Twenty-year-old Frederick Valentich was a pilot for Southern Air Services in Moorabbin, Australia, twenty-five kilometers (fifteen miles) southeast of Melborune, Victoria, in the far southeastern part of mainland Australia. At 6:19 p.m. on October 21, 1978, he departed Moorabbin Airport, piloting a single engine Cessna 182L light aircraft.

Valentich radioed Melbourne air traffic control at 7:06 p.m. reporting an unidentified aircraft was following him at 4,500 feet. Headquarters showed no known air traffic at that level. At 7:12 p.m., he again radioed, with his voice shaking, “It isn’t an aircraft.” His transmission was then interrupted by unidentified noise described as “metallic, scraping sounds” before all contact was lost.

Also lost were Frederick Valentich and his aircraft; no trace of either has ever surfaced.

Forty-five years later, it is still unknown what on Earth caused him to vanish off the face of the Earth. Some say, perhaps only half-jokingly, that something out of this world was responsible for the young pilot’s disappearance.

Frederick Valentich

In his two years of flying, Frederick Valentich had accumulated over one-hundred-fifty-hours of solo flight time. His flight plan for the evening of October 21, 1978, called for a forty-minute trip west along Australia’s southeast coast. At Cape Otway, he was to head for a half hour run over Bass Strait to King Island where he was to pick up three friends and return to the airport. The scheduled private flight totaled one-hundred-twenty-seven miles and it was a route he had flown on several occasions.

Valentich reported nothing out of the ordinary upon takeoff.

The Pilot’s Planned Route

Approximately half way through the flight, Valentich reported to the Air Service Center at Melbourne Air Services that a long green object was hovering around his plane. He maintained radio contact with the air field for nearly seven minutes, saying the object was swerving around him and that his plane’s engine was running roughly.

Valentich, with more trepidation in his voice, then reported the plane’s engines were malfunctioning and the fast-moving object was above him at what appeared to be one-thousand feet, saying “that strange aircraft is hovering on top of me and it is not an aircraft.” The unidentified clicking noise lasting seventeen seconds then came over the radio, followed by silence.

 

The Air Service Center put an alert phase on the airplane; when that elapsed with no sightings, it issued a distress alert and began a search. For four days, a flotilla of search vessels combed Bass Strait but found no sign of the pilot or his aircraft; nor did they find any evidence that the plane had crashed.

Frederick Valentich’s scheduled forty-minute trip instead became a now forty-five-year-old mystery.

No Trace of the Plane or Pilot

As the search was in progress, a man reported that as he was driving his car on the evening of October 21, he noticed unusual activity in the sky. His description of what he saw seemed to match Frederick Valentich’s recorded account.

The man described a long lime-green light flying above an airplane, confirmed as Valentich’s. After a few seconds, the man said the green light gradually grew closer to the plane before both the light and the plane flew over a hill and disappeared from his view.

An Artist’s Rendering of What Was Seen

Six weeks later, amateur photographer Roy Manifold came forward stating he had set up his camera on Cape Otway to photograph the sunset on the same evening. His location was almost directly under Frederick Valentich’s flight path.

Roy had his camera on automatic exposure and took six photographs; he did not see or hear anything unusual as he was taking them. When the film was developed, the last photograph showed a blemish. The Kodak lab in the Victorian city of Coburg found no dirt or damage on the negative and believed the mark was in the picture.

The photo was sent to the United States for analysis. A group of UFO researchers concluded the blot was a solid metallic object appearing to have been enveloped in a cloud of exhaust situated approximately one mile from the camera. Another analysis, however, concluded the spot was most likely a developing error.

The Mysterious Mark

In 1983, five years after Frederick Valentich’s disappearance, an engine cowl washed ashore at Flinders Island, approximately seven-hundred-forty kilometers (four-hundred-sixty miles) southeast of Melbourne. The flap was from the same type of Cessna he had flown and had a partial serial number matching the number from his plane.

The flap could not, however, be conclusively determined as coming from Valentich’s plane, as other similar planes had previously been lost in the same area.

Plane Remnants Are Found

Several theories have been offered for Frederick Valentich’s aerial vanishing:

• He was disoriented after seeing a bright planet, the stars, or a meteor shower in the sky

• He became distracted and was flying upside down. If this were the case, what he thought he saw would have been his own aircraft’s lights reflected in the water. He would then have crashed into the water.

• Air force pilots and astronomers have suggested he was deceived by the illusion of a tilted horizon for which he attempted to compensate and inadvertently put his aircraft into a downward graveyard spiral which he initially mistook for the orbiting of the aircraft. The gravitational forces of a tightening spiral would decrease fuel flow, resulting in the rough idling he reported.

Astronomers further posit that the apparently stationary, overhead lights that Valentich reported were probably the planets Mercury, Venus, and Mars, along with the bright star Antares in the Scorpius constellation. All, the astronomers say, would have behaved in a way consistent with his description.

Theories Abound

It has also been proposed that Frederick Valentich staged his disappearance. His single-engine Cessna 182 had enough fuel to fly eight-hundred kilometers, nearly five-hundred miles. Despite ideal conditions, aircraft was not plotted on radar, casting doubts as to whether it was ever near Cape Otway.

In addition, Melbourne Police received reports of a light aircraft making a landing not far from Cape Otway at the time he was last seen. This aircraft was never identified.

As there has been no trace of Frederick Valentich, however, since that fateful flight forty-five years ago, he has been declared legally dead.

Could Frederick Valentich Have Vanished Voluntarily?

One final explanation has been proffered for Frederick Valentich’s vanishing.  Ufologists speculate the only explanation for the young pilot’s disappearance goes beyond our world.

They suggest perhaps . . . just perhaps . . . the aliens got him.

Nabbed by Extraterrestrials?

SOURCES:

• The Australian
• Melbourne Herald Sun
• Unsolved Mysteries
• “Weird or What?”