7 Answers

rojo's avatar

@Rarebear

Yep, It’s aways a weather balloon.

Or Venus.

ScottyMcGeester's avatar

@Rarebear I’m confused. This sighting has nothing to do with Valentich’s disappearance. This was 1966. Valentich disappeared off the coast of Australia in 1974 or so. Unless you’re suggesting these weather balloons were also released at the time of his disappearance.

Rarebear's avatar

@ScottyMcGeester My mistake. Sorry.

strangeuniverse's avatar

He(Frederick) stated it was a strange craft/UFO that was bearing down on him, he was frantic, if you do some research – you’ll find many cases of planes encountering UFOs/ and also disappearing off the radar. Strange case from Canada in 1953 I believe, where a fighter plane was sent to investigate an unknown radar target over the Great Lakes, when the plane reached the unknown target, the radar blips merged into one, and the plane and pilot were never heard from again, this kind of thing is sadly not uncommon, but finding the reports can be hard, due to the Air Force/and Military(Domestic & Foreign) suppressing any info on UFOs, and their interaction with our planes..

Espiritus_Corvus's avatar

”... this kind of thing is sadly not uncommon, but finding the reports can be hard, due to the Air Force/and Military(Domestic & Foreign) suppressing any info on UFOs, and their interaction with our planes..”

So, if these things are suppressed by the Air Force/and Military (Domestic & Foreign), how do you know they are sadly uncommon?

rojo's avatar

we have some new information on this puzzling case:

“Adelaide researcher Keith Basterfield has been following the case since the disappearance in 1978, but had been told by the Government in 2004 the official file had been lost or destroyed. He “found” it when searching through an online National Archives index on an unrelated topic. The file has since been digitised and uploaded on the archive’s website.”

So we have skeptic Keith Basterfield to thank for the recent government “document dump” that gets this new information ‘out there.’ Basterfield explains that the newly-released files reveal that “parts of aircraft wreckage with partial serial numbers were found in Bass Strait five years after the disappearance.” Also, one pilot searching at the right time and place saw debris that appeared to be from a Cessna, but before he could get a good fix on its position it apparently sank. This makes it extremely likely that Valentich’s aircraft simply crashed into the water in the darkness, although it falls short of conclusive proof.

Those interested in reading the 315-page official file still need to go out of their way to find it, however, via a seven-step process outlined by Mr Basterfield, which he perhaps charitably denies is another attempt to hide information. He says: 1. Go to National Archives of Australia. 2. Click on search the collection 3. Click on Begin your search 4. Up comes RecordSearch 5. In the keywords box type VH-DSJ 6. Up comes this file 7. Click on the View digital copy icon. (Miles Kemp, Adelaide Now, Fri, 06 Jul 2012)

If that is too complicated, and you really don’t want to read all 315 pages in this maddeningly slow way, there is a nice summary of these findings in Basterfield’s Blog entries of June 28, July 3, and August 24, 2012. You can also download the first set of documents from scribd. From the documents: A number of reports of a fast moving brilliant white light were received from various parts of the country. Mt Stromlo observatory advised that the night of the 21st was the peak of the meteorite stream with 10–15 sightings per hour achieved.

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