The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich

Before leaving the subject of aviation in the 1970’s entirely, the strange case of Australian pilot Frederick Valentich is another mystery worthy of note. At 6:19 pm on October 21, 1978, Frederick took off from Robin Airport, near Melbourne, in a Cessna 182 light aircraft. His plan was to fly west for forty minutes along the Australian coast. Once he reached Cape Otway, he intended to head south over the Bass Strait towards his destination, King Island. Accounts differ as to the purpose of the flight. According to some reports he said he was planning to pick up passengers, and he did indeed take three spare life jackets with him, which lends credence to this assertion. However, he apparently told others he was going to buy crayfish. As there were no passengers waiting for him at King Island, and he had not placed an order for crayfish, both assertions seem to be incorrect. The truth of the matter may, however, be fairly mundane. He was a young man who just liked flying, and so probably made up a couple of different excuses for the evening jaunt. He would possibly have been a little embarrassed to admit the journey had no purpose other than for his own pleasure.

Beginning at 7.06pm, the following is a transcript of a conversation between Frederick Valentich and Steve Robey, an air traffic controller with Melbourne Air Flight Service:

Valentich: Is there any known traffic below five thousand [feet]?

Robey: No known traffic.

V: I am—seems [to] be a large aircraft below five thousand.

R: What type of aircraft is it?

V: I cannot affirm. It is [sic] four bright, it seems to me like landing lights. . . . The aircraft has just passed over me at least a thousand feet above.

R: Roger, and it, it is a large aircraft? Confirm.

V: Er, unknown due to the speed it’s traveling. Is there any Air Force aircraft in the vicinity?

R: No known aircraft in the vicinity.

V: It’s approaching right now from due east towards me. . . . [Silence for 2 seconds.] It seems to me that he’s playing some sort of game. He’s flying over me two, three times, at a time at speeds I could not identify.

R: Roger. What is your actual level?

V: My level is four and a half thousand. Four five zero zero.

R: And confirm you cannot identify the aircraft.

V: Affirmative.

R: Roger. Stand by.

V: It’s not an aircraft. It is—[Silence for 2 seconds.]

R: Can you describe the, er, aircraft?

V: As it’s flying past, it’s a long shape. [Silence for 3 seconds.] [Cannot] identify more than [that it has such speed]. [Silence for 3 seconds.] [It is] before me right now, Melbourne.

R: And how large would the, er, object be?

V: It seems like it’s stationary. What I’m doing right now is orbiting, and the thing is just orbiting on top of me also. It’s got a green light and sort of metallic. [Like] it’s all shiny [on] the outside. [Silence for 5 seconds.] It’s just vanished. . . . Would you know what kind of aircraft I’ve got? Is it military aircraft?

R: Confirm the, er, aircraft just vanished.

V: Say again.

R: Is the aircraft still with you?

V: [It’s, ah, nor-] [Silence for 2 seconds.] [Now] approaching from the southwest. . . . The engine is, is rough idling. I’ve got it set at twenty three twenty four, and the thing is—coughing.

R: Roger. What are your intentions?

V: My intentions are, ah, to go to King Island. Ah, Melbourne, that strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again. [Silence for 2 seconds.] It is hovering, and it’s not an aircraft. [Silence for 17 seconds, open microphone, with audible, unidentified metallic staccato noise.] End of transcript

The conversation with Robey, which ended abruptly at 7.12pm, was the last time anyone heard from Frederick Valentich. A sea and air search was undertaken that included oceangoing shipping, an RAAF Lockheed P-3 Orion aircraft, and eight civilian aircraft. The search encompassed over 1,000 square miles. Search efforts continued for four days but no trace of Frederick or the aircraft was ever found. Five years after Valentich’s aircraft went missing, an engine cowl flap was found washed ashore on Flinders Island. However, as a number of Cessna aircraft had been reported as having lost a cowl flap in the general vicinity, it was not possible to identify it as having belonged to the missing aircraft.

So, what happened to Frederick Valentich. Although he was just 20 years old, he had amassed about 150 total hours flying time and he held a class-four instrument rating, which authorised him to fly at night. Although he did not have a huge amount of flying hours under his belt, he was considered reasonably experienced, given his comparative youth. Various theories have been put forward to provide a logical explanation of what happened to Frederick on that fateful evening.  One suggestion was that Valentich became disorientated and was flying upside down. If this were the case, the lights he thought he saw would be his own aircraft’s lights, reflected in the water and he would then presumably have crashed into the water. However, the model of Cessna he was piloting could not have flown inverted for long as it has a gravity feed fuel system, meaning that its engine would have cut out very quickly. Another alternative theory proposed that Frederick was deceived by the illusion of a tilted horizon for which he attempted to compensate and inadvertently put his aircraft into a downward, so-called “graveyard spiral”. However, this theory required him to have mistaken the planets Venus, Mars, and Mercury, along with the bright star Antares as the lights from the other aircraft. Extremely unlikely, especially as it was not even dark at the time. There was even a suggestion that he committed suicide. However, interviews with doctors and colleagues, and others who knew him, including his father and his girlfriend, virtually eliminated this likelihood.

What we are left with reminds me of a phrase coined by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and attributed to his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes; “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. Did Frederick Valentich really encounter an unidentified flying object that abducted both him and his little plane? It has been over 40 years since his disappearance, and to date it seems about as likely a possibility as the alternative theories.

Sources:

Skepticalenquirer.org the-valentich-disappearance

Wikipedia.org Disappearance_of_Frederick_Valentich